What does “Hovering” mean? Not ‘Hovering’ means a ‘PUITA … Pick Up Inside Take-Away or Forward Press’… early swing error meaning too much hand action … ‘Flippy Handed – Draw Hooksy’!
About flying a helicopter just above ‘Mother Earth’? You tell me!
OK we are talking about a ‘Golf Swing Condition’ that has a simple feeling but a big contribution! “Why and Where Might I Hover?”
Not hovering is about the sole of your ‘Golf Club’ resting on the ground. Kind of a lazy “I am not going to do anything extra!” Like a glass of cold cider sitting on the table. That is OK until you want to enjoy a sip! … or a big gulp! So, to enjoy cider, you have to actually pick up the glass and move the rim to your lips! Nothing happens while the bottom of the glass is pressing down on the table! To move the glass laterally to your lips, you must firstly lift it up off the tablecloth!
GOLF … To make a nice positive and controlled, sweeping, take-away ‘Chip or Pitch Shot’, you have to create some vertical clearance, bottom of the glass to the tablecloth before it will move efficiently laterally. We must have the ‘Golf Club Mass’ in hand, slightly elevated and under control. (see ‘Soft Tissue Stretch’ or ‘Kinetic Lever Length Elongation’ … Centrifugal and Centripetal Force is real)
We call this clearance ‘Hovering’. As long as the sole of the clubhead is pressing on the grass, it will NOT slide or sweep away from the ball. The grass provides too much ‘Resistance or Drag’.
If we have to get ‘Handsy’ (‘Lifty or Wrist Cocksy’) in the first few inches, or 8 to 12 inches of the ‘Take-Away’ (including in a Putt) we are venturing off into the darkness of golf mechanics. We are forced to shorten our ‘Swing Radius’. We get narrow! We lose our ‘Depth, Flatness and Width’. We make small swing circles rather than generous, bigger ones! This compromises ‘Clubhead Control and Speed’. The next thing to unavoidably go to ‘Hell In A Handbasket’ is our ‘Ball Flight Control’. (see ‘Shape & Distance’)
If we are not properly disciplined, we shall often fall prey to ‘Pivot Variability or Instability’ … then we are getting a nasty free pass to ‘Purgatory’.