How to Stay Down in a Golf Swing

That frustrating feeling of skulling a shot across the green or hitting a thin worm-burner that dives into the first cut of rough often comes from the exact same fault: standing up during your swing. Every golfer has been told to keep your head down, but the problem goes much deeper than that simple (and often unhelpful) command. This guide will walk you through what's really happening when you lift out of a shot and give you practical, actionable ways to stay down, rotate properly, and finally achieve that compressed, pure strike you’re looking for.

Understanding "Early Extension" – The Real Reason You Can't Stay Down

First, let’s get on the same page. When a coach talks about "staying down," they're referring to maintaining your posture and spine angle from address through impact. The opposite of this is a swing fault called Early Extension, and it’s one of the most common issues among amateur golfers.

Early extension is when your hips and pelvis thrust forward - toward the golf ball - during the downswing. Think about your belt buckle. If it moves closer to the ball before you make contact, you are extending early. This forward thrust forces your spine to straighten and your head to lift, pulling your arms and the club up with it. From this raised position, the only way to make contact is to either miss the ball entirely, hit the top half of it (a topped shot), or catch it on the upswing with the leading edge (a thin shot).

It’s important to realize you aren't doing this on purpose. Nobody thinks, "I'm going to lunge at the ball now." Early extension is an athletic compensation. Your body is incredibly smart, and it will do whatever it takes to get the club back to the ball. The key is to figure out why your body feels the need to lunge in the first place. Usually, it’s one of these things:

• Lack of Space: Most often, the culprit is a backswing that brings the club too far behind your body or "stuck" on the inside. As you start the downswing, your path is blocked. Your body’s only option to create room for your arms and the club to swing through is to push your hips forward and stand up.
• Poor Setup: If you start your swing with your weight too much on your heels or you're reaching for the ball, your body will naturally want to move forward to regain balance during the swing.
• Mobility Limitations: Sometimes, the body simply can't rotate properly due to tightness in the hips or thoracic spine (upper back). If you can't turn, your body will find power another way - by thrusting.

Step 1: Nailing Your Setup to Promote Proper Rotation

You can't expect to maintain a good posture if you don't start with one. A solid setup is the foundation that makes staying down possible. If your foundation is cracked, the whole structure will collapse during the force of the swing. Here's how to build a powerful and stable foundation.

Hinge From Your Hips

Many golfers make the mistake of slouching or rounding their upper back to get down to the ball. Instead, learn to hinge properly from your hips. Stand up straight and place the club across your waistline. Without rounding your back, push your rear end straight back, allowing your chest to tilt forward over the ball. Your back should remain relatively straight, a position often called "athletic posture." This one move sets your spine angle correctly and gets you balanced.

Find Your Balance

Your weight should feel balanced in the middle of your feet, perhaps leaning slightly toward the balls of your feet. You shouldn't feel like you’re about to fall forward or backward. If you feel too much pressure on your heels, you’re almost guaranteed to push your hips forward during the swing to maintain balance. If you feel too much on your toes, you might fall a bit toward the ball.

Let Your Arms Hang

Once you’re hinged and balanced, let your arms hang naturally from your shoulders. Where they hang is where your hands should grip the club. Many golfers disrupt their perfect posture by reaching for the ball, which pulls them out of balance from the very beginning. Let your arms hang down, then bring the club to them. This creates the perfect amount of space you need for the swing.

Step 2: Drills to Feel the Correct Movement

Understanding the concept is one thing, feeling it in your body is another. These drills are designed to eliminate early extension by helping you physically experience what it feels like to rotate correctly instead of thrusting forward.

Drill: Rear End Against a Chair

This is the gold standard for fixing early extension.

1. Take your normal setup position, but place a golf bag, alignment stick, or a chair directly behind you so that it is lightly touching your rear end.
2. Now, take some practice swings. The goal is to keep your glutes in contact with the chair (or even push back into it) as you start your downswing.
3. The moment your hips thrust forward, you'll immediately lose contact with the object behind you. This gives you instant, undeniable feedback that you've extended early. Repeat this slowly until you can make a swing where your backside maintains that connection deep into the downswing. This drill teaches your hips to turn back and around instead of up and forward.

Drill: The Pump-and-Go

This drill helps you sequence the downswing correctly, with the lower body leading the way.

1. Take the club to the top of your backswing and pause.
2. From the top, make a small "pump" move down where you only focus on turning your hips and shifting your weight slightly toward your target. Your arms and club lag behind. Feel that stretch across your torso.
3. Go back to the top of the swing.
4. Pump down again, focusing on that lower-body lead.
5. On the third go-around, don't stop. Feel that same lower-body-first sequence and rotate all the way through the shot to a full finish. This teaches your body that the arms are the last thing to fire, preventing the instinctive urge to throw the club at the ball from the top, which often triggers early extension.

Drill: The "Lead Pocket Back" Thought

This drill uses imagery to encourage the correct hip rotation.

1. At address, focus on your lead pocket (your left pocket for a right-handed golfer).
2. As you start your downswing, think about pulling that lead pocket directly S-B-backwards, a_w_a_y_ _f_r_o_m_ t_h_e_ _t_a_r_g_e_t_ _l_i_n_e_, as if someone is standing behind you tugging on it.
3. This simple cue forces your lead hip to clear out of the way, which creates tons of space for your arms to swing through freely. An earlier extension, your hips move t_ó_w_a_r_d_s_ t_h_e_ _b_a_l_l_. With this "lead pocket back" move, your hips rotate o_p_e_n_.

Step 3: A Simple Swing Thought for the Course

Drills are fantastic for the range, but you need a simple, positive thought on the course. Thinking "don't stand up" is a negative command that often makes things worse, as your brain focuses on the very action you're trying to avoid.

Instead, try this: "keep your chest covering the ball."

Feel like the logo on your shirt is pointing down at the golf ball for as long as possible through impact. When your hips lunge forward and you stand up, your chest lifts and points up at the sky. If you focus on keeping it "covering" the ball through the hitting zone, you will naturally maintain your spine angle and stay down through the shot. This encourages your body to rotate around your spine instead of hoisting itself up.

It's an athletic key that promotes good rotation without feeling restrictive. It helps synch up your upper and lower body and deliver that solid, downward strike that compresses the ball and makes it fly purely off the face.

Final Thoughts

Learning how to stay down in your golf swing is really about learning to fight early extension. By building a solid setup, practicing drills that train your hips to rotate instead of thrust, and using a simple feel on the course, you can replace thin shots and tops with the satisfying feeling of pure ball striking.

Mastering these moves takes practice, but instant feedback can simplify the process significantly. To better understand your game and get guidance when you need it most, our Caddie AI serves as your 24/7 personal coach. When you’re trying to pinpoint why you’re hitting shots thin or you need a strategy to recover from a bad lie, you can get expert advice in seconds, helping you turn practice thoughts into confident course play.