Understanding Weight Transfer with Irons
Most golfers watch the pros on tour and trying to imitate elements they see into their own golf swing. Generally, this is a good thing because those athletes on t.v. have figured out something that works well and can help 99% of amateurs. Of course there’s the occasional obscure swing that should be ignored, but if you imitate something you see multiple pros doing, that’s a pretty safe approach.
When it comes to watching a player’s weight transfer, though, that’s not always the easiest to figure out what’s going on. We can’t easily see the movement of weight from one foot to another. Obviously we can see the finish position where all pros (with the exception of Bubba Watson) are balanced on the front foot. But what’s happening between the address and finish position? That’s important information to have that cannot be seen.
The first thing we need to clear up when it comes to weight transfer is that you can also think of this movement as pressure transfer. Sometimes people hear weight transfer and think they have to sway from side to side in order to shift their weight, but that should be avoided. Swaying involves moving your swing center (head or sternum) from side to side (laterally). In general, we want your swing center to stay in the middle until you’ve finished the golf swing.
Shifting the pressure applied to each foot may be a helpful way of imagining how weight moves throughout the golf swing. Without a special weight plate to measure how much weight is on each foot, there’s no perfect way to figure out how close you are to the numbers we’ll be discussing. That’s ok. The point of this article is to get a general idea of what’s happening, not to get caught up in matching the exact numbers.
Address
At the address position, before you take the golf club back, you want to have about 50% of your weight on each foot.
note: images in the article show a right-handed golfer. Lefties, be sure to pay attention to front/back foot label.
Top of the Backswing
When you get to the top of the backswing, about 75% of your pressure is going to be on the back foot. Again, though, don’t allow your head to sway towards the back foot to make this happen. Imagine you have a weight scale under each foot. Try to imagine what it’d be like to increase the number on the one under the back foot without much lateral movement.
Impact
Once you get to impact, there should now be about 75% of your weight pressure on the front foot. The time between the top of the backswing and impact is where the greatest change in weight transfer occurs. It’s the loading of weight back and shifting forward that creates power.
Too often I see students with most of their weight on their back foot at impact or “flat footed,” meaning 50% on each foot. This often occurs when someone is trying to lift the golf ball in the air rather than hit down and through it. Many people have been told that their impact position ought to look like their address, but that’s not at all correct.
Allowing more weight to shift forward before impact will create more of a downward attack angle into the golf ball.
Finish
Finally, once you finish the shot, you’re going to want about 95% of your weight on the front foot. The important thing here is that it’s balanced weight. The remaining 5% on the back foot will be all on the toe, with the heel raised in the air. Many amateur golfers know they have to have their weight forward at the finish position, but if their weight is too far back at impact, it’s often an artificial weight forward in the finish. What that means is the weight isn’t smoothly shifted forward in one motion. Instead, the shot is completed, the weight isn’t forward enough, the ball is gone, and a second later the player decides to shift their weight forward. It’d subtle, but significant.
The finish position should happen in one fluid motion, not seconds after the golf ball 20+ yards away and flying towards the target (hopefully).
The finish position can be a great place to check to make sure the weight transfer was correct at other points throughout the golf swing. If you can stand in a balanced position on that front foot until the ball lands, that’s a pretty good indication that the weight transfer was correct.
Often times there’s a subtle stepping back away from the target onto the back foot or falling forward (towards the impact area) or behind (toward the player’s back) at the end of the shot. Pay close attention to that fraction of a second after the swing is over. Wherever you feel most comfortable standing to watch the shot will tell you if your weight was too in one direction or another.
