Golf swing faults, in plain words

Every fault below is one our analysis engine actually detects and measures. No blame in any of them: your body is always solving a problem, just sometimes in a way that costs you the golf ball. Each page tells you what is really happening, what it costs, the cue that fixes it, and a drill with real numbers.

• Corrected at P6 Delivery

  Early Extension

  Your body isn't making a mistake here. It's solving a problem. On the way down, your arms need room to deliver the club. When that room isn't there, your hips push toward the ball to create it. Your trail leg straightens, your hips rise, and your head pulls back away from the ball. By impact, the posture you built at address is gone and your hands are left to save the shot on their own.

• Corrected at P6 Delivery

  Outside-to-In Swing Path

  There's nothing wrong with your effort. Your body just fires in the wrong order. From the top, your shoulders unwind before your lower body gets a chance to lead. That throws the club up and out, so it comes into the ball from outside the target line and cuts across it. You've heard this called coming over the top. The shape is the symptom. The order is the fault.

• Corrected at P4 Top

  Sway

  Your body wants a bigger turn, and it's chasing one the only way it knows how: by sliding instead of coiling. Going back, your lower body drifts away from the target until your trail hip slips outside your trail foot. It feels like you're loading power. You're actually letting it leak out. A hip that slides off the ball has nothing left to coil against.

• Corrected at P5 Transition

  Reverse Pivot

  Your body is trying to stay over the ball. That's a good instinct pointed the wrong way. At the top, your weight hangs on your lead side and your upper body leans toward the target. From there, the only place it can go on the way down is backward, away from the target. So that's where it goes. The pivot runs in reverse.

• Corrected at P7 Impact

  Loss of Posture

  You set an angle at address, and your swing was built to run on it. Then somewhere in the downswing, your body trades that angle for something that feels stronger. You stand taller than you started, or you dip lower. Either way, the swing arrives at the ball on a different track than the one it left on, and your hands have to make up the difference at the last instant.

• Corrected at P6 Delivery

  Casting

  Your hands aren't the problem. They're reacting to one. When your upper body races ahead, the club gets trapped behind you with no room to swing, and throwing the clubhead early is the only way your hands can reach the ball. The wrist angle you loaded going back gets spent at the top of the downswing instead of at the strike.

• Corrected at P7 Impact

  Deceleration Through Impact

  Somewhere along the way you learned to steer the ball, and steering means braking. Your swing hits top speed before the ball, or your body stalls right at it. Either way, the club is slowing down through the one spot where it should be at its fastest. You're guiding the shot instead of hitting it.

• Corrected at P7 Impact

  Scooping

  Your instincts are trying to help the ball into the air. It's the most natural move in golf, and it's exactly backward. Through the strike, your lead wrist breaks down and the clubhead passes your hands before the ball. Instead of delivering the loft the club was built with, you're adding to it at the worst possible moment.

• Corrected at P5 Transition

  Over-Swinging

  You're chasing distance the honest way, with a bigger swing. The problem is your swing kept going after your body finished. Once your shoulder turn completes, the arms keep traveling on their own. Posture gives a little, wrists collapse a little, and the top of your backswing ends up held together by parts that stopped turning a beat earlier.

• Corrected at P4 Top

  Cupped Lead Wrist

  At the top of your backswing, your lead wrist bends backward. Cupped. That one hinge quietly opens the clubface, and nothing else has to go wrong. The face is already open before you start down, so the entire downswing inherits one job: close it in time.

• Corrected at P4 Top

  Over-Bowed Lead Wrist

  A little bow in the lead wrist at the top is a strong, modern position. You've just got too much of a good thing. Bowed past that healthy range, the clubface is shut before the downswing even starts. From there, the ball only flies straight if you hold the face off through the strike. Every swing. Forever.

• Corrected at P1 Address

  Ball Position Drift

  Your swing is fine. The ball is standing in the wrong part of it. Every swing has a natural bottom, the spot where the club wants to hit the ground. When the ball creeps too far forward or back in your stance, the club gets to it before or after that bottom. Nothing about your motion changed. The target moved.

• Corrected at P1 Address

  Stance Width Off

  Your legs are trying to give the swing what it needs, and they're guessing wrong. Too narrow, and there's nothing under you to turn against, so your body sways looking for balance. Too wide, and your hips can't turn at all, so your arms take over. Either way, the top half of your swing spends its energy covering for the bottom half.

• Corrected at P1 Address

  C-Posture (Rounded Shoulders)

  Your body is relaxing into the ball the way it relaxes into a desk chair. The shoulders roll forward, the upper back rounds, and from down the line your spine makes the shape of a C. It feels comfortable, and that's the trap. A rounded back can't rotate the way a straight one can. Before the club ever moves, your turn has a ceiling on it.

• Corrected at P1 Address

  S-Posture (Arched Lower Back)

  Somebody told you to stick your chest out and keep your back straight, and your lower back overdid it. The pelvis tips forward, the belt buckle points at the ground, and your lower spine arches into an S over the ball. It looks athletic in the mirror. But that deep arch switches your core off, and the big muscles that should power your turn never enter the swing.

