One thing I’m always hearing when it comes to golf and golfers is that one needs to be very flexible to make a proper pivot.

That’s all bunk – sure, there are long drivers and professional golfers who have a good deal more flexibility than the average person, but making a pivot to swing a golf club doesn’t require that.

It helps with the Modern Golf Swing, to be sure – and that same flexibility (see Tiger Woods) is just setting a trap for the flexible golfer who uses spinal twisting to achieve a full shoulder turn.

Better to just use a proper setup with a mechanically-sound pivot action.

Here I am at 52, without working out and at the time, probably hitting balls once a week, with a 7 iron swing:

I wasn’t even swinging hard, and yet I still achieved a slightly-more-than 90 degree shoulder turn.

You see that I’m set into that right or trailing hip, and just before the gif. stops, I’m beginning that transfer back into the leading foot, if you watch my leading thigh reach vertical and then the incremental move back to the target with the leading knee.

In the full speed swing, you can see both the vertical nature of the swing (up and back, then down and through) as well as the lateral stability – no shifting one way or another, just a “swinging in the box” action with a balanced finish:

Leading foot stable through impact and not jumping or twisting, no hyper-extension of the leading leg through impact – in fact you can see my leading knee flexing as I come to the finish position, which indicates a leading leg that hasn’t straightened coming into the swing bottom.

The pivot provides the shoulder turn, and the down swing pivot provides the leverage and power production.

Golf may be a complicated game, but the swing itself isn’t, or shouldn’t be.