Tip Tuesday: Keep the Right Arm Close

Many golfers struggle with “casting” the club. Steve Dresser from the Steve Dresser Golf Academy at True Blue Golf Club in Pawleys Island, S.C. is here to show us a simple way to keep that right arm close through impact.

Steve Dresser:

One thing I see in a lot of right-handed players is as they’re coming down, their right arm straightens way too soon, long before impact, some call it casting. If you’ve seen some of my stuff before, I like to call this the California arm because your arm takes on the shape of California prior to impact. If you think of throwing a ball a little bit sidearm or whatever, your arm’s going to be this way for quite a while. In fact, it’s still going to be bent when you let go of the ball. It doesn’t really straighten until you’ve gone all the way through.

So, there are a couple things you can think about to help keep you from making this move. One really simple one is to just keep your palm of your right hand parallel to the stance and the target line as you’re coming down. You can see this elbow really stays in like this. If you have shoulder issues, you’re going to have a hard time with this. So do what you can, but we have not made this move where we’ve used up all of our power when we do that.

You also notice I’m rotating into the shot as I’m doing this, so that tip is to simply keep the palm of this hand parallel to your target line. It’s almost like you’re wiping a wall with a cloth when you’re coming through. If it’s easier to think of what’s going on in this hand. Well, if you have the palm of your right hand parallel to the target line, you’re going to have the back of your left hand parallel to it also. So now, you can see we’re able to create a little bit of lag. You’ll notice this elbow stays in, and that’s another thing you can do is just put your elbow right in your ribs. And again, the palms facing out. And now, I’m just turning. I’m just turning my body through. I’m not really moving my arm independently. I’m just turning.

So one thing I will caution you on this, if you’re a really open face player (meaning club face kind of looks down toward the ground at the top of the back swing): it could be because your grip is too weak. It could be because you roll it open, going back … Could be from of a variety of things. My point is, if you’ve got a very open club face at the top, and you start working on this, you’re probably going to hit flop shots over to the right. So make sure that club face is square, even perhaps slightly shut up at the top of the back swing before you really try to start working on hitting the ball like this.