“her upper body could no longer keep pace with them,” her coach says. This year, the em- phasis has been on getting her upper
the upper body to lag so far behind that the clubface can’t release. The feeling Thitikul uses to help get that release is to feel like she’s hitting the front-left quadrant of the ball. “You want to feel like you’re chopping the wood where the ball is,” he says. “That’s when you have the most extension and maximum speed at the ball. The right shoulder stays up, and the right arm ex- tends even more.” When Thitikul does that and stays tall, her upper body has an easier time keep- ing pace with her hips – providing more power to the strike.
To accomplish this, Thitikul will need to eliminate the right miss off the tee. Her tendency is to pull her hands and club down too much during the first part of the downswing, Assawapimon- porn says. As a result, she doesn’t have enough room to swing the club down in front of her, causing her to extend her hips early (towards the ball) and leave the clubface open. To fix this, they worked last season on keeping her pelvis back while she rotates, so she can clear her hips more efficiently on the downswing. However, she got so good at rotating her hips that
SYNCING IT UP Thitikul has been trying to get her upper and lower body to work better together.
body to catch up and match her lower body in the downswing. The key, As- sawapimonporn says, is getting her right arm to “extend earlier on the downswing so that it’s straighter at impact (above, sixth frame).” At times, her trail arm stays bent for too long, he says, which causes the right shoulder to drop and
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 47
MAY 2026
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