Golf Swing Tips: Avoid Straightening Your Left Leg Until After Your Club Face Contacts Your Ball

One of the best golf swing tips is to keep your left knee flexed until after your clubface has contacted your ball at impact.

The reason why this is one of the best golf swing tips to improve your golf game is that if you straighten your left leg and lock your left knee joint before impact, you will mishit your golf shot.

Specifically, locking your left knee joint before your clubface contacts your ball during your down swing will change the bottom-out point of your swing arc and prevent you from hitting straight golf shots.

Even if you setup perfectly to your ball and otherwise swing your club to hit a golf ball straight, if you lock your left knee joint as your clubface contacts your ball during your down swing, your ball is going to fly anywhere but on a straight path to your target.

Some of the leading golf instructors imply you should straighten your left leg as your clubface enters the impact zone of your down swing.

They don’t specifically state you should straighten your left leg and lock your left knee joint at the point of impact, but if you listen to some of them, you may be led to believe such.

For example, some instructors and commentators imply you should straighten your left leg when they talk about the importance of hitting against a firm left side. A few even suggest you should straighten your left leg at the point you deliver your clubface to your ball during your down swing.

Such suggestion definitely is not in keeping with the bestgolf swing instructions. However, I do not believe most of those who imply you should straighten your left leg at impact truly mean to suggest such an absurd idea.

Instead, I just believe they get caught up in the mechanics that you must hit against a firm left side. They then mislead golfers into assuming they should straighten their left leg during the impact zone of their down swing. My take is they really mean to suggest that you should straighten your left leg immediately after impact, if at all, not at impact.

Irrespective of their intent, I often observe golfers on a practice range locking their left knee joint as they deliver their clubface to their ball at impact. As a result, they mishit every golf shot.

Therefore, regardless of what you may have interpreted from listening to golf instructors and commentators about hitting against a firm left side, please do not conclude that they mean to imply you should lock your left knee joint as you deliver your clubface to your ball at impact.

For those of you who have misinterpreted such comments from golf instructors and mistakenly adopted such advice into your golf swing, hopefully this article will clear up any such confusion and misinformation.

Otherwise be prepared for a disaster if you habitually lock your left knee joint before your club face contacts your ball

Thus, one of the best golf swing tips to improve your golf swing is to ensure you do not straighten your left leg and lock your left knee joint prior to the point your clubface contacts your ball during you’re your down swing. Copyright © 2012 by Gordon Jackson