How your arms extend or hang down at address is an important aspect of correct posture and being in a dynamically balanced setup to make a dynamically balanced swing. Arms hanging too close to or stretched too far from the body opens a Pandora's Box of balance and swing problems. Jeff in his question below is searching for the answer to what is correct arm extension.
Jeff says:
How far away do I need to stand from the ball? Is there a certain shaft angle I should be looking for? I've read the PPGS manual about the setup, but I'm not sure it specifically talks about this? Thanks, really enjoy the videos and the site and the inner circle!
The Surge says:
You mention that you have read the PPGS Foundations Swing Manual and missed where I covered this point. It is in Chapter 6, 'How Posture Affects Your Swing,' and found on page 47 and reads:
'The fourth step toward good posture is to extend your arms
comfortably. If you have properly performed the previous steps and have
your upper body tilted out and over the ball, extension of the arms really
amounts to letting them just hang from your shoulders. Your hands should
be positioned so that if you draw a line straight up from the top of your left
thumb knuckle, it extends to a point on your face between your nose and
your chin. If the line is inside your chin, your hands are too close to your
body. If the line points outside your nose, to your forehead or beyond, you
are reaching too far for the ball.
'Another good way to judge whether you are extending or reaching
too much (a more common fault than keeping the arms too close to the body)
is to notice whether you feel any pulling between your shoulder blades. If so,
you have extended too far and need to get your hands closer to you.
'It is vitally important to find your proper arm extension. If you reach too
much, you will be forced to bend over too much, and you will have problems
maintaining your balance during the swing. You will also set up and swing
the club on a flat plane. If you do not extend enough, your swing will be too
upright or will come across your body, since a lack of arm extension means
you stand too close to the ball, with your body in the way of an on-plane
backswing.'
More golfers' reach or extend their arms too much because this stretching of the arms gives a false sense of feeling strong and powerful. It's false because over-stretched muscles are, in effect, out of balance which means they now have the body out of balance.
The other extreme is standing too close. This usually happens because the golfer is swinging on an outside-to-in path (likely because of too much shoulder turn getting the club into the SBG and/or swinging to parallel or longer) and they are hitting the ball on the toe. The brain equates hitting the ball on the toe with reaching or stretching and being too far from the ball. The common sense answer is to stand closer. Creep in closer and you have to pull your arms and club in and across more but you still hit it on the toe. This cycle continues until the player is now popping up on his toes at impact and falling backwards to avoid his hands hitting his legs.
The answer or cure to finding the correct distance for both over-stretching or standing too close to the ball is for the arms to hang relatively straight down from the shoulders. The checkpoints mentioned above are guidelines and can vary from player to player because of differences in arm, torso and leg lengths based on overall height. The ultimate key is that your posture is athletically ready and you are in dynamic balance, which is mandatory to make a dynamically balanced swing.
The Surge!