The vast majority of golfers have their lead arm bend or collapse during the backswing.
This is something that many golfers know they do but have a tough time actually correcting.
The reason for this is that they are focusing on the wrong arm.
The lead arm collapsing is simply an effect of the rear/trailing arm over bending.
Any time the rear arm bends more than 90 degrees the lead arm will also bend.
This causes a lot of potential issues including: hitting the ground behind the ball, taking steep divots, and the most common, pulls and slices.
Here are some thoughts that will help prevent your lead arm collapsing:
• Because the root cause is a rear arm that over bends, and the rear arm will bend on any swing longer than chest high, many players will find that feeling the right arm is straight during the backswing will create a wider and more in-sync backswing.
• When the rear arm over bends the hands become too close to the rear shoulder. An effective thought for many is feeling like the hands are as far from your rear shoulder as possible at the end of your backswing. This encourages a nice full turn while keeping arm swing compact and wide.
• Another big reason the right arm over bends is that the right elbow moves closer to a players side during the backswing. This results in too narrow of a swing where the rear arm gets trapped behind the player. A good thought is feeling like the rear elbow never gets closer to you during the entire backswing. This means the rear upper arm will be away from your rib cage and NOT glued to your side.
These thoughts should produce a shorter, wider, more powerful swing as well as promoting more solid contact.
