Irons tips 17 Sep 2026 8 min read

3 Popular Golf Swing Tips: Which Ones Fit Your Swing?

Bow your lead wrist. Hold the lag. Roll your wrists through impact. These popular golf swing tips all promise a change in the way you deliver the club, but choosing one starts with a simpler question: what does your usual shot need to do better?

If you already hit a controlled fade, a feel that closes the clubface more could leave you missing left. If your contact gets worse while you try to hold a wrist angle, return to your normal swing and reconsider the feel.

Andy Proudman and Piers Ward explored all three feels with Shawn, using Full Swing for club and ball data and HackMotion for wrist feedback. Each cue changed his shots. None improved on his normal fade overall. His comparison gives you a useful way to judge advice before committing to a swing change.

Know your starting ball flight

Before adding a new swing thought, hit some shots with your normal swing. Watch where they start, how they curve and how tightly they finish together. Pay attention to the strike as well. You need something useful to compare the change against.

Shawn’s normal shots were already playable. His club path averaged 3.9 degrees left, with the face 1.9 degrees open to that path. That produced a small fade, with average carry around 150 yards. These directions describe his right-handed example; the face number is relative to the path, not the target.

HackMotion showed some lead-wrist extension, or cupping, at the top of his backswing and at impact. That gave the coaches a wrist pattern to investigate. It did not erase the good shots he was hitting.

This matters if you use feedback technology in practice. Full Swing helped show what Shawn delivered and where the ball went. HackMotion helped show how his wrist moved. A better-looking wrist indicator still needed to produce a shot worth keeping.

Bowing the lead wrist: check what happens to the face

The first cue was to bow or flatten the lead wrist during the backswing. For Shawn, the lead wrist is his left. He described a feeling of his knuckles pointing down and the club having less loft at impact.

Keep those two things separate: the instruction concerned the backswing; the impact description was Shawn’s own sensation. You do not need to force the wrist into its most bowed position to explore whether a flatter feel suits you.

The cue made a clear difference to his delivery. His path moved closer to neutral but still averaged left of the target. The face became closed to that path, and shots went strongly left. He had changed the fade, but the new pattern gave him a different miss to manage.

Check the wrist at the phase you want to change

The HackMotion review showed less extension in the takeaway and at the top. Impact feedback still showed extension. A backswing change had not made every later wrist position match the same pattern.

For your own practice, check the result at the stage you are working on, then check the shot. A flatter wrist at the top may be a useful change, but it is not proof that you have also improved impact or accuracy.

Andy and Piers considered this feel worth exploring for a golfer whose slice involves an open face. Shawn’s existing fade did not automatically need that correction. If a slice is your usual miss, start with these clubface checks for a slice before choosing a stronger closing feel.

Keep watching the curve and the strike. If the change sends your shots hard left, do not keep exaggerating it simply because the wrist position looks tidier.

Holding lag: a straighter path can still produce a worse shot

The next instruction was to hold the angle between the shaft and lead arm for as long as possible, feeling almost no release. This was an exaggerated cue being tested. It is not a drill you need to copy to improve your impact.

Shawn found it awkward. He described a chicken-wing sensation, and his shots became weak and rightward.

His club path was almost neutral during this test. On its own, that number might look encouraging. Yet the face remained open to the path, contact suffered and average carry fell to 132 yards.

The wrist feedback also ran against what Shawn was trying to achieve. The coaches saw more extension and described more casting while Shawn was trying to retain the angle. Trying harder to hold something did not mean he delivered it that way.

There is a useful lesson here if you are chasing a picture of forward shaft lean. Judge contact and face control alongside the position. When the ball gets weaker or starts missing further right, return to your normal motion and reconsider the instruction. Our explanation of why holding wrist angles can backfire looks at the underlying problem before trying to retain more lag.

Shawn’s short test does not show that every golfer responds identically. It does show why a nearly straight path, or a strong sensation of holding an angle, is too little information to call a change successful.

Rolling the wrists: avoid replacing a fade with a left miss

The third feel was to roll the wrists through impact and turn the clubface over. Shawn tried to make the release more active as the club moved through the ball.

This produced the biggest shift in his club path, which moved to the right. The face also became much more closed to that path. Shots went left, and the strike was inconsistent; some caught the ground first.

There was another useful distinction in the wrist data. Shawn could close the face more while still showing extension at the top and impact. Turning the face over had not simply produced a flat lead wrist throughout the swing.

The coaches saw a possible use for the release feel in a golfer with a steep, over-the-top slicing pattern. Shawn had benefited from release work earlier in his golfing development. His current swing, however, was already producing a controlled fade. Giving it a stronger closing feel created more trouble on the left.

If you recognise a persistent slice, this may be a feel to explore with a coach after checking the face and path. If you already hit a playable fade or draw, pay particular attention to whether extra hand action makes the curve harder to control. A feel that helped you in the past can become unnecessary as your swing changes.

Judge the whole shot

The results below are the averages described by Andy and Piers during Shawn’s short comparison. Left and right for the face refer to its direction relative to the club path. They are not measurements of the face relative to the target.

Swing feel	Average club path	Average face-to-path	Average carry
Normal swing	3.9° left	1.9° open	About 150 yards
Bow the lead wrist	2.2° left	2.6° closed	Not reported
Hold the lag	0.2° right	2.9° open	132 yards
Roll the wrists	2.6° right	6.9° closed	146 yards

The bowing test included a longer shot, but no average carry was supplied for that group. Choosing a change on the strength of its longest ball would overlook the left misses.

Shawn found the bowed-wrist feel easiest. Andy and Piers judged it the most consistent of the three changes. Even so, his stock pattern remained best overall in this session.

That is a worthwhile result. Sometimes a comparison gives you a useful new cue. Sometimes it gives you a reason to stop changing a swing that already does what you need. A short test with one golfer cannot settle which feel will suit everyone.

Test one feel against your normal shots

Use the same comparison approach at your next practice session:

1. Choose the problem first. Be specific about the shot you want to improve: an excessive curve, unreliable strike or a recurring miss.
2. Pick one club and target. Hit a small group with your normal swing, noting contact, starting direction, curve and where the shots finish.
3. Try one feel that addresses the problem. Keep the club and target the same so you can make a useful comparison.
4. Look at the whole group. Has the recurring miss reduced? Is contact at least as dependable? Check ordinary shots as well as the best one.
5. Return to your stock swing if the feel makes the result worse. If it appears promising, revisit it in another session or with your coach before building your game around it.

You can make these observations without a wrist sensor or launch monitor. When you do have data, use it to understand the change alongside the shots you can see. The aim is a more useful ball flight you can repeat.

For more help with your game, explore Swing Coach.