▶ Without a club in your hands,
getting into good address
posture almost becomes auto-
matic. Johnson says he some-
times stands too far from the
ball at address, with his arms
having to reach out for it. That
can lead to a toe strike and the
miss Johnson hates the most, a
hook. But without a club or ball
to reference, the tendency at
address is to let the arms hang
naturally like you see here ( 1 ).
You’ll also feel less rounded
in your back, with your hips
stacked more under the torso,
not jutting too far behind it.
There’s a lot to learn from
making air backswings, start-
ing with better tempo. There’s
no rush to get the club back to
the ball when neither is pres-
ent, so you tend to take your
time swinging to the top. “The
smoother your backswing can
be, the better you’re going to
hit it,” Johnson says.
There’s also a reduction in
tension. That helps you make
an unrestricted turn, with the
torso and hips moving together.
It allows you to create and store
power in the backswing while
still feeling fairly relaxed.
But perhaps the best thing
happens at the top—and it’s not
copying Johnson’s famously
bowed left wrist. It’s keeping
the elbows close together ( 2 ).
That puts you in position to
swing down from inside thetarget line, and it’s much easier
to get there without a club. “You
can exaggerate things when
you make air swings,” Harmon
says. “Doing it without a club
really isolates the move. You
don’t have any distractions.”
Air swings also help to prop-
erly sequence the downswing.
With no fear of hitting a poor
shot, focus turns to making
a good weight shift into your
front foot and starting thedownswing by unwinding
the lower body. Even halfway
down, you can see how active
Johnson’s lower body is while
the arms trail ( 3 ).
“I like to think of my right
hip re-tracing the path it took
in the backswing, but in the op-
posite direction,” he says.
And with air swings, there’s
no feeling of urgency to get
back to the ball, he says: “I slow
things down at the transition,
because I don’t want to swing
hard from the top—I want toswing it hard near the ball.”
Without a club serving as a
counterweight to your body
and arms, slowly accelerating
down and through feels natural.
As does finishing the swing in
balance, with the arms extend-
ing ( 4 ) and the torso completely
unwound ( 5 ). These things are
easier because you’re not fixat-
ed on where the ball is headed.
Instead, visualize that you
roasted a drive, just like D.J.without a clubin your hands,there’s no rushto get backto the ball.all your focusis on the swing.air swingsintuitivelyhelp you pivotyour bodyback and throughwith a goodweight shift.▶ follow the order Let the lower body lead in the downswing.
▶ stick together The elbows should be near each other at the top.▶ keep moving In the follow-through, feel as if you let everything go.▶ hang loose At address, feel relaxed—not rigid—in your arms.
Photographs by Dom Furore