How to Stop Dipping in Golf Swing

Being new to golf is exciting and equally challenging. You’re going to make many mistakes as an amateur golfer, and learning from those errors is what will turn you from a beginner who knows nothing to an experienced player who enjoys the game.

Dipping in golf is one of the most common flaws that beginners to golf have to deal with. It’s a situation where the golfer lowers their head and gets their upper body to move closer to the ground.

The right shoulder raises excessively, making the club stroke the ground before hitting the ball. Check this guide on how to stop dipping in Golf swing within a short practice period.

Professional golf instructors warn against dipping because it changes your distance away from the ground. This makes it difficult for you to control where the low point of your swing should be.

In this guide, we’ll look at what cause a golfer to dip in golf and then give you some effective tips that you can use to fix the problem. 

What Causes Dipping in Golf? (How to Stop Dipping in Golf Swing)

In the following section, we’ll look at the various causes of dipping in golf swing, followed by some suggestions that you can use to keep yourself from dipping.

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Let’s have a look: 

1. Too Much Forward Bend

You’re dipping in golf because you have too much forward bendas you take your golf club back in your backswing. In other words, you play the ball too far forward, which results in lowering your left shoulder and returning to the same position at impact.

In this situation, you mid body and chest go lower than usual, causing your head and left hand to move closer to the ground.

The best way to correct too much forward bending and keep yourself from dipping is to learn to extend. That’s too say that you should try some backward bend in a way that your chest and belt points higher into the backswing.

You need to be careful not to delve into a reverse pivot when extending backwards. The goal here is to ensure your head stays still and that you’re able to turn around the center.

2. Too Much Rightward or Leftward Tilt

You dip in a golf swing because you tilt too much to the left if you’re a right-handed player and too much to the right if you’re a left-handed player.

Tilting is important in golf. But just like everything in the golf swing, you should only tilt to a certain degree – not as much as you wish.  

When you tilt too much leftwards or rightwards, your lead shoulder will drop straight down very early into the backswing. Also, your head not only moves closer to the ground, it also tends to move forward in front of the golf ball.

The solution to this problem is to adjust your body in such a way that you actually feel the opposite. To achieve this, you have to raise your head away from the ball to make your lead shoulder feel high in relation to the other shoulder.

• Place your head against a wall
• Take your golf club and place it across your chest
• Turn your body, making sure you don’t turn your head farther into the wall or away from the wall. You do want to stick your head gently against the wall and make sure you leave it right there the entire time as you turn. 

You need to make sure your head doesn’t press into the wall because your lead shoulder will most likely drop, making the angle between your lead shoulder and the other shoulder rather too steep.

Also, you need to make sure that your head doesn’t move away from the wall because the shoulders would end up being very shallow or flat.

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3. Improper Movements

Dipping is likely to occur when a player successfully move to their right on a backswing but unable to move to the left when doing a downswing.

It’s possible to get into dipping if a player tries to get underneath their golf ball and lift it into the air. What they’ve done here is fail to strike downwards and allow the club’s loft do the job.

Reverse pivoting is another possible cause of dipping in golf. In this case, a beginner golfer transfers their weight to the left of the backswing right on a downswing.

You can get around such improper body movements by trying the following strategy:

• Set up a shot or mid-iron as you normally would and make sure you place your golf ball right near the center of your stance.
• Try to raise your right heal while keeping your toes to the ground. At this point, your lead shoulder should at least feel somewhat higher than it usually is.
• With your heel still lifted, hit one or more few shots with your normal swing. Keep in mind that this kind of heel and shoulder raise helps a great deal of flexibility so that you’re able to strike down the ball just right. 

Swinging off your knees is also a good way to keep yourself from dipping in golf swing be it during personal practices or in the event of a match. This is a great deal because it reprograms your body in such a way that it maintains an ideal spinal alignment. 

You can also swing with your butt on a wall. You want to make sure your butt stays on the wall the entire time to make sure you’re not dipping your shoulder

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Dipping in golf is something you want to avoid completely because it takes your swing off the plane. As we’ve seen, dipping causes your shoulder to move closer to the ball, so much so that it causes all types of swing faults that you should avoid in the first place.

The biggest problem with dipping in golf is the tendency to hit the ball fat. In other words, the club head hits the ground first and then the ball afterwards. When this happens, you end up losing distance, which translates into the worst performance in golf. 

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Last Updated on July 13, 2024 by Tom Fiore