Re: How can I get my left arm straight?

Three thoughts occur to me immediately, one of which is a drill and two are questions.

Let's cover the one question first ... are you physically able to keep your left arm straight? It may well be that you have a mobility/flexibility issue that some balanced stretching and/or strength training will help. Forget the club, forget the swing just stand as if you were setting up and pull a first with your left hand, grip your left fist with your right hand. Now swing back in a rehersal swing keeping your arm straight and first closed and see how far you can go. Can you actually keep it straight? If not - you need to do some excercises to strengthen and loosen the muscles that enable the left side.

Now, remember you don't have to keep the left arm perfectly straight. Lots of the bets players in the world flex their left arm a little but they restore the width of the arc on the way down.

The second question is what swing position are you in when your arms are parallel tothe ground on the backswing? It might be that you're in a bad position for the left side and it can't stay straight... it has to flex to carry on turning around on the backswing.

Next is a drill:
If you're physically able to keep the left arm straight, one of the best ways to drill this is to get an athletic elbow guard (like you get for tennis elbow) and swing with that. They're designed to restrict the elbow movement. If that still allows too much movement for your liking, wrap a piece of paper around your elbow and use something like cellotape to keep it wrapped. If you do it correctly you'd have to be pretty darn strong to break the paper wrapping if you "break" your elbow and allow the left arm to flex.

There are also quite a few golf-specific training aids on the market that do a similar thing.

Now remember, not all drills are meant for full swings and most training aids and the paper option aren't designed for a full swing. You want to fold the left elbow on the follow through once your club passes parallel to the ground. That's why I like using the athletic elbow gaurd because it does allow some flexing and could easily be used on a full swing.

Re: How can I get my left arm straight?

If you are naturally cheap like me and / or a Blue Peter fan you could get a large plastic soft drink bottle, cut off the ends to fit and slide it on to your arm - a little bit of cotton wool padding at the ends and it works a treat.

Re: How can I get my left arm straight?

Hi TP
Some good advice, thanks for that!
I´m physically pretty in shape and are able to hold my left arm straight until it is parallel to the ground. In the bunker for example I´m able to keep the arm straight because conscious I take the club off just half the way. Bunker play is pretty good, at least at the practice green 60% sand saves. But at the full swing, when the arm left the parallel position to get to the full backswing position the elbow gets weak as I recognized in the in the scope. I am going to check out how an athletic elbow guard can help me.

If not I will leave golf sports and became a famous board game player (Halma) ;-)).

Cheers Wolfgang

Re: How can I get my left arm straight?

Carry on working on it ... try the athletic elbow guard, I'm sure it'll help. I use it in my teaching quite a bit.

It would also be worth while practicing at home for example just working on getting the left arm up and behind in a rehersal swing. The more often the brain gets given instructions the better.