Tip Tuesday: Setting Your Arms Properly at Address

In this segment, Allen Terrell of the Dustin Johnson Golf School at TPC Myrtle Beach in Murrells Inlet, S.C. demonstrates the proper way to establish your arm structure at address – a critically important step that dictates what the golf club will do within the first few feet of your backswing.

Allen Terrell:
Okay. So some things we see on the lesson tee here at the Dustin Johnson Golf School are in relation to how someone sets up, and specifically how they set their arm structure at address. How you set your arm structure at address is solely going to dictate what the golf club does in the first few feet. So we see a lot of right arm rolled and the elbow out at address with a fairly weak right hand. So what we’d like to see is preferably a neutral setup, where this left elbow is a little more toward the target and our right elbow is a little bit more down to the ground or pointed at your right hip. To be able to do that, you’re going to have to softly bend your right arm at address. You won’t be able to straighten it and get that elbow pointed out.

What that does is it kind of presets the structure of your right arm, gets your right hand more to the side of the grip. So then this is already preset. So when we start taking it away, there’s not going to have to be a lot of extra levers moving. We can use more of our pivot with the already preset structure. It will have a pretty low maintenance back swing from there.

So work on that setup. Make sure that left arm’s on top of our chest, and never on the sides with our long game. Obviously, with pitching you can do that, but for the full swing get that left arm more on top. Get that elbow pointed slightly out. Right elbow a little bent, point it a little more down to the ground in relationship to your left. And that’ll really simplify how the arms work in the backswing.