What Happens When You Early Extend in Golf?

Moving your hips and pelvis toward the golf ball on the downswing, a movement known as early extension, is one of the most common and destructive faults in amateur golf. It robs you of power, creates wildly inconsistent contact, and leads to those frustrating shots that fly everywhere but at the target. This article will break down exactly what happens when you early extend, the root causes behind the move, and most importantly, provide clear, actionable drills to help you stay in your posture and start hitting pure golf shots.

What is Early Extension, Really?

Let's simplify this concept. At the top of your backswing, your body is coiled, and you’ve created a certain amount of space between your hips and the golf ball. In a proper downswing, your hips rotate, but they stay back, maintaining that space. This allows your arms and the club to swing down freely on a consistent path through the impact zone.

Early extension is when your hips do the exact opposite. Instead of rotating back and away from the target line, your pelvis thrusts forward, toward the golf ball. This forward movement forces your torso and head to lift, pulling you out of the posture you established at address. Your body is essentially standing up right when it needs to be rotating through. This single improper move sets off a chain reaction of compensations that wreaks havoc on your golf swing.

The Domino Effect: Four Things That Go Wrong When You Extend Early

Early extension isn't just one isolated bad move, it’s the starting point for a cascade of issues. When your lower body eliminates the space your arms need, your body has no choice but to make emergency adjustments to even make contact with the ball.

1. Blocked Shots and Snap Hooks

When your hips lunge forward, they effectively create a roadblock. There’s no room for your arms and club to swing down from the inside. They get stuck behind your body. From this "stuck" position, two very common outcomes occur:

• The Block: Your hands and arms can't "catch up" and square the clubface. The path is forced severely out to the right (for a right-handed player), and the face is left wide open. The result is a shot that starts right and goes further right - a classic push or block.
• The Snap Hook: In a desperate attempt to avoid the block, your brain signals your hands and wrists to flip over rapidly at impact to close the clubface. This over-correction causes the club to shut down hard, producing a violent, low-flying hook that dives left.

If you fight both of these misses, you’re likely fighting early extension.

2. Thin and Topped Golf Shots

Think about your setup posture. You're bent over from the hips, and your spine is at a specific angle. The goal is to return to a similar position at impact. When you early extend, your posture disappears. Your hips move forward and up, which forces your spine to straighten and pull your head and chest away from the ball.

What does this do to the club? It raises the entire swing a_rc. The low point of your swing, which should be slightly after the ball, is now significantly higher and often before the ball. Your club simply can't get down to the turf. This leads to hitting the golf ball on its equator (a thin shot) or striking the very top of it (a topped shot).

3. A Major Loss of Power and Speed

The golf swing’s power doesn’t come from your arms, it comes from your body's rotation. Proper sequencing involves the lower body initiating the downswing, pulling the torso, which then pulls the arms, and finally whips the club through impact. This 'kinematic sequence' is how smaller players can generate tremendous clubhead speed.

Early extension completely short-circuits this power source. When you thrust your hips toward the ball, your rotation stops dead. You go from having a dynamic, rotational swing to a lift-and-push motion powered only by your arms and hands. You are throwing away all the ground force and rotational energy you'd stored in the backswing. You might feel like you're putting a lot of effort in, but the energy isn't transferring to the golf club.

4. General Inconsistency

Ultimately, early extension makes consistent ball striking impossible. Because your body is making so many last-second compensations, your low point is never in the same place twice. One swing you might flip your hands perfectly and hit a decent shot. The next, you might get stuck and hit a huge block. This inconsistency is incredibly frustrating because you never know what kind of shot is coming out next. You can't build a reliable game when you're busy making emergency athletic moves just to make contact.

Two Common Reasons for Early Extension

Before you can fix the problem, you need to understand why you might be doing it. It's often not a choice, but a compensation for something else.

Reason 1:Physical Limitations

Sometimes, the body just can't physically perform the move you’re asking it to. A proper golf swing requires a good amount of mobility and stability. Key areas include:

• Hip Mobility: If your hips are tight, particularly in internal rotation, your body won't be able to rotate them correctly in the downswing. As a result, it will lunge forward as a compensation to create movement.
• Glute Strength: Your glutes are the engine of your rotation and are responsible for stabilizing your pelvis. If they aren't strong enough or aren’t activating properly, they can't hold your posture, and the hips give way by moving forward.
• Thoracic (Mid-Back) Mobility: Limited ability to rotate your torso will also inhibit your swing. If you can't turn your upper body, the lower body will have to compensate, often by coming out of posture.

Reason 2: A Misunderstanding of Power

Many golfers intuitively believe that to hit the ball hard, they need to lunge at it or throw their right side at the target. This feels powerful, but it’s a false sense of power. They push off their back foot and thrust their hips forward, thinking this energy will go into the ball. As we’ve discussed, this move actually kills true rotational power and disengages the body's powerful core musculature.

The Fix: Practical Drills to Tame Early Extension

Theory is great, but you need to feel the correct motion. These drills give you physical feedback that makes it obvious when you're doing it right and when you're falling into old habits.

Drill 1: The Wall/Bag Drill

This is the gold standard for fixing early extension because the feedback is instantaneous.

1. Set up without a club, a few inches from a wall or your golf bag, with your rear end just touching it.
2. Mimic your backswing. As you rotate back, your right glute (for a righty) should engage more with the wall.
3. Now, the important part. As you start your downswing motion, your primary feeling should be your left glute rotating back to meet the wall where your right glute started.
4. If your hips move forward, you will immediately feel them leave the wall. The goal is to maintain light contact with at least one part of your rear end on the wall throughout the entire swing.

Start with slow motion practice swings, then introduce a club, still using slow swings. Gradually build up speed as you get the feeling ingrained.

Drill 2: Visualizing the "Hulahoop" Rotation

A great mental image can be just as helpful as a physical drill. Curing early extension isn't just about stopping a forward move, it's about replacing it with a correct rotating move.

Instead of thinking of firing your hips *at the ball*, imagine your belt buckle or left hip pocket (for a righty) moving backward and around, *away* from the ball, during the downswing. Visualize a hula hoop around you. Your hips are not trying to push the hula hoop forward, they are trying to rotate within it. On the downswing, your left hip is pulling back and away from the target line, which clears space for your arms to swing down freely.

Drill 3: The Feet Together Drill

This drill exposes any instability in your swing and forces you to rotate around a stable center rather than swaying or lunging.

1. Take a short iron, like a 9-iron or pitching wedge.
2. Set up with your feet completely together, ankles touching.
3. Take small, three-quarter swings, focusing on just making solid contact.

You’ll notice it’s almost impossible to thrust your hips forward without completely losing your balance. This forces you to rotate your torso and maintain your posture to stay upright and stable. It highlights the importance of turning your chest and shoulders rather than relying on a lunge from the lower body. It's a fantastic drill for improving balance and proper rotational sequencing.

Final Thoughts

Beating early extension is about retraining your body's ainstinctive movement pattern from a forward thrust into a rotational clearing motion. By understanding what it is, why you do it, and diligently practicing drills that give you instant feedback, you can fix this common fault and unlock a more powerful and consistent golf game.

Eliminating swing faults like early extension takes practice and the right kind of feedback. That's why we built Caddie AI to be your personal 24/7 golf coach. If you're struggling with a recurring miss, you can ask for drills specifically designed to target your issue or even describe what your ball is doing to get instant, actionable advice on what the root cause might be. Our goal is to take the guesswork out of your practice, so you can stop being confused and start feeling more confident on the course.