The “Counter-fall" and the critical role it plays in your swing

Mastering Golf - by David Lee

If you swing “over the top” and slice the ball, or your shots take too much effort to produce too little distance, you are not “counter-falling” sufficiently at the start of your down-swing.  The arms of the average man weigh about twenty-five pounds.  If you are solidly balanced on your feet when the down-swing begins, the weight of your arms and club swinging in front of you, will instantly pull you toward your toes (over the top) and out of plane, kind of like a washing machine with all the clothes on one side of it.  Most golfers are under the false impression that they want to be balanced during a golf-swing. What we are really searching for, is a state of “rotary equilibrium,” where the pull against the body from the weight of the arms and club swinging around us, is negated by the counter-fall, thus giving the appearance of being “balanced” during the swing.  Look at You-Tube sequences of a hammer thrower.  Because of the significant weight of the arms and hammer, he has to pivot with his body being close to forty degrees “off vertical” to keep from being pulled onto his face during the rotation.  A golf swing is a microcosm of the same move.  All sports where rotation is employed require a counter-fall in order to maintain equilibrium.

In a proper golf swing made by a right-handed player, the weight shifts to the right leg and back to the left leg as the shoulders turn back.  As the weight shifts from the right, it lands slightly against the left leg, enough to deflect the body into the counter-fall, on a line or vector about seventy degrees left of the target line, ninety degrees being straight behind you.  The feeling is like that of tipping a barrel onto its edge so that it will roll.  The deeper one moves into the counter-fall before the shoulders start forwards in the delivery, the less internal effort it takes to turn the core through impact (if the arms are in a state of dead-fall), and the faster it will move.  Using mass rotation to sling the arms and club, instead of using shoulder and arm strength, is the proper way to apply power in the golf swing.

Study the Gravity Golf cross-footed drills and they will teach you to make a perfect counter-fall.