Over-Rotation/ Overswing

Over-Rotation/ Overswing:

This fault is caused by either standing up in the backswing, letting your hips sway, over rotating your body or putting in hip tilt.  This fault although one may think would lead to more power (because you are turning more and putting more leverage into the swing) leads to less power due to not coiling your upper body around your  hips and having rotated your hips too far to unwind them properly (before your shoulders).  This leads to weak, inconsistent strikes. If you have the correct spine angle and don’t sway or over-rotate your hips then unless you collapse your arms, you shouldn't overswing.  Basically this fault comes down to coming out of the positive angles established at address.  

These are two photos depicting the over-rotation fault.  Too much hip tilt, hip turn, and hip sway in photo on left (notice how yellow stick points towards ground), and too much hip turn and shoulder turn in photo on right.  These faults produce other faults including the over the top, early extension, hip sway.

Drill 1:

Have your right hand on the club and your left holding an alignment stick on your hip line.  Try to make a backswing where you move your hips as little as possible, like they are restricted in the address position.  This adds more coil to the backswing rather than wasting all the energy on the backswing.  Then make sure to unwind with the hips before your shoulders, to eliminate the over the top move that plagues many golfers from the over-rotation fault.  

Drill 2:

 Have your right foot back and up on it's toe.  Make a swing staying in balance.  Your right foot in this position will not let you over-rotate or hip sway without falling over/ losing your balance.  

Drill 3:

This drill is similar to the one above, except it focuses on not over-rotating the shoulders/ upper body. Setup with right foot just behind ball, left foot behind and on toes, and have a club shaft against your shoulder line.  Now take a shoulder turn that does not allow the clubshaft pass the ball (so it stays on the left side of the ball looking down on it).  This will make the swing much more efficient because if you unwind your hips against your upper body on the downswing, you will generate much more "stretch or torque" than you would if you turned "everything" (your lower body and upper body) together.  This drill will lead to more power as well as a simpler action which will make finding the proper club path easier, contributing to more consistent strikes and lower scores.