Tweet
Looking over some videos, I noticed that my stance looked wide. I hadn't paid that much attention to this before. I thought my feet were about shoulder width, but looking at the videos, I realized they were farther apart than that. Since I have trouble getting a good hip turn, I thought this might be part of the cause. So I've tried bringing them closer together. It's hard to do, because I've been doing it one way for long enough that it feels natural, so if I don't make a conscious adjustment, I place them wide every time. This may partly be a hangover from the fact that when I first started playing I was trying to do the "natural golf" swing, which has a wide stance, precisely to keep the hips still.
I've come to the conclusion that the NG swing, and its derivatives, are based on the idea that the closer the address position is to the impact position, the more likely one is to get a repeatable swing. This makes sense, I think, for those of us who aren't naturally athletic. I tend to think of this as a "remedial" swing for the athletically challenged, and I see nothing wrong with that (since I'm in that category myself). But for various reasons, I decided to work on a conventional golf swing, with a full hip turn. So in addition to being athletically challenged, I had to unlearn the elements of the NG swing that I had been using (or trying to).
Anyway, this adjustment seems to help a lot with the hip turn. Something I had noticed was that often my right foot wasn't coming up very much, but I didn't think it was because of the stance being too wide. Narrowing the stance changed that completely, so I am presumably getting a better weight shift.
I've come to the conclusion that the NG swing, and its derivatives, are based on the idea that the closer the address position is to the impact position, the more likely one is to get a repeatable swing. This makes sense, I think, for those of us who aren't naturally athletic. I tend to think of this as a "remedial" swing for the athletically challenged, and I see nothing wrong with that (since I'm in that category myself). But for various reasons, I decided to work on a conventional golf swing, with a full hip turn. So in addition to being athletically challenged, I had to unlearn the elements of the NG swing that I had been using (or trying to).
Anyway, this adjustment seems to help a lot with the hip turn. Something I had noticed was that often my right foot wasn't coming up very much, but I didn't think it was because of the stance being too wide. Narrowing the stance changed that completely, so I am presumably getting a better weight shift.