<h2>The golf swing</h2> Putts and short chips are ideally played without much movement of the body, but most other golf shots are played using variants of the full golf swing. The full golf swing itself is used in tee and fairway shots.
A full swing is a complex rotation of the body aimed at accelerating the club head to a great speed. For a right-handed golfer, it consists of a backswing to the right, a downswing to the left (in which the ball is hit), and a follow through. At address, the player stands with the left shoulder and hip pointing in the intended direction of ball flight, with the ball before the feet. The club is held with both hands (right below left for right-handed players), the clubhead resting on the ground behind the ball, hips and knees somewhat flexed, and the arms hanging from the shoulders. The backswing is a rotation to the right, consisting of a shifting of the player's body weight to the right side, a turning of the pelvis and shoulders, lifting of the arms and flexing of the elbows and wrists. At the end of the backswing the hands are above the right shoulder, with the club pointing more or less in the intended direction of ball flight. The downswing is roughly a backswing reversed. After the ball is hit, the follow-through stage consists of a continued rotation to the left. At the end of the swing, the weight has shifted almost entirely to the left foot, the body is fully turned to the left and the hands are above the left shoulder with the club hanging down over the players' back.
The full golf swing is an unnatural, highly complex motion and notoriously difficult to learn. It is not uncommon for beginners to spend several months practicing the very basics before playing their first ball on a course. It is usually very difficult to acquire a stable and successful swing without professional instruction and even highly skilled golfers may continue to take golf lessons for many years. One can also purchase or use a new golf simulator that can cost upwards of $50,000.
Relatively few golfers play left-handed (i.e., swing back to the left and forward to the right). The percentage of golfers in the U.S. who play left-handed is estimated to be anywhere from 4 percent to 7 percent in the U.S. according to http://www.pga.com/equipment/focus-on/lefthandedequipment050503.cfm. Even players who are strongly left-handed in their daily lives prefer the right-handed golf swing. In the past, this may have been due to the difficulty of finding left-handed golf clubs. Today, more manufacturers provide left-handed versions of their club lines, and the clubs are more readily purchased from mail-order and Internet catalogues, as well as golf stores. A golfer who plays right-handed, but holds the club left-hand-below-right is said to be "cack-handed". It is difficult to obtain the same consistency and power with this arrangement as is possible with conventional technique.
Besides the physical part, the mental aspect contributes to the difficulty of the golf swing. Golfers play against the course, not each other directly, and hit a stationary object, not one put into motion by an opponent. This means that there is never anyone to blame but oneself for a bad result, and in most competitive formats there are no teammates to directly help one out. Knowledge of this creates a great deal of psychological pressure on the golfer; this pressure exists at all levels of play. Even the best professional golfers sometimes succumb to this pressure, such as getting the "yips" (an infamous affliction of Bernhard Langer) a severe putting disorder caused by uncontrolled muscle spasms of the arms, resulting in a jerking motion during the follow through of the putt causing the ball to go much farther than desired, or having collapses of their full swing (as with Ian Baker-Finch).
A golf ball acquires spin when it is hit. Backspin is imparted for almost every shot due to the golf club's loft (i.e., angle between the clubface and a vertical plane). A spinning ball deforms the flow of air around it[5] similar to an airplane wing; a back-spinning ball therefore experiences an upward force which makes it fly higher and longer than a ball without spin. The amount of backspin also influences the behavior of a ball when it impacts the ground. A ball with little backspin will usually roll out for a few yards/meters while a ball with more backspin may not roll at all, or even roll backwards. Sidespin occurs when the clubface is not aligned perpendicularly to the plane of swing. Sidespin makes the ball curve left or right: a curve to the left is a draw, and to the right a fade (for right-handed players). Accomplished golfers purposely use sidespin to steer their ball around obstacles or towards the safe side of fairways and greens. But because it's sometimes difficult to control or predict the amount of sidespin, balls may take an undesirable trajectory, such as hook to the left, or slice to the right (for right-handed players).
Thats interesting to know that not very much p[eople are lefet handed in golf. I am a lefty and I golf. I guess I fall in that small 4-7 % range in the US.
