Golf World: Addressing major swing problems

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I was standing behind the first tee the other day wondering what my next article would be about, and I decided to focus on some of the major golf swing problems I witnessed there.I watched 30 people go through the first tee and here is what I saw:-- Some 23 of 30 golfers had grips that were too weak. This means their grips were turned too far to their left. This will cause them to hit a slice. A simple turning of their left hand to their right would have saved them five shots.-- 27 out of the 30 golfers misaligned their body. The golfers that aimed too far to the right at address seemed to swing violently across the ball and hit a pull slice or a pull hook.-- The other golfers I looked at aimed down the left side of the fairway and swung directly across the ball, hitting a huge slice. It is a fact that the path of our swing is influenced by the alignment of the shoulders. A simple adjustment of the shoulders to a square (parallel to the target line) position at address would have influenced their shots dramatically. In any case, most of these golfers swung the club outside in (across the ball).-- I couldn't measure, but it looked as if all 30 of the students were too tight and full of body tension. Again, a simple tip such as, "Relax your grip," when you swing the club probably would have helped all of them.-- 26 of the 30 had a poor posture and were either standing too close or too far from the ball. The golfers that looked too close to the ball seem to have high backswings and steep downswings. Many of these players hit the ball very high and to the right.This is a result of the high, steep swing. A better posture for these players would be about a 30-degree bend forward from the waist, with the arms just hanging very softly from the shoulders.This would get these players standing farther from the ball and allow them to have a flatter, more rounded backswing, resulting in a shallower, more inside-out downswing.-- The other type of posture that was quite noticeable was the player that was standing too far from the ball with a very rounded spine. This noticeable reaching for the ball seemed to cause limited body turns and an arm swing only.These players seemed to just throw their shoulders and upper bodies at the ball, and also came down very steep and across the ball. I also saw a few toe hits out of these players because of their extreme distance from the ball.-- All 30 of these golfers had their weight too far to the right at the point of impact. This caused a number of these players to pull their arms in too close to their bodies. This caused thinly hit shots that go to the right.Many of you reading this have seen your arms in this pulled-in, chicken-wing look and now you know why.-- 28 of 30 did not release the club after they hit the ball. Most of them just hung onto the club very tightly trying to steer the ball out in the fairway. Just allowing the club to release a little would have caused them fewer slices that day.-- The last noticeable thing was the quickness from the top of the swing to impact. Although all tempos are different, this group of 30 players seem to be very quick from the top.Probably a good tip to slow them down would be to ask them to complete their turn on the backswing. This would slow their tempos down from the top and give them the added distance they are all looking for.My advice is to watch your fundamentals and try to be as natural as you can with your swing. Sometimes a good tip on the first tee will help.(Dr. Jim Suttie, the 2000 PGA Teacher of the Year, is director of instruction at The Club at TwinEagles in North Naples, Fla. and at Cog Hill Golf Club in Lemont, Ill. He also is a Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher. Suttie coaches the Florida Gulf Coast University men's golf team. E-mail him at jmsuttie(at)aol.com.)