Early Extension

Early Extension:
Early Extension is the first move on the downswing where you push your hips and bow your legs out towards the ball in an effort to either square the clubface (usually because of a poor grip) or to attack the ball from an "out to in" path.  This leads to inconsistent strikes all over the clubface as well as a loss of distance due to miss strikes.

If you early extend and bow of your left knee out, it will be impossible to rotate your hips (left) where if you make a good hip rotation and weight shift you should end up with a straightened left leg (right).  Think of rotating around that ball and socket joint in the left hip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUQmjdywsio

This is commonly caused by a leveling/ standing up of your posture on the backswing which leads to a steep shaft on the downswing.  Many golfers consciously or subconsciously recognize this steepening of the shaft and thrust their hips forward in order to not hit from out to in.  

This is Beatriz Recari demonstrating a solid impact and downswing with minimal early extension.  She hits a beautiful push draw.  Notice how her left leg has straightened from the left image to the right image.

This is also caused by a drop in the right shoulder on the start of the downswing, instead of rotating it more.  To a good player, this move feels over the top, so he/she will drop the right shoulder and get the right elbow too far down on the right side.  This really shallows the club, and gets the golfer stuck on the way down.  So this problem boils down to not enough tilt at address or impact  

So the good player who has the problem of too shallow a club path on the downswing has to forget all the cliches about swinging in to out and holding lag.  Instead the good player should focus on moving their body in sync.  If you have enough tilt at address and you let your right shoulder work around your spine (on that same tilt), the left hip can't help but stay on the tush line.  Or think about straightening your left leg in the downswing to ensure that you keep your tush line.    

What I'm focusing on (as of 7/12/13) is to make sure that the left leg straightens earlier in the downswing.

Left leg has just straightened by this point in the follow through, but the left leg starts straightening about halfway down in the down swing. 

Now when you early extend you get closer to the ball and you will have really high hands at impact (4 to 5 degrees upright!).  We would like to error on the side of lower hands through impact.  We have to realize that the early extension also results in an upper body fault as well.  When early extending, the right shoulder does not rotate down towards the ball on the downswing which means that we will probably cut across the ball in order to not hit fat shots (because the right shoulder needs to rotate downwards towards the ball in order to hit solid shots consistently - bottoming out in front of the ball).    

You may see:

• shanks
• heel contact (Which could lead to push slices since the path is now in to out)

Drill 1: "The Cross-Guard Drill"

 


Put the club diagonally across your body, from the left hip to the right shoulder, and maintain this relationship from backswing to downswing.  This will keep the body more synchronized and will stop the early extension move by focusing on the upper body and lower body at the same time.

Keys: the left leg should straighten while the right shoulder is rotating through

Left hip moves southwest, and the right shoulder moves out and down (in the same relationship established by the club against the left hip and right shoulder).  This drill will help your backside stay back and get your arms to stay in front of you.  If you are hitting it fat or slicing it badly, then you need to make sure you are bumping your hip west enough (because just turning in a barrel will catch the ball way on the later part of the arc resulting in a major out to in move).  

If you are hitting the ball thin or way to much in to out, then your right shoulder is not coming out enough and the left hip is not turning to the south enough (back towards the tush line).  

The more you create the axis tilt, the more the plane shifts out to the right, the more you will push draw, pull hook, or push slice the shot. 

Drill 2:  

Put your left foot back behind your right foot and hit/ rehearse swings where you feel like you are opening up your hips to the target.  

Drill 3:

Simple exercise/ warm-up for feeling your hips rotating independently of your shoulders.

Drill 4:

If you can afford these balance balls, they are very beneficial to your balance and fixing faults like swaying, early extension, etc.

 Balance balls (virtually no early extension) vs. No balance balls (early extension)