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Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America. Meet your new instructor.

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Right Arm Pull, Left Arm Push

Here is a fun way to look at “rotation”. I put it in quotes, because rotation may not actually be rotation, the way you are used to thinking about it. If I flex the left side of my body, and I extend the right side of my body, notice how it creates “rotation. So you can either think of it in this way, or you can think of it as a front side (left) and a backside (right) movement. So, during the takeaway, the left side can push across your body and the right arm can pull the backside of your body to rotate. Notice however, that if your left arm pushes, you will tend to drift off the ball. It is rare to find a tour pro who shifts more than 2-3 inches off the ball in the backswing, but it’s quite common to find higher handicapers. This can sometimes be corrected by learning to pull the club with the right side of the body.

Tags: Backswing, Drill, Intermediate

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This drill is called emphasizing the right arm pole and it's to help you create this

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centered one piece take away back swing. So one way to think about rotation that you may

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not have thought before is there's no muscles that really cross my spine, right? So

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most of the muscles in my body kind of stop at this midline both in the front and the back.

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So one way to think about rotation is if I flex my left side and I extend my right side

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can you see how that created something that looks very much like rotation because it's exactly

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the same. What we typically see with golfers is they overemphasize one or the other and the one

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that we'll see the most of or the one that I see the most of is the left side flexing without

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having the right side extend and if you flex the left side without extending the right side then

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what ends up happening is the upper body starts drifting away from the golf ball and it's

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going to move the bottom of your swing behind the golf ball. It's going to get you outside of your

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basis support when it's just hard to push off and it's going to make you very prone to hitting

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the ball fat hitting the ball thin and having a path that's either way to into out or way to have

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it in depending on how you compensate. So one of the things that you can focus on is if you bring your hands

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up like so you can push one arm and pull with the other like this. So if I stand here you'll see

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I push with the left and I pull with the right. I push with the left and I pull with the right.

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And if I turn around when I do this you can see that this shoulder blade actually ends up working

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towards my spine. So as you do this takeaway movement focus on feeling that right side feeling

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more like it pulls up and back versus the left side reaching across like so and it will help the

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spine control this one piece take away instead of just the arms. So it's a great drill for working

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on the connection and the realization of how your spine actually moves which will set you up for the

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rest of the backswing.

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