Todd Kolb’s Top 5 Golf Swing Tips for Seniors

You’ll find plenty of great tips in traditional golf instruction, but none of them address the unique challenges senior golfers face.

That’s why I love working with more “experienced” players. It gives me a chance to prove that, with the right strategies in place, anyone can play a great game, no matter how much swing speed or flexibility they’ve lost.

Now, having worked with thousands of “experienced” players, I’ve identified the five most important golf swing tips for seniors. Do these five things, and you’ll start seeing way better contact and much longer distance.

Golf Swing Tips for Seniors: Key Takeaways

Here’s the short version of all the senior-friendly swing tips we’re about to cover:

Work your lead arm straight back and up in your backswing.
Flare your toes in your setup.
Load the trail foot on the backswing. (Don’t sway!)
Make sure you unload on the downswing by getting your knees to touch at the finish.
Use your arms to generate more speed.
Bonus Tip: Get a driver specifically designed for senior golfers.

Need more details? Join me for the countdown to my #1 best golf swing tip for seniors.

#5: Work Your Lead Arm Straight Back and Up

This is the core concept of my senior-friendly Vertical Line Swing System:

You’ve got to work that lead arm straight back and up on the backswing instead of low and around.

In all honesty, a vertical swing path is good for everyone, as it creates a longer swing, promotes better contact, and feels more natural than a flat backswing. But it’s absolutely crucial for those of us who can’t rotate as deeply as we once could.

If you’ve lost a lot of distance in the last few years, try this more vertical swing path. You’ll be picking up yards and setting down the ibuprofen.

Practice Tip

Here’s how I help my students get used to swinging straight back and up:

Take your regular setup.
Lift the club straight out in front of you so your hands are at the same height as the buttons on your golf shirt.
Rotate your upper body toward your trail side like you would in your backswing.

The position you end up in is where you want to be at the top of your backswing.

#4: Flare Your Toes

This tip is even easier than the last, if you can believe it.

When you get set up, flare your toes slightly.

Standing with your toes pointing straight forward limits your range of motion. But if you flare your toes, you can rotate a lot more… and a lot more easily. A big win if you’ve lost some flexibility.

It doesn’t really matter how much you flare them. Twenty degrees, thirty degrees . . . whatever works for you.

Combine this adjustment with your vertical swing path, and you’ll really be able to stretch that backswing.

#3. Load, Don’t Sway

I count this among my top golf swing tips for seniors because it combats balance issues while improving contact and tapping into your most reliable power source as an experienced golfer.

When you set up for your shot, you want to start with about 60% of your weight on your lead foot and 40% in your trail foot. It doesn’t have to be exact; you just want to feel a little more pressure on that lead foot.

You’ll then shift most of that weight into your trail foot on the backswing.

We refer to this shift as “loading.” You’re essentially loading your energy into the trail side of your body, preparing to transfer as much power as possible into the ball on the downswing.

Now, a lot of golfers—especially senior golfers—inadvertently sway instead of loading. Rather than experiencing a controlled shift, they sway over their feet, which interrupts their stability, zaps their power, and moves the low point of their swing.

And because this move causes some experienced golfers to lose their balance, they stop shifting their weight altogether. You definitely don’t want to do that, but you also don’t want to sway. Here’s the fix:

To load, focus on shifting your weight to the inside of your trail foot on the backswing.

The sway happens when you shift your weight to the outside of the foot.

Practice Tip

If you have trouble feeling the difference between shifting weight to the inside of your foot and shifting it to the outside, use your knees as a checkpoint.

Let’s say you set up with about a 30° bend in your knees. If you load the trail foot correctly on the back swing, your trail knee should have straightened a bit so there’s only about a 15° bend. You should also have a deeper bend in your lead knee.

Again, those measurements aren’t exact; they’re just to help you visualize the change. When in doubt, focus on reducing the bend in the trail knee and increasing it in the lead knee on the backswing, and you’ll end up loading your trail foot naturally.

#2: Get Your Knees Touching at the Finish

If you’re only able to take one of these tips to the golf course today, make it this one. It’s easy, requires zero practice, and gets immediate results.

Get your knees to touch as you finish your golf swing.

Similar to changing the bend in your knees on the backswing, this trick forces you to shift your weight back into your lead foot. You shifted into your trail foot (loading), and now you’re shifting into your lead foot, sending your energy into the ball and toward the target (unloading).

Experienced golfers tend to keep their weight on their trail foot as they swing through, even if they used to unload properly. Again, it’s often a matter of feeling unstable in the shift because they haven’t learned how to fix the sway.

If you keep your weight back on the downswing, I’m betting you’ve lost a lot of distance. You’re probably slicing more often than you’d like, too. Fortunately, you can fix it in your next round by just making sure your knees touch when you finish your swing.

It’s seriously that easy.

#1: Use Your Arms

This is it. My Number One golf swing tip for seniors. Sounds pretty obvious, but I’d be willing to bet you’re not using your arms as well as you could.

If you’re a golfer of a certain age, you probably can’t count on deep rotation and strength for generating clubhead speed. But that’s okay. You can still increase your speed just by tapping into the natural momentum of your arms.

Here’s a drill I use with my students to help them unlock that hidden power source:

Step back from the ball and take your regular setup as if the ball were still there.
Stand with your feet together.
Swing your arms as if you were taking a golf shot, but don’t pause between swings. Maintain that continuous back-and-forth motion, feeling the momentum build.
Step up to the ball, keeping your feet together.
Take a shot.

Standing with your feet together forces you to power your swing almost entirely with your arms. Under those circumstances, you’ll be shocked by how much speed you discover.

Repeat this drill regularly, and soon you’ll naturally tap into that extra power on every shot you take.

Reclaim Distance as a Senior Golfer

Your age may impact the way you play the game, but it doesn’t have to tank your scores. Try these five swing tips, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. You can still improve your accuracy, fix your contact, and pick up more distance. You just need a technique that makes sense for this phase of your life.

And it doesn’t hurt to have a driver designed specifically for senior golfers. There’s only one out there, but fortunately, it’s a darn good one: the VLS Maxvert 2 Driver.

I’ve seen golfers over 70 pick up as much as 40 extra yards with this club. That’s because our industry-leading designer engineered the Maxvert to suit the senior golfer’s swing. (All the big-name clubmakers base their designs on the swing speed and precision skills of tour players.)

Click this link to see the Maxvert in action and to try it yourself risk-free for 60 days.

About the Author

PGA Teaching Professional Todd Kolb is a five-time Golf Digest Best-in-State Instructor, Amazon Best-selling Author, and Minnesota PGA Teacher of the Year. In over 30 years of coaching, he’s worked with from newbies to an LPGA major champion. He’s currently the Director of Instruction for VLS Golf and USGolfTV and dedicates his efforts to helping the everyday golfer cut through overcomplicated traditional instruction to find solutions that actually work for them.