Have you ever noticed how effortlessly most of touring PGA pros seem to move through their swing and still hit the ball a ton? The very heart of a golf swing that generates its power and club head speed is body flexibility. Specifically, striking the golf ball with power is dependent on properly rotating the shoulders and hips - not swinging the arms and hands at the ball independent of the body's core.

Flexibility and Golf: If you're not striking the ball consistently well or are dissatisfied with the distance your longer clubs are delivering the root problem might be flexibility. During a lesson if you're unable to get in certain positions as instructed by a teaching pro, or if in doing so you feel like a pretzel and are uncomfortable, the difficulty is most likely flexibility.Do you know how flexible you are relative to the motions involved in a golf swing? This is very important to playing better golf and hitting the ball further.

Hitting the Ball Further: A few years ago I attended golf seminar led by Dr Frank Thomas, a past director of the USGA, that focused on the relationship between the distance a ball can travel and an individual's flexibility. Dr. Thomas' responsibilities included establishing equipment guidelines to which all manufacturers had to adhere. Interestingly, he candidly indicated that manufacturers had pretty much exhausted the ways in which they could incorporate available technology and materials into a club to enable a golfer to hit the ball further.

Dr. Thomas acknowledged that traditional "fixes" to increase distance such as weight training, cardio, and proper club fitting were all very useful, but he stressed that the single most important factor for achieving greater distance was flexibility. He also indicated that his experienced showed that the vast majority of amateur golfers were neither concerned with flexibility nor aware of its relationship to distance.

Torque, Club Head Speed, and Distance: Power in the golf swing comes from the force generated by correctly rotating the shoulders and hips in the following sequence of moves:

• Shoulders and hips rotate back on the backswing
• Hips slide forward independent of shoulders to initiate the downswing
• Hips begin forward rotation independent of shoulders
• Shoulders will naturally follow while pulling the arms along for the ride  

This counter motion creates torque that in turn generates club head speed. More torque equates to more club head speed and distance when the ball strike is executed correctly.

It logically follows that if one lacks the flexibility to turn their shoulders and hips to any reasonable degree and relies on arm strength for power they will always compromise distance. Fortunately, in most cases flexibility can be increased through specific exercises and commitment. Increased flexibility also decreases the risk of injuries from physical activity of all sorts.

Feel and Real - Very Different: As with most commentary on golf swing improvement, this bit about generating more power and club head speed by rotating the shoulders and hips sure sounds easy to implement.  And, as always, that's just not the case. If you want to perform this critical movement correctly and begin to realize its true effectiveness spend some time with me on the range. This will ensure that you're making the movement correctly under my trained eye and improvement will be accelerated. In addition, if you complement this movement with greater flexibility - look out for the long ball!

Hi-Tech Analysis With Track Man: Mindy Clark is a considerate new member who is enabling us to take swing analysis to a new level by providing access to her Track Man launch monitor and motion capture system. This is the same equipment used by Titleist Performance Institute to analyze the kinetic sequence of a golf swing and recreate it in 3D.  Data this thorough is a must for anyone who is serious about improving his or her golf game. I'll keep you posted on this.

I hope this has been beneficial.Visit me at the range if you have any questions and want to start lowering your score the right way.

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