A few days ago I offered a simple tip by Tom Watson on ‘Keeping the Crease’ through your golf swing. What Watson suggests about keeping a slight hip flex during the backswing and forward to release seems, at least on the surface, to be an easy thing to do. Two days ago, I headed out to my DIY driving net in my garage (because the temperatures are warmer) in attempts to replicate keeping the crease.
Initially, I worked on ensuring I had the proper posture. I took the time to align my feet (with alignment sticks), bent at the hips as Watson suggests, let my arms hang, gripped my club and took many practice swings. Why many practice swings you may ask, well that is a great question. It took me some time work this new posture of keeping the crease into my swing routine.
After taking my initial swing, I realized that my right hip and left shoulder were very tight. Even with increasing my flexibility routine over the past 3 weeks, they were not near ready to the movements I wanted to try. So, I swung my 5 iron until I felt like my hips and shoulders were ready to hit balls.
Focusing again on my foot location, I realized that my first instinct was to play the ball forward in my stance slightly to accommodate for my swing technique of last year. With trying to keep the crease, I was able to move the ball back in my stance (just in front of center) to ensure that I was hitting the ball first to have a divot after. This new position is challenging and I will have to hit many more balls to engrain it into my swing routine.
You might be wondering why I the different in ball locations, primarily I stand a bit more upright than Watson’s advice. I have developed this posture because of my intent to hit the ball square, but my choice cost me distance. It was a trade-off I was willing to accept, until now. I want to try and increase my distance and I believe that I can by keeping a more athlete swing position by keeping the crease. Add this to my efforts to increase my lag and I think I have found a recipe to success.
It will take time to ensure that my new changes are automatic, but I am willing to put in the time and accept the frustration of making swing changes. As I continue to work at on my swing, I will keep you updated as to my success. I am a grateful golfer! See you on the links!
The Grateful Golfer 
Posture. My swing speed search has taken me there too. I’ve taken to pointing both toes out now instead of just my left toe. That has made it feel more natural to plant my weight where it’s supposed to be more in the center instead of on the balls of my feet. It’s also facilitated easier and more full turns and put my knees into a better position to help lead the transition into my downswing transfer my weight and get into impact position. I can mimic the squat as the transition starts and mimic my left leg pushing me up as I come into contact in my slow motion practice moves so much easier now so I can ingrain the timing needed to get it somewhere close to right on the course. And it’s working. Pretty much all of it. I’m gaming it. It all started with wanting to turn a little better and it’s led to a ground up change to basically everything. The only concession I’m making really is that I’m keeping the limp wrist feeling where I let the inertia generated in the downswing add to the amount of lag and thus keep me from releasing early to less than full swings. But I do that kind of shot more often than any other so I’m giving it lots of practice.
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Kevin,
I play with flaring my toes as well. I will have to check it out. Thanks for sharing. But today, I need to move 6 inches of snow, so to swing of clubs for me. 🤣
Cheers Jim
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