Ever feel like you’re swinging as hard as you can but the ball just goes nowhere? Or worse, it peels off to the right in a weak, frustrating slice? The culprit is often something many golfers overlook: your hips. Failing to turn your hips properly deprives your swing of its engine, leading to a cascade of problems that kill both distance and accuracy. This article will break down exactly what goes wrong when your hips don't turn, why it happens, and give you some simple, actionable drills to get your body powering your swing correctly.
Thinking of the golf swing as just an arm movement is one of the most common and damaging misconceptions in the game. The truth is, the swing is a full-body athletic motion, a kinetic chain where power is built from the ground up. Your hips are the critical link that translates lower body energy into torso rotation, which then catapults your arms and the club through impact. When that link is broken, chaos ensues.
This is the big one. When a golfer doesn't rotate their hips on the downswing, their body has no way to Ccreate space for the arms. The body essentially gets in its own way. To compensate, the first move from the top becomes an aggressive throw of the shoulders and arms. This pushes the club "over the top" of the ideal swing plane, sending it outside the target line and cutting across the ball from out-to-in.
An out-to-in swing path paired with an open clubface (which is common when the arms lead) is the absolute recipe for a slice. It's a high-spin, low-energy shot that dies in the air and lands far to the right of your target (for a right-handed golfer). You feel like you're swinging hard with your arms, but all that effort is wasted on creating sidespin, not forwards momentum.
Imagine trying to throw a baseball without rotating your body. You could only use your arm, and the throw would be weak. Now imagine winding up, turning your hips and shoulders, and then unwinding forcefully. The difference is night and day. The golf swing is no different.
The core philosophy of a good swing is that it’s a rotational action powered by the body. Your hips and torso are the engine. By turning your hips away from the ball in the backswing, you create stored energy (like stretching a rubber band). As you initiate the downswing by unwinding your hips toward the target, you release that energy in a powerful sequence. Without this turn, you’re left with only your arms to generate club head speed. It's an inefficient, exhausting way to swing that leaves a tremendous amount of potential distance on the table.
A proper hip turn not only adds power but also stabilizes the swing. When you rotate correctly around a stable spine angle, the lowest point of your swing arc becomes predictable. This means you can consistently strike the ball first and then the turf.
When the hips stall, other movements have to compensate. The most common is a "slide" or "sway," where the hips move laterally instead of turning. This shifts the entire center of your swing, and the low point becomes a moving target.
This inconsistency is maddening because you never know what's coming next - a skull across the green or a fat shot that goes five yards.
Watch any good golfer finish their swing. They are balanced, their chest and "belt buckle" are facing the target, and their arms are extended comfortably. This finish is a result of proper body rotation. When your hips stop turning through the shot, your arms and the club have nowhere to go. They effectively run into a wall - your own body.
The result is a jammed, awkward follow-through. To avoid hitting themselves, the golfer's lead arm (the left arm for righties) often buckles and folds out and away from the body. This is famously known as the “chicken wing.” It’s a clear visual indicator that chest and hip rotation has stopped, killing club head speed and preventing any kind of powerful extension through the ball.
Most golfers who don't turn their hips aren't doing it on purpose. It usually stems from a misunderstanding of how the swing works or a physical limitation in their setup. Here are the most frequent culprits.
The most common mental block is the feeling that you need to "hit the ball with your arms." This makes golfers focus on lifting and chopping with the arms instead of rotating with the body. You need to shift your thinking.
The Fix: Understand that the club is along for the ride. The swing is powered by the body unwinding. The speed comes from transferring energy from your hips to your torso, which then pulls the arms through. Your arms are merely the connection to the club, your core is the motor.
Many golfers, in an attempt to get their weight forward, end up sliding their hips laterally toward the target instead of rotating them. A slide prevents a true turn.
The Fix: Feel is key here. In the backswing, feel your trail hip pocket (right hip for righties) moving back and away from the ball, not sideways away from the target. On the downswing, feel that same pocket moving back around you as your lead hip clears out of the way.
Your ability to turn starts with your setup. If you stand too upright, without enough bend from your hips, you make it physically harder for your hips to rotate on the proper angle.
The Fix: Get into an athletic posture. From a standing position, unlocked at the knees, hinge forward from your hips, sticking your bottom out and keeping your back relatively straight until your arms hang naturally below your shoulders. This creates the space and the angle needed for your hips to turn effectively.
Understanding the concept is one thing, feeling it is another. Here are three simple drills you can do at the range or even at home without a ball to train the correct movement.
This is a an incredible drill for learning the feeling of a complete finish driven by hip rotation.
This isolates rotation from any lateral sliding motion.
This drill ingrains the correct sequence of weight transfer and rotation and helps you feel explosive power through the ball.
Recognizing the hips as the engine of the golf swing is a transformative moment for any golfer. Stalled hips lead directly to slices, loss of power, and inconsistent strikes, while a proper hip turn unleashes a powerful and repeatable sequence. It shifts the focus from an arm-domnated chop to a fluid, athletic, body-driven motion.
Figuring out swing mechanics like hip rotation on your own can be challenging, which is why we created our app for people who want clear, reliable answers. With Caddie AI, you can get instant advice on your swing mechanics or even film a swing and ask for-real time analysis without scheduling an expensive lesson. It's like having a 24/7 golf coach in your pocket to help you understand complex concepts and stay on the right track during practice and on the course.
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