You’ve had the lesson. Your coach identified the fault, explained the fix, and for about ten swings on the range you managed it.
Then it came back. Not because you weren’t trying, and not because your coach was wrong.
Sometimes a swing fault isn’t a technique problem at all. It’s your body finding the only route available to it, because the movement your coach is asking for isn’t currently in your range. You can understand a correction perfectly and still be physically unable to produce it — and no amount of repetition changes that.
Here are the faults where a physical cause is most often lurking, and what to check.
One boundary first: this isn’t swing instruction, and your coach’s read on your technique is theirs to make. This is about what may be sitting underneath it.
Early Extension
What your coach sees: Your hips and spine move toward the ball through the downswing, standing you up out of your posture. It’s one of the most common faults in amateur golf and it wrecks consistency of contact.
What may be driving it: Two restrictions come up repeatedly.
Ankle dorsiflexion. The Titleist Performance Institute has found a strong correlation between limitations in the overhead deep squat and early extension in the downswing — and those squat limitations frequently trace back to restricted ankle dorsiflexion. If your ankle can’t let your knee travel forward, your body finds the movement elsewhere, and standing up is the easiest option available.
Restricted dorsiflexion is common in anyone with a history of ankle sprains or Achilles problems.
Hip internal rotation. If your hips can’t rotate through the range the downswing requires, the pelvis has to do something else. Extending is that something else.
How to check at home: Kneel with one foot forward and try to drive that knee past your toes with the heel staying flat. Compare sides. A clear restriction — or a clear difference between sides — is worth investigating.
Why it matters beyond ball striking: Limitations in hip rotation often result in compensatory rotation through the lumbar spine, which is a recognized contributor to golfer’s low back pain.
Loss of Posture
What your coach sees: Your spine angle changes significantly during the swing — you stand up, dip, or otherwise lose the setup you started with.
What may be driving it: Some combination of thoracic spine rotation, hip mobility, and the strength to hold a hinged position under rotational load. Holding posture isn’t only about awareness; it’s a strength demand, and if the muscles maintaining it fatigue or were never strong, the position goes.
Worth knowing: This one often looks like a concentration problem and frequently isn’t.
Sway and Slide
What your coach sees: Excessive lateral movement away from the target in the backswing, or toward it in the downswing, rather than rotating around a stable center.
What may be driving it: Restricted hip internal rotation, most often. If the trail hip can’t rotate internally to load, sliding sideways is the alternative route to getting weight over that leg.
Trail hip internal rotation deficits also reduce loading and transition power — so this restriction costs you distance as well as consistency.
Glute strength matters here too, particularly gluteus medius, which resists lateral drift and keeps the pelvis stable.
How to check: Sit on a chair, knees together, and let one lower leg swing outward — that’s internal rotation at that hip. Compare sides. Golfers frequently find one hip noticeably tighter.
Casting and Early Release
What your coach sees: The angle between your lead arm and the club opens too early in the downswing, losing lag and clubhead speed.
What may be driving it: Often sequencing rather than a single restriction. If the lower body can’t lead, the arms take over — and the arms release early because they’ve been given the job of generating speed.
Restrictions further down the chain frequently show up as an arm-driven swing. Grip strength and forearm capacity contribute, and so does the ability to actually produce force from the ground.
Reverse Spine Angle
What your coach sees: Excessive upper body tilt toward the target at the top of the backswing.
Why it deserves particular attention: Beyond the ball-striking consequences, this pattern is associated with increased load through the lower back.
What may be driving it: Limited thoracic rotation and limited shoulder mobility. When the upper back can’t rotate enough to complete the backswing, side-bending is the compensation the body reaches for.
How to check: Sit on a chair, arms crossed over your chest, and rotate as far as you can each way without your hips moving. Compare sides. Restricted or asymmetrical rotation is common in anyone who spends their working day at a desk.
Chicken Wing
What your coach sees: The lead elbow bends and lifts through impact rather than extending.
What may be driving it: Shoulder mobility restrictions, thoracic rotation limits, or a lack of stability through the shoulder blade under load. Sometimes it’s a protective response from a shoulder that’s been sore.
The Pattern Underneath All of Them
Three restrictions come up over and over: ankle dorsiflexion, hip internal rotation, and thoracic rotation.
They matter disproportionately because they’re the joints the swing depends on most, and because when they’re restricted the compensation almost always lands somewhere it shouldn’t — usually the lumbar spine.
That’s the connection between playing well and staying healthy. Low back pain is the most common complaint in golf, and much of it comes from a spine repeatedly producing rotation that hips and upper backs were supposed to supply.
What This Doesn’t Mean
It doesn’t mean every fault is physical. Plenty are genuine technique issues, and your coach is the person to identify which. The useful question is what to do when a correction won’t stick despite understanding it and practicing it.
It doesn’t mean mobility work alone fixes your swing. Restoring range gives you access to a movement. Turning that into a repeatable swing is still coaching, and still practice.
And it doesn’t mean you need to become flexible everywhere. More on that in the companion piece on clubhead speed — but briefly, the evidence linking general flexibility to swing speed is considerably weaker than golf culture assumes. Targeted range at specific joints is a different proposition from stretching everything.
The Sequence That Works
Screen first. Establish what range you actually have, rather than guessing from the fault.
Restore the specific restrictions, if there are any.
Build strength and control in the new range, because mobility you can’t control doesn’t transfer to a swing performed at speed.
Then work with your coach on the technical change, now that it’s physically available to you.
Attempting step four without steps one to three is why so many lessons feel like they didn’t take.
When to Get Something Looked At
Book an assessment if you have pain during or after golf that persists beyond a couple of weeks; low back pain that’s worse after a round; a clear side-to-side difference in rotation or hip movement; pain that’s changing how you swing; numbness or tingling into a limb; or a fault that has resisted correction despite good coaching and honest practice.
Seek prompt medical care for severe or unrelenting pain, pain following a fall, or any chest pain, breathlessness, or dizziness during play.
Find Out What’s Actually Available to You
A screen takes under an hour and frequently explains something a golfer has been fighting for years.
Park Rehab offers a free discovery visit at no cost and no obligation. You’ll get an assessment of the mobility, strength and control the swing actually depends on, a clear explanation of which restrictions are likely shaping your ball striking, and a plan to address them.
We work alongside your coach, not instead of them — the technical work is theirs.