Stop Coming Over the Top: Create Space With Your Hip Turn

Stop coming over the top by looking below your arms

If you want to stop coming over the top, look at your hips before your arms. In most amateur swings the pelvis drifts towards the ball during the downswing, which removes the space the arms need to drop into. With nowhere to go, the arms take the only route left, which is out and over the top.

That is why the usual fix fails. You rehearse a shallower arm path, it feels great at half speed, then the first full swing goes straight back over the top. Nothing was wrong with your intention. There was simply no room.

Why the space disappears

The move has a name. Early extension: the pelvis thrusting towards the ball in the downswing rather than rotating and holding its distance from it. It is one of the most common faults in amateur golf, and it explains far more than just the over-the-top pattern.

Picture the space between your hips and the ball at address. That gap is your workshop. It is where your arms and the club need to travel on the way down. If your hips move forwards into that gap, the workshop shrinks to nothing while the club is still arriving.

Your body is not being clumsy about this. It is solving a problem. If the arms cannot drop into a space that no longer exists, the fastest available route to the ball is out, around and down. So the arms go over the top. It is a compensation, and a smart one.

Which means the over-the-top move is a symptom. Treating it directly is like straightening a picture on a wall that is slowly tilting.

The knock-on effects

Once the hips come forward, everything downstream suffers:

• Steep attack angle. The club drops from outside the line, so you hit down sharply and lose both distance and control
• Out-to-in path. The classic slice recipe, or the pulls and hooks of someone whose hands rescue the face
• Inconsistent strike. Your distance to the ball has changed mid-swing, so low point moves. Thin, heavy and heel strikes appear in the same session
• Lost posture. You stand up through impact, which is the visible version of the fault

Fix the space and all four improve together, which is why this is such high-value work.

The key insight: hips go back, not forwards

Good players do the opposite of what feels natural. Their hips rotate and move slightly away from the ball in the downswing, deepening as the pelvis turns. The belt buckle ends up further from the ball line at impact than it was at address.

That backward movement is what opens the workshop. Arms drop, the club shallows, and the path straightens without any conscious manipulation.

Two parts make it happen.

The trail hip in the backswing

This is where the pattern usually starts. In a good backswing, the trail hip turns back and deepens behind you. In a poor one it slides sideways or, worse, rolls towards the ball. If the trail hip has already moved forwards going back, you begin the downswing in the exact position you were trying to avoid.

The lead knee through impact

This is the part almost nobody works on. In the downswing your lead knee should straighten as you rotate through. A straightening lead knee pulls the pelvis back and up, which is precisely the movement that creates room.

Keep the lead knee bent and flexed through impact and your hips stay close to the ball, regardless of how well you turned going back. Golfers who squat hard in transition and never stand back up out of it end up early extending for exactly this reason.

How to put it into practice

Three rehearsals, in order. Do them slowly. This is a feel you are building, not a swing you are rebuilding.

1. The trail-hip rehearsal

Stand in your golf posture with the back of a chair, or a wall, lightly touching your backside. Cross your arms over your chest. Turn into your backswing and feel your trail hip move back into the chair rather than away from it. You should feel your trail glute engage and deepen.

Most golfers are surprised here. The correct move feels like you are turning into something behind you, not coiling around a pole.

2. The wall drill for the downswing

Same set-up, backside touching the chair or wall. Now make a slow backswing and a slow downswing, and keep contact throughout. Your trail glute finds the wall going back, then your lead glute finds it coming down.

Losing contact at any point tells you exactly when you drift towards the ball. Most golfers lose it in transition, within a fraction of a second of starting down. That is the moment to work on.

3. Add the lead knee

Once you can keep contact, add the second layer. As you rotate through, let your lead knee straighten and feel yourself grow taller through impact while your hips stay back against the wall. Rotate and rise, without moving in.

Build it up: twenty slow rehearsals against the wall, then step away and make ten half-speed swings holding the same feel, then hit a few balls. Judge it by the ball flight rather than by comfort, because the correct move will feel unfamiliar for a week or two.

One warning. If your hips genuinely cannot rotate that far, no amount of drilling will help. Limited hip mobility is a common reason golfers early extend, because standing up is the only way the body can find room. If the wall drill feels physically blocked rather than just awkward, some basic hip rotation work alongside the drills will speed everything up.

See it on screen at Grip

This fault is far easier to fix when you can see it, because early extension happens too fast to feel and looks completely normal from where you stand.

Every bay at both our London studios runs Trackman, and three readings tell you whether the space is opening up:

• Club path. Coming over the top shows a negative, out-to-in number. As the hips learn to hold their distance, this climbs towards zero
• Attack angle. Early extension makes you steep. Watch this shallow out as the arms get room to drop
• Strike location. Because your distance to the ball changes mid-swing, early extension scatters your contact across the face. Tighter, more central strikes are one of the first things to improve

The down-the-line view matters just as much. Deptford Park is our coaching home in SE8, with dedicated coaching bays where one of our professional coaches can film your hips from behind and show you the exact frame where the space disappears. That single image tends to land harder than any amount of explanation.

At Tower Bridge, members have 24/7 access with a personal door code, which suits this work particularly well. Fifteen minutes of wall rehearsals and half swings, three times a week, beats one long session a fortnight. Changing a movement pattern rewards frequency, and indoor bays make that possible in any weather, all year round.

Book a session

Coming over the top is rarely a problem with your arms. Your arms are doing their best with the room you gave them. Create space with your hip turn, let the lead knee straighten through impact, and the arms will find their own way down.

Ready to see where your space disappears? Book a free trial at Tower Bridge or Deptford Park, or work through it with one of our coaches and get the down-the-line footage that makes it obvious. Most golfers have been fighting the symptom for years. The cause is usually about six inches lower.