There are two ways your wrist can hinge, or cock, in the backswing. Every golfer does it one particular way. To get the most out of your swing, you have to hinge them both ways, which few recreational golfers do.

Hold your hand together in front of you, palms and fingers touching as if in a praying posture. Now hinge your wrists directly up toward you, so your fingers point straight up in the sky. That’s the first way to hinge your wrists, and that’s the one very golfer does. It’s the way you would hinge your wrists if you were chopping wood by lifting the axe straight over your head and swinging it back down.

Put your hands in the starting position again and hinge your wrists to the right and left, so each hand is alternately folding back on itself. That’s the second way, which is the way recreational golfers should learn how to do. It’s the way you would hinge your wrist if you were hitting a forehand shot in tennis.

The reason this is important is that allowing your right wrist to hinge backwards on the backswing preserves the square alignment of the clubface you had at address by preserving the angle your left wrist had at address. The right arm folds on the backswing and if the right wrist does not fold backwards with it, the left wrist is forced to hinge backwards, taking the clubface out of alignment. Then you would have to make a correction on the downswing to square up the clubface, and that is awfully hard to do consistently.

Learning how to hinge the right wrist takes a drill and a mirror. The drill will teach you the new movement and how it feels. The mirror will let you make sure you’re doing it right, because what needs to happen takes place behind your back. Remember while you’re doing all this that letting the right wrist bend backwards is an effect, not a cause. You don’t deliberately hinge it back; it is something that happens by itself when you take the club back correctly.

Take your grip on the club and hold it out in front of you. Notice the amount of bend there is in the left wrist. Now swing your shoulders and arms around so your hands are in about the place in space they get to at the top of your backswing and do not let the amount of bend in the left wrist change. You will find that your right wrist bent backwards. That is what you’re looking for. That’s the wrist hinge you want to add to your swing.

Stand with your mirror to your right, and swing to the top of your backswing, keeping the left wrist as it was at address and letting the right wrist hinge backward. It’s really not hard to do, but if you haven’t been hinging the right wrist, it will feel quite strange. Practice this every day until it you get accustomed to the feeling, and keep checking in the mirror to make you sure you’re doing it right.

The payoff comes in the downswing. As you start down, maintain this right wrist hinge until the momentum of your swing forces it to release. That will happen when the hands get about hip height. When the right wrist unhinges, the right hand comes into the ball providing effortless power and real accuracy.