Every golfer will experience periods of inconsistent ballstriking, low confidence and a general sensation of swinging out of sync. For these times, I offer a quick fix: Quiet your lower body, and concentrate on swinging the golf club with only your hands and arms. 

Timing issues that can wreck a golfer’s confidence tend to crop up when he or she makes too many gyrations with his or her body, like turning and twisting the upper torso or overworking the legs. When golfers try to use their whole body to move the golf club, often they have no chance of making consistent contact or creating ample clubhead speed.

One of my favorite drills provides an immediate remedy for an overactive body. Make a few practice swings at quarter-speed and half-speed, slowly working up to full speed, keeping body movement to a minimum. Internalize the sensations created by the simple motion of the arms swinging the club back to the top and dropping into place on the downswing. As Charlie Sorrell, a former PGA teacher of the year, likes to say, “The hands are for holding, the wrists are for hinging, and the arms are for swinging.”

Most of my students struggle with the slice. Many of these golfers have serious swing issues, but the majority certainly possess enough talent and an understanding of the golf swing to keep slices at bay. The problem is they’re trapped into hitting slices because their setup facilitates swinging on the out-in path to which all slices owe their existence.

If you’re prone to slicing, I’ll bet that you set up to the ball with your shoulders aligned too far to the left. It’s a common malady that’s difficult to self-diagnose. Open shoulders at address force the clubhead to come from outside the target line. This path, combined with a face that’s square to the target, imparts the dreaded left-to-right sidespin.

To help my students better align themselves at address, I have them focus on their shirt buttons. The buttons on your shirt can help line up your shoulders correctly and guard against creating an out-in path. In fact, they’re useful for setting up any type of shot shape.

Undoubtedly, the most embarrassing tee shot in golf is the drive that pops straight up, barely clearing the tee box. The pop-up is an agonizing mis-hit most often caused by an excessive forward weight shift on the downswing and a club that approaches the ball on a very steep angle of attack. The steep descent de-lofts the clubface to such a degree that the topline of the club effectively becomes the leading edge. The result? Not only a humiliating pop-up, but one of the most hated marks in golf: a scuff on the crown of the clubhead. Yuck.

Eliminating the pop-up can be as simple as finetuning your setup. The key is to make sure your address position encourages a longer and bigger backswing arc, which will automatically shallow out your swing plane and reduce the steepness of your downswing. You’ll also find that the correct setup facilitates a solid backswing weight shift. In addition to the plane errors discussed above, a poor weight shift to the right side during the backswing can increase the likelihood of a pop-up.

After watching thousands of swings over the past 30 years, I’ve pinpointed three mistakes that the majority of amateurs commit, each of which can diminish power and accuracy.

The first is overswinging. Most amateurs overswing because they have a poor understanding of how power is created. More than 70 percent of your power comes from the ability to maintain the fully loaded wrist set established at the top deep into the downswing. Maintaining this position as long as you can then releasing the clubhead through impact accelerates the speed at which your clubhead moves through the hitting zone to four times faster than the speed of your hands.