Golf Tip: Don’t Keep Your Head Down

A Common Myth

It’s kind of funny how golf is the only sport in the world where players willingly take advice from someone who clearly has no idea what they’re talking about. Imagine you’re playing basketball and look over and see someone airball 10 consecutive free throws. They proceed to walk over and give you shooting advice. Would you listen to them? No. 

Without a doubt, the most common tip that I hear in golf is to “keep your head down”. It’s something that every golfer has heard at one point in their life. It is my goal to stop the madness that is telling someone to keep their head down. I have witnessed the negative impact of this advice far too many times. I can’t stress enough how detrimental it can be to a golfer’s athleticism, speed, and overall performance.

What’s the Problem?

Many golfers, most often beginners, hear this dreaded four word phrase after whiffing, topping, chunking the golf ball. The reality is that those misses are generally caused by 2 things:

1. A misunderstanding of where the low point of the golf swing should be
2. A technically flawed swing which doesn’t allow the golfer to reach the proper low point on a consistent basis.

It’s almost never caused by a golfer “lifting their head up”. If you’re wondering what the low point is, Trackman defines the low point of the golf swing as the distance from the club head’s geometric center to the lowest point on the swing arc at the time of maximum compression. To make it easier to understand: the low point is where the club head bottoms out in the downswing.  Experienced golfers know that the low point, with irons, should be somewhere in front of the golf ball.

That’s why you typically see good players taking divots (after the ball) when they strike an iron shot. The club head strikes the golf ball first, then continues to drive into the grass where eventually the club bottoms out. When golfers are told to “keep their head down”, it robs them of their ability to shift their weight into their left side, and rotate the hips and chest toward the target. 

What Should You Do Instead?

In sports that involve a hitting motion (baseball, tennis, golf, hockey), rotation is vital in speed generation. In golf, the two main areas that we focus on, rotation wise, are the hips and shoulders. Using technology like K Vest and Gears, we’ve found that the best players in the world average 35-50 degrees open with the pelvis at impact, and 26-34 degrees open with their thorax. Golfers who are told to keep their head down don’t even come close to sniffing those numbers. There could be physical limitations that are preventing them from reaching certain levels of rotation. The idea of keeping their head down is only going to make it harder to reach their rotational capabilities.

On a positive note, golf instruction has come a long way in the past 15 years or so. Old, outdated “opinions” are being dismissed by science and factual information. For example, before launch monitor technology came out, it was universally accepted that the club face angle dictated the curvature of the golf ball, and path dictated starting direction. That was taught to possibly millions of golfers around the world. There was no fact behind those teachings. It was strictly what experts “believed” to be true, and it was accepted by the masses without question.

When we finally had the science to definitively test what controls start line and curvature, we found that it was the exact opposite. Club face is primarily responsible for starting direction, and club path will dictate how much the ball curves. In addition to Trackman, technologies like Boditrak, K-Vest, Sam PuttLab (used in our SMART Initial Performance Assessment) Gears, HackMotion, and several others are helping the golf instruction industry uncover missing information at an unprecedented rate. It is a very exciting time, and what’s more exciting is that there is still so much more information to be learned about the golf swing.

Busting the Myth

As technology continues to innovate, my hope is that a lot of these outdated opinions will eventually disappear for good. “I think” will be replaced by “I know”, and fact will reign supreme. With that said, if you want to strike the ball more solidly, hit it farther, and ultimately shoot lower scores, DON’T keep your head down!