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The joke(?) of the golf-pro giving the student back his money after half an hour of fruitless effort and telling him to start over left-handed had crossed my mind while typing up my original post! But in all seriousness, that '2nd chance' seems a better option than quitting for someone who has truely messed up their right-handed action.

Great observation! I play tennis regularly and agree 100%. Also, I think more specifically, a top spin backhand is exactly the same at a good golf swing vs. a backspin/cut shot. The latter would be a slice and the former a draw.

Strange that you mention a backspin/cut shot in tennis producing a slice, I agree entirely.......... as I mentioned, table-tennis was my game rather than tennis and, when under pressure, I would revert to an unintentional chop/backspin type of shot - just the same as I do in golf. This results in my 'weak' push-fade....... most frustrating in golf, just as it was all those years ago in table-tennis, missing the table on the right is not quite as bad as missing the fairway or green on the right though!

I have to respectfully disagree. I teach golf in Canada. Home of Mike Weir (Lefty II) who is naturally right-handed. I have also worked with tennis players (one of whom was an all Ontario champion). This tennis player equates the golf swing motion more as a 2 handed "top-spin lob" while bending at hips toward the ball, than anything else.

Canada has the highest percentage of left handed golfers in the world -and it's not even close. Canada has 30% of it's golfers left handed, the rest of the world is 8%. The reason is that we grow up playing hockey where most righties shoot left. I work with a lot of righties playing left (including my brother) and I will tell you it takes at least twice as long for a righty to learn the swing from the left side. I don't say it's not possible, but players like Weir are an exception.

Hockey is about leverage or levers. In a slap-shot the left hand is the fulcrum and the right hand controls the lever. The right hand works away from the net while the left hand works toward it. The center of the swing is between the two hands, effectively making the radius of the hockey stick a lot shorter than a golf swing where the center of the swing is the spine. Also, the stick hits the ice first, bends the shaft and then snaps through. You don't want to hit the ground first in golf or you'll lay the sod over the ball. Incidently,that's why lefties like playing the ball back in their stance and teeing the ball low. It's also why they prefer their 3 woods (more loft) over there drivers. But, after they hit the ground before the ball a few times they start lifting up and topping it. This can get rather confusing to these golfers and that is when they come to see me.

In a good golf swing the hands should work together through the ball. You never want to 'flick' the club through the ball (exceptions are a high lob shot, which requires a fluffy lie and a lot of timing).

The other factor that righties playing left over-look is coil and recoil which produces a weight shift into the back leg and return to the front leg. I ask righties which leg they kick a soccer ball with (which requires a weight shift) and 99% of them kick with their right leg. Why? Because they push off that stronger right leg after a coil into it. They can't get nearly as much power kicking off their weaker left leg. The biggest muscle in the body for righties is the right thigh muscle.

I also think it makes more sense to have the (stronger) right hand behind the shaft and closer to the clubhead. You can square the face a lot easier with your forearm rotation this way. Most righties playing left pull the club through with their stronger right arm and hand and have trouble squaring the face with their weaker left hand. The harder they try to swing the more they pull through with the stronger right hand and the more they open the face - btw, using the over-lapping grip takes even more strength away from the left hand so I recommend a 10 finger grip for these players. You can only unwind the body as fast as your ability to square up the face. So yes you may hit it straight but you will lose a lot of distance because you will have to slow down your body.

This is the reason it takes twice as long for a righty to learn to swing left. You have to do a lot of practice on forearm rotation to speed that up (left-handed baseball swings where you cross the left forearm over the right will help), and you also have to train yourself to make an unnatural weight shift (recoil) from left leg to right leg or you will be doomed to hitting the ball much shorter and playing the ball back in your stance using fairway woods to get the ball up.

I hope this helps,