To the inexperienced eye, the wiggle appears as a meaningless fidgeting motion that accomplishes nothing useful in the swing. For the untrained, wiggling is nothing more than a way of expending nervous energy before taking a golf swing. When the move is done correctly, such appearances couldn’t be further from the truth.
The wiggle is a golden opportunity to improve your swing motion and gain tremendous insight into the synchronized intricacies of the motion used that a golf swing produces. If you are interested in understanding and improving your swing, knowing how to swing properly is a must.
The wiggle serves several very important purposes. First, the wiggle provides a way to align the sweet spot on the clubface with the sweet spot on the golf ball. If you’re not swinging your clubhead before you swing, how are you lining up the sweet spots on the clubface with those on the golf ball? By moving the clubhead back and forth, you can see if the sweet spots are lined up. If not, you can adjust your heading position or how far you are from the target line so that they are aligned.
Second, the manual action of the swing is also the manual action of the golf swing. Knowing how to properly swing a golf club teaches you to use your hands during the golf swing. The action of the swing hand preserves the alignment of the golf ball and clubface sweet spots when the clubhead rotates back and forth. The same is true on the backswing when the golf club rotates ninety degrees on the backswing and ends up parallel to the target line at the top of the backswing. In addition, the alignment of the sweet spots is preserved on the descent and therefore maximum compression of the ball is achieved at the moment of impact. Correct hand action provides a means of returning the clubface to a position perpendicular to the target line at the moment of impact, one of the few requirements for making pure and accurate golf shots.
During the golf swing, the shoulders and hips rotate and move consistently with the manual action of the wiggle. To coordinate the three movements, the starting point is to learn to use your hands and this can easily be done by learning to wiggle. Consciously learn to use your hands, then during the golf swing, allow the hands to unconsciously move within the frame of rotating the hips and shoulders.
To see the movement in action, Google “The Ben Hogan Movement” and watch videos of your search results. Some of the videos demonstrating Ben Hogan’s Waggle clearly show how the hands rotate the golf club. For a modern take on the Ben Hogan move, Google Jason Dufner. It has the best example of a correct movement of all tourism professionals today. Also, watching the video of Jason’s golf swing clearly shows how the wiggle motion is incorporated into the full swing.
Bottom Line: To coordinate and synchronize the manual action of the golf swing with the turning of the hips and shoulders, start by learning the correct way to swing a golf club.