Let me be more specific: this is about my biggest swing flaw. If I start getting into general flaws, we’re going to be here a while.

I have a case of “chicken wing”. No, I didn’t say I ate a case of chicken wings. I said I have a horrible swing affliction. For those unaware, “chicken wing” refers to a problem where the left arm and wrist don’t stay firm at impact and break down. This results in a power drain and lack of consistency. I first discovered this problem at a lesson a couple of years back. It’s not necessarily apparent because I have a lot of power. But the camcorder exposes the problem big-time.

My belief is that in my case, the cause is a late or stalled action of my legs and hips on the down swing. If I hang back on my right foot a little too long it starts the whole thing in motion. Because I have a lot of power, the chicken wing is basically my body’s defense mechanism to keep parts of me from tearing or snapping like twigs. Amazingly, I still get decent distance. When I first discovered this problem, it took me a ton of effort on the practice range to start to correct. Then I got injured. Now that I’m back, so is the chicken wing. I haven’t verified this on tape yet, but the subtle symptoms are there: higher ball trajectory, less consistent ball striking, more shots thinly struck, and of course, less distance. And perhaps the most telling symptom: soreness in my elbows. I believe that the rapid, violent breakdown in my left arm/wrist causes me some soreness in my elbows. On top of all that, and I don’t have any evidence of this, but I believe this inefficient swing flaw could be a source of or contributor to my back problem.

So what’s the cure? A couple of years back, my teacher had me working on this problem by having me try to make my right knee and hands move through the ball at the same time. This boils the fix down to one easy swing thought that’s easy to practice. To get my right knee moving through the ball at the same time as my hands, my right foot has to come off the ground earlier in the down swing, and that means the transfer of weight to my left side will have to start sooner and not stall out. It eventually worked for me after a ton of practice time (and times when I made only a tiny improvement but thought I was completely cured).

Recently, I read an article at Golf Digest online by Rob Akins from 2003 that gives a different approach to solving the problem. His belief is that you must resist letting your hands cross in front of your chest, and you do this with a hard chest turn in the down swing. This allows the hands to lag behind and avoid the chicken wing.

I believe both these tips achieve the same goal through different means. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. You might find yourself having trouble executing a certain corrective action, but find success when it’s presented to you in a different way.

Another lesson-learned that I’d like to pass on is: if possible, take a video lesson so you can see for yourself what your swing looks like. I would have never realized on my own that I was doing this because I still have a fair amount of power. The symptoms seemed like it was just an issue of putting in some practice time to work out some consistency problems. The problem was, I was grooving this move. The mind and body are wonderful things. But it’s a fine line between a groove and a rut.

My plan for now is to make this my maximum priority. I will absolutely never achieve any level of success with this flaw. Since the weather has been bad here for a bit, I’ve been taking some partial swings in my living room and am trying to learn the correct action so when I address a ball for real, it’ll start coming to me faster.

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