Swing Tip from the Dustin Johnson Golf School: The Two Centers of Your Golf Swing

Allen Terrell, director of coaching at the Dustin Johnson Golf School at TPC Myrtle Beach in Murrells Inlet, S.C., is here to demonstrate a simple tip that will help you make better contact with the ball every time.

There are some common flaws we see on the lesson tee here at the Dustin Johnson Golf School. One is in how the two centers in our swing, and how they’re relating to each other. Meaning our sternum, or your buttons on your shirt, or the center of your pelvic, or let’s say for reference point, your belt buckle. So we see either an excessive drive of the lower center away from the target, which makes the upper center tilt to the left. And remember, you’re always going to be trying to line these things back up. So if this one, the lower one is too far to the right, the upper one’s too far to the left, your first move is going to be to try to center that back up. For a good player, a bad player would go here, and move more forward. Or a higher handicap.

Also, the opposite is we’ll see kind of a reverse hip slide. The hips will shift toward the target and the buttons or the upper sternum gets way over here. The problem with that is when you swing through your left hip is going to get really high early, you won’t be able to open up, and you’re going to have a very manipulated hand action to square the club face.

So to remedy that, for one we’d love for you to come and sign up for a lesson so we can help you through these issues. But if you can feel how you swing to the top, and you start to feel how your buttons are over your belt buckle, not on our left side, but over a little bit more toward our right. And then in your transition, try to keep those two centers matching up. Try not to drive your legs and tilt back. Try not to lean or lunge forward with your upper body. Try to get the feeling in a transition of how you’re lining, keeping these two on top of each other. If you do that, there’s a good chance that everything else is going to be working in the proper manner.