How to Maximize Improvement in the 5 Keys of Golf from Lowest Score Wins: Part 1 – Mastering a Steady Head
We are going to break down the 5 simple keys of the golf swing from the book “Lowest Score Wins”. In this article, we will focus on the first key, a steady head. As described by the authors, these keys give you the best chances for a simple and effective golf swing that you can understand, predict, and create score lowering practice sessions around. I want to introduce to you these keys while addressing how physical restrictions and pain may limit your ability to integrate these simple keys while providing drills and exercises that will maximize your potential to master them.
Lowest Score Wins
The book Lowest Score Wins was written to bring clarity to how to blend swing instruction and technical flaws between course management and decision making. Its purpose is simple but powerful: identify the skills and patterns in the golf swing that have the greatest impact on scoring and help golfers prioritize their practice and improvement accordingly. Rather than focusing on countless mechanical details, the book emphasizes measurable outcomes—what the golf ball does, where it starts, how it curves, and how consistently it can be controlled. By focusing on the elements that most directly affect ball flight and scoring, golfers can avoid getting lost in unnecessary complexity and instead direct their attention to the factors that actually lower scores.
Though the primary focus of the book is understanding your swing, your numbers, you’re your dispersions to make club choice and practice decisions, there are some technical keys introduced. These are the Five Simple Keys of the Golf Swing. These keys represent the fundamental movement patterns that consistently appear in high-level ball strikers. They are not meant to be stylistic preferences or rigid positions, but rather broad principles that help produce reliable, predictable ball flight. When these five elements are present, golfers dramatically increase their chances of striking the ball solidly and controlling its direction and trajectory. These keys are what give you an effective and repeatable golf swing that you can then make tactical decisions with (is that bunker in my normal dispersion zone?).
The Five Simple Keys include maintaining a steady head, creating proper weight forward at impact, achieving a forward shaft lean, ensuring a diagonal sweet spot path, and controlling the clubface so that it points at the target. Together, these keys provide a simplified framework for understanding the golf swing. They strip away unnecessary complexity and focus attention on the movements that matter most for striking the ball well and ultimately shooting lower scores.
Understanding these keys gives golfers a practical roadmap for improvement. Instead of chasing endless swing thoughts, players can evaluate their swing against a small set of essential principles. Let’s talk about the first and perhaps most visually recognizable element of good ball striking: the steady head.
Physical limitations to the steady head
Access to cervical rotation is the primary driver of a steady head. The testing we do with golfer for cervical or neck range of motion often drives the most questions. Why are we looking at my ability to turn my neck, how does this impact the golf swing when my head stays down on the ball?
When the head stays stationary while the trunk turns below it, like in the backswing and downswing, the joints of the cervical spine are still rotating and moving just as they are when you stand up straight and turn left or right. The joints don’t know the difference. The body is rotating underneath the head and the vertebrae of the neck have to rotate against it to maintain the head position. Try this:
· Stand in golf posture
· Rotate into a full backswing
· Lock your head and neck in position
· Return to upright and turn your trunk and hips back to neutral.
For a right-handed golfer, you will realize in the top of the backswing position, your head and neck rotated completely into left rotation. See this example below…
Head and neck movement in the golf swing.
For some golfers, they lack true mobility at these vertebrae, making this rotation difficult. This can cause the golfer to either start to drag their head with their trunk in the rotation, relying more and more on straining the eyes to turn and stay on the ball or even begin to use peripheral vision without knowing it. Or they will have a shortened backswing to prioritize keeping their head steady and eyes on the ball. In either case, we are losing distance, consistency in ball strike, and straining these muscles and joints to get into our desired position.
Here is what we need access to. We need full cervical rotation range of motion from the joints and muscles, motor control and stability over these muscles, and awareness to maintain head position in the swing.
Check out this podcast episode on this same topic of cervical rotation in golfers…
Golf Podcast 26: The cervical rotation test
Improving the steady head key
I have broken down these movements and drills into categories to improve true joint mobility, motor control and muscle activation, and swing drill to put these pieces together.
Cervical mobility
We need the muscles and joints of the neck to be able to access full range of motion first. Chiropractic manipulation and soft tissue techniques can be exceptionally helpful and effective here. Beyond that, try these drills here to improve these qualities.
1. Mckenzie cervical retractions
This movement is a fantastic start to restore joint mobility. This movement of retraction and extension acts as general joint opener that can be quite effective.
2. Supine