There have been a few questions and possibly some confusion about what a proper shoulder turn is.

I have said level shoulder turn many times on this blog, so I want to clarify what that is. Level can be said several different ways, whatever makes sense to you. Level to the spine angle, 90 degrees to the spine, around the spine, etc.

First, I have to explain proper posture, because if you don’t have good posture, the shoulders won’t turn anyway.

(All of the following is what it should look like when viewing setup from behind or down the line, where looking straight ahead you see the target as in the picture below.)

1. Weight should be over balanced feet, with no leaning toward the heels or toes.

2. A nice comfortable knee bend.

3. Bent over enough at the waist so the arms can hang down comfortably.

4. A nice straight spine. If you drew a line from the tailbone into the middle of the neck, it would be a straight line and not curved as it would be in most golfers who looked hunched over.

5. Nice straight shoulders that aren’t rounded…rounded shoulders often happen when the ball is too far away from you and you are reaching for it.

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Now that there is a proper setup, the shoulders are free to turn properly. Here is what a level shoulder turn is. If you draw a line at the golfer’s spine and then a line from shoulder to shoulder, you will draw a big capital “T” and you want to maintain that capital “T” throughout the swing. The top part of the “T” is rotating, but you always want that top part of the “T” to be at that 90 degree angle and not tilt one way or the other.

Looking at it in a different way from a different angle…in the picture below, if this golfer made a level shoulder turn, the short yellow line would remain parallel to the long yellow line through the whole swing.