• Corrected at P1 Address

  Misaligned at Address

  Your swing aims exactly where you told it to. The problem is what you told it. Your feet, hips, and shoulders set the swing's railroad tracks, and most golfers set them somewhere other than where their eyes believe. Usually open, aimed left of the target, and a little more every year. The ball starts where the body aims, so your good swings get punished for following orders.

• Corrected at P2 Takeaway

  Inside Takeaway

  Your hands roll the club open in the first two feet because that's the easiest way to make the swing feel started. The clubhead whips inside the line and disappears behind your body almost immediately. By P2, the takeaway checkpoint, the club is trapped. Its only way forward is up and around, onto a flat, deep track the rest of your swing has to climb out of.

• Corrected at P2 Takeaway

  Picking the Club Straight Up

  Your arms are doing the whole job because they're the fastest way to make the club move, and your body never got an invitation. The wrists snap the club up almost immediately while your chest stays facing the ball. What should be a turn becomes a lift. The backswing ends up narrow and steep, with everything below your shoulders standing still.

• Corrected at P4 Top

  Bent Lead Arm

  Your lead arm bends because your body stopped turning and your arms wanted more backswing anyway. Somewhere past P3, halfway back, the shoulders hit their limit and the elbow folds to keep the club moving. It feels like a bigger swing. It's actually your swing's radius collapsing in the middle of the swing.

• Corrected at P4 Top

  Flying Trail Elbow

  Your trail elbow lifts away from your body on the way to the top because lifting feels like power, especially once the shoulders stop turning a beat early. The elbow that should point at the ground at P4 points at the fence behind you instead. It pushes your hands high and deep and carries the club across the line with it.

• Corrected at P4 Top

  Across the Line at the Top

  At P4, the top of the backswing, your club points right of the target instead of down the line. It got there honestly. The trail elbow drifted, or the wrists kept hinging after the turn finished, and the shaft crossed over. Nothing about the position feels wrong while you're in it. The bill comes on the way down.

• Corrected at P4 Top

  Laid Off at the Top

  Your club points left of the target at the top, flattened behind you. It almost always starts two seconds earlier, with a takeaway that whipped inside and forearms that rolled the club flat. By P4, the shaft has nowhere to point but left. The top didn't fail on its own. It inherited the takeaway.

• Corrected at P4 Top

  Flat Shoulder Turn

  You set a forward tilt at address, and your shoulders are ignoring it. Instead of turning on the incline your spine created, they level out and spin flat, the same motion as turning to talk to someone behind you. The tilt you built gets abandoned one move into the swing, and the club flattens right along with it.

• Corrected at P4 Top

  All-Arms Backswing

  Your arms are running the backswing by themselves. The club swings back, the hands reach a spot that looks like a backswing, but your chest never turned and your hips never coiled behind it. From face-on, it's almost convincing. Underneath, the spring was never wound. The big muscles that store your power are still standing at address.

• Corrected at P4 Top

  Head Dip

  Your body is trying to stay down the way somebody once told it to, and it's overdoing it. Going back, the lead shoulder crowds under your chin, the knees over-flex, and your head sinks toward the ball, sometimes by several inches. Your swing now has a bottom that sits deeper than the one you stood at, and it has to climb back out before impact.

• Corrected at P6 Delivery

  Hip Slide

  Your lower body knows the downswing starts with it, and it's doing the right thing in the wrong direction: sideways instead of around. Starting down, your hips surge toward the target and keep going, sliding past your lead foot instead of turning over it. It's the mirror image of the sway. That one leaks your backswing. This one leaks your downswing.

• Corrected at P6 Delivery

  Stalled Hips

  Your hips start the downswing and quit halfway home, and your arms inherit everything. By P6, the delivery position, the body has stopped rotating. The only way the club can reach the ball is for your hands to throw it, flipping the face over at the bottom. The flip isn't the fault. The flip is the rescue. The fault is the engine shutting off underneath it.

• Corrected at P6 Delivery

  Stuck Behind You

  Your lower body is doing its job almost too well. The hips fire and clear, but your arms never get the memo to come along. The club gets left stranded behind you, trapped deep on the inside with the face hanging open. At P6, the club should be delivering down the line. Instead it's parked behind your trail hip with nowhere to go but right.

• Corrected at P7 Impact

  Hanging Back

  Your body loaded onto the trail side going back and never bought the ticket forward. Coming down, the weight stays on your back foot and your spine leans away from the target. That drags the bottom of the swing behind the ball, exactly where the ball isn't. You end up throwing uphill at a shot that needed to be hit downhill.

• Corrected at P7 Impact

  Chicken Wing

  Your lead elbow bends and pulls up through the strike, wing out, because somewhere the swing ran out of room and bending was the only exit left. The room usually disappeared earlier, in a steep downswing or a body that stopped turning. The elbow is just the last one holding the bag. Arms that should swing long and free through the ball are braking instead.