You sway when your head and hips slide away from the target in your backswing. To stop swaying, turn your trail hip back behind you and keep your head within 4 inches of its address spot at the top, with your trail hip no more than 1 inch outside your trail foot.
A small head move is fine. In our test clips, the tour pros and a skilled amateur moved their heads back 0.7 to 3.5 inches by the top. Past 4 inches, you owe all that distance back on the way down, plus your normal shift toward the target, before the club reaches the ball.
Tell a sway from a turn
Picture your backswing from the front. In a turn, your trail hip pocket rotates back behind you, your weight settles into the inside of your trail foot, and your head drifts a little with your chest. In a sway, your hips and head slide sideways together and your weight rolls onto the outside of that foot.
TPI defines the sway as too much sideways movement of your lower body away from the target in the backswing, enough to push your weight to the outside of your trail foot. It compares a good backswing to a baseball hitter who digs in with the back foot, coils around that leg, then drives forward off it (TPI's sway page).
You can feel the difference without a camera. Stop at the top and notice where your trail foot carries your weight: on its inside edge, you turned; on its outside edge, you swayed. Your trail knee gives you a second clue, because when it drifts outside your trail foot, your hip went with it.
Face on, you check two numbers at the top. If your head moved more than 4 inches away from the target, you swayed. If your trail hip moved more than 1 inch outside your trail foot, you slid your hips.
Know your limits at the top
| At the top, face on | Inside the limit | Fault |
|---|---|---|
| Head movement away from the target | 4 in or less (tour pros and a skilled amateur in our test clips: 0.7 to 3.5 in) | More than 4 in: a sway |
| Trail hip past your trail foot | 1 in or less | More than 1 in: a hip slide |
Your trail foot is the wall you load against. Once your hip moves past that wall, your weight sits on the outside edge of the foot, the spot TPI warns about, and you lose the brace you push from in the downswing.
Your head gets more room: it drifts back a little as your chest turns over your trail leg.
Two faults share the word slide. In the backswing, a hip slide means your trail hip drifts outside your trail foot. In the downswing, your hips can slide too far toward the target: past 11 inches at impact, you've overdone your shift.
On our fault list, a hip slide sits in the second tier, with coming over the top and falling back. If your clip also shows early extension or hanging back, you start with those, since they cost you more.
Let your head move a little
Your weight should move into your trail side in the backswing, and your head drifts back a little with it. Force plate research backs that up: in 62 golfers from professionals to high handicappers, pressure moved toward the back foot during the backswing in both weight transfer styles the researchers found (Ball and Best, 2007).
Watch when you load. Skilled golfers with an average handicap of 0.8 finished loading their trail foot partway through the backswing and were already easing off it by the top. Golfers averaging a 30.8 handicap kept loading their trail foot until the top (Okuda and colleagues, 2010).
Some pelvis movement can even come with speed. In 16 low handicap women, more pelvis translation during the backswing went with more clubhead speed, and the researchers found no single driver technique that suited all of them (Brown and colleagues, 2011).
So load your trail side early, let your head drift back with your chest, and keep the drift inside 4 inches. If you try to pin your head in place, check that your weight still reaches your trail side: weight that stays on your lead leg at the top starts a reverse pivot.
See what a sway does to your contact and timing
The bottom of your swing follows your body. Move your head and hips 5 inches away from the target and you have to bring them 5 inches back, plus your normal shift toward the target, before the club reaches the ball.
Come back short and the club bottoms out behind the ball: you hit it fat, or the club catches the ball on the way up and you hit it thin. The fat shots guide covers that miss in detail. Overdo the trip back and you can slide your hips past that 11 inch limit, a fault the hanging back page covers.
Timing suffers too. Your arms keep swinging while your hips travel out and back, so your body and the club reach the ball at different moments. TPI's version: without a stable platform to drive from in the transition, you lose power and build your speed in the wrong order.
Check your body for the cause
A sway often starts below your belt. TPI points at three limits: a trail hip that can't rotate inward, a trunk that can't turn apart from your pelvis, and a weak glute medius, the muscle on the side of your hip that keeps it from shifting out.
TPI's guide to eliminating the sway adds your trail ankle. If it can't roll inward, you struggle to keep your weight on the inside of your back foot, and if the foot rolls onto its outer edge, you sway. The same guide says good internal rotation in your trail hip, more than 45 degrees, can sharply cut the odds of a sway (TPI on eliminating the sway).
If your trail hip feels locked when you turn into it, add hip mobility work to the drills below, and ask a TPI certified expert or a physio to screen you.
Stop the sway with three drills
Drill 1: Turn inside a stick
- Push an alignment stick into the ground against the outside of your trail heel so it stands straight up beside your trail hip. A golf bag works too.
- Make half swings and turn your trail hip back behind you without touching the stick.
- If your hip bumps it, you slid. Make two slow turns where your trail pocket moves back, then swing again.
- Build to three-quarter swings and hit 10 balls.
Drill 2: Swing with your feet together
- Set your feet together, touching, with the ball in the middle of your stance and a 7 iron in your hands.
- Make three-quarter swings at about 70% effort.
- Feel yourself turn around your center: a sway tips you off balance right away.
- Hit 10 balls, then widen to your normal stance and keep the same turn.
Drill 3: Pause at the top
- Swing to the top and stop for a two count.
- During the pause, feel your weight on the inside of your trail foot and check that your head sits close to its address spot.
- Swing down from the pause and hit the ball.
- Hit 10 balls, then shorten the pause until it disappears.
Check your sway face on
Record five swings face on before the drills, with your phone in the same spot each time. The filming guide shows where to put it.
Read two numbers at the top: how far your head moved from its address spot, and where your trail hip sits against your trail foot. Aim for less than 4 inches of head movement, ideally inside the 0.7 to 3.5 inch range of the tour pros and skilled amateur on our bench, and keep your trail hip within 1 inch of your trail foot.
Then check impact on the same clip. If your hips moved less than 1.5 inches toward the target, you also hang back, and the hanging back fix comes next. Down the line, check your posture too: early extension shows best from that angle.
After a week of drills, record five more swings and compare.
Record one swing face on in Scratchmaxx and you see both top numbers and your hip shift at impact. Your height sets the scale for the inches, so keep one swing per clip.
