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GOLF TEACHING PRO%u00ae 31 WINTER 2O26KNOWLEDGE USGTFThis has a couple of important implications. The first, and most noticeable, is that upper core players will come out of posture in order to accommodate the straightening of the angle between the club shaft and arms established at address. Middle core and lower core players accommodate this straightening by clearing their hips at impact, something that upper core players do not, and more importantly, cannot do. Wright and his team of researchers found that the hip turns of players are set by their anatomical abilities and not through conscious effort. In other words, the amount of a player%u2019s hip turn is pre-determined by their anatomy and if you have been teaching players who do not clear their hips very well through impact that they must learn to do so, you are not teaching correctly!The second implication is that upper core players must use more rotation of the arms and hands through impact in order to square the clubface. Modern teaching stresses that the hands should be taken out of the swing as much as possible, but that applies mainly to only middle and lower core players, and even that%u2019s debatable. Too many amateur players do not know how to release the club properly through the impact zone and this should be taught. A couple of good ways for your students to feel this is to have them swing a golf clubs with the hands separated on the grip, and to also use the back to the target drill (refer to How to Teach Golf: The American Golf Teaching Method textbook used in USGTF certification courses).Now that we%u2019ve covered that, what are some other faults that aren%u2019t really faults? One is the position of the toe of the club on the backswing. A lot of teachers still believe that at the 9 o%u2019clock position on the takeaway, the toe of the club should be pointed straight up. In fact, it should parallel the spine angle, which means the toe will be slightly down. Finally, we%u2019ll discuss a reverse pivot position at the top of the backswing, where the player is leaning their upper body towards the target instead of away. True, this is a fault if the player is making a traditional swing where he or she wants their weight to shift slightly into the back foot, but in the methodology called Stack & Tilt, the player should keep their weight %u201cstacked%u201d on their front foot and the spine should be tilted towards the target. How does this impact our teaching? If you have a player who, for whatever reason, cannot get themselves into a spine angle that is leaning (from hip to head) away from the target, they need to keep most of their weight on their lead foot throughout their backswing. The worst possible scenario is a player who sways their hips past their back foot and counterbalances by leaning towards the target. If this player is simply unable to get themselves into a more traditional spine angle at the top of the backswing, borrowing from Stack & Tilt methodology may be the best course of action.All of this goes to show that at the end of the day, the impact position is the most important one, and that there are several fundamentally correct ways to make this happen. Keep an open mind when you see things that may appear to be faults, because in fact they may not be.