How to Stop Flipping the Golf Club

A weak, high slice or a chunky shot that goes nowhere - sound familiar? If so, you’re likely battling one of the most common swing faults in golf: flipping the club. This involuntary flick of the wrists at impact robs you of power, consistency, and that crisp, compressing sound every golfer loves. The good news is that you absolutely can fix it. This guide will walk you through what the flip is, why it happens, and provide you with actionable steps and drills to replace it with a powerful, stable impact position.

What Is Flipping the Golf Club (And Why Do We Do It?)

In simple terms, "flipping" is when your wrists break down through the impact zone. Your trail wrist (the right wrist for a right-handed golfer) loses its bent-back angle too early, and the clubhead races past your hands before it makes contact with the ball. Instead of leading the clubhead through the ball with your hands, your hands stall and flick it, creating a scooping motion.

This action is almost always an unconscious reaction or a last-second attempt to save a poor swing. Golfers don't flip on purpose, it’s a symptom of a deeper issue. The main culprits are usually:

• A Desire to "Lift" the Ball: This is the biggest misconception in golf. Many players Instinctively feel they need to help the ball get airborne by scooping under it. The reality is that the club's loft is designed to do that for you. Proper impact involves hitting down on the ball, compressing it against the clubface, which then sends it up into the air.
• Poor Body Rotation: When your hips and torso stop turning through the shot, your body's power source shuts off. To create any speed, your arms and hands are forced to take over, which a flip is the easiest and fastest way to do. Your body stalls, your hands flick, and the result is weak contact.
• An Open Clubface: If your clubface is coming into the ball wide open (pointing to the right for a righty), your brain's incredible hand-eye coordination will instinctively try to square it at the last millisecond. The quickest way to do that is to flip the hands over. It's a save-move, but a very inconsistent one.

The result of a flip is almost always a loss of dynamic loft, leading to high, weak shots, or incredibly inconsistent contact, causing an epidemic of fat and thin shots. To stop the flip, we need to treat the cause, not just the symptom.

Step 1: Build a Non-Flip Foundation with Your Grip

Your connection to the club has an enormous influence on what the clubface does. A “weak” grip, where the hands are rotated too far to the left (for a righty), naturally wants to open the clubface in the backswing. From this open position, a flip is almost required to get the face pointed anywhere near the target at impact. We need a grip that encourages a square or slightly closed clubface without any extra manipulation.

Check Your Lead Hand (Top Hand)

Place your left hand on the grip. When you look down, you should be able to see at least two, maybe two-and-a-half, knuckles. If you can only see one knuckle or none at all, your grip is likely too weak. The "V" formed by your thumb and index finger should point toward your right shoulder or even slightly outside of it. This slightly “stronger” position makes it much easier to keep the clubface square throughout the swing, removing the main reason for a compensatory flip.

Check Your Trail Hand (Bottom Hand)

The trail hand is largely a support-and-leverage hand. Its primary job is to maintain its angle. The palm of your right hand should face your target, and it fits neatly over the thumb of a your left hand. The "V" formed by your right thumb and index finger should also point generally toward your right shoulder. This creates a unified piston, where both hands can work together instead of fighting each other.

Step 2: Turn Your Body into the Engine

A golf swing powered by the hands is destined to flip. A swing powered by the body’s rotation promotes a stable impact and effortless power. The core idea is simple: the body leads, the arms follow, and the hands are the very last thing to release their energy.

Think of it as cracking a whip. The handle (your hips and torso) starts the movement smoothly, and that energy flows down the whip until the very tip (the clubhead) snaps through at maximum speed. If you tried to just flick the tip of the whip without moving the handle, you’d get nothing. The same is true in golf. If your body stops, your hands have to flick.

The feeling you want is to unwind from the ground up on the downswing. Your first move from the top should be a slight shift of pressure to your lead foot, followed immediately by the unwinding of your hips. Your shoulders and arms just come along for the ride initially, they don’t initiate the downswing. As your torso turns continuously through the impact zone, your hands will naturally stay ahead of the clubhead.

Drill: The Feet-Together Swing

This is a fantastic drill for feeling body-led rotation.

1. Set up to the ball but with your feet touching each other.
2. Take a smooth, three-quarter swing.
3. To hit the ball with any semblance of power and to maintain your balance, you will be forced to rotate your body through the shot.

You simply can’t make an all-arms swing and stay upright. You have to turn your chest and hips toward the target. This drill eliminates your ability to sway off the ball and forces you to feel your core as the true engine of the swing.

Step 3: Train Proper Impact Dynamics

Now that we have a solid grip and a concept of using our body, we need to ingrain the feeling of a proper, flip-free impact. The goal is to feel forward shaft lean at impact. This means your hands are ahead of the ball and the clubhead when you make contact.

Drill: The Pump Drill

This is one of the best drills for reteaching your wrists what to do.

1. Take your normal setup.
2. Swing the club back to the top of your backswing.
3. Start the downswing slowly, and stop when the club is about parallel to the ground. In this position, check to make sure your hands are well ahead of the clubhead. This is teaching you to store the angle, or "lag."
4. Return to the top of the swing.
5. Repeat this "pump" down to the pre-impact position two times.
6. On the third "pump," continue on and hit the ball, trying to recreate that same feeling of your hands leading the way.

Start by hitting little half-shots. The goal isn't to hit it far, but to feel that downward compression and see a divot that starts in front of where the ball was.

Mini-Drill: The Low Point Post-Impact Punch

Sometimes all you need is a powerful feeling to latch onto. This drill provides just that.

1. Take an 8 or 9-iron and set up normally.
2. Instead of taking a full swing, focus only on the post-impact zone.
3. Make a short, punchy swing where your only goal is to finish with your arms fully extended towards the target, clubhead low to the ground, and your body fully rotated so your chest is facing the target.

This abbreviated finish prevents you from having time to flip. It forces you to drive the club through the ball with your body's rotation, keeping the hands ahead and the clubface stable. You'll feel tremendous pressure in your lead hand and a powerful, "trapping" sensation at impact.

Final Thoughts

Stopping the flip is about changing your entire concept of the swing from a lifting motion with the hands to a rotational motion with the body. By securing your grip, using your body as the engine, and drilling the feeling of your hands leading the clubhead through impact, you can transform your contact from inconsistent scooping to powerful compression.

Mastering these new feelings takes practice and, most importantly, the right kind of feedback. Knowing what to work on and why a certain shot happened is so important. That's precisely why we built our app, an AI golf coach named Caddie AI You can get instant, personalized coaching on any part of your game, from a quick tip on course management to a detailed analysis of a swing fault. It removes the guesswork and gives you a clear path forward, so you can focus on building a swing you can trust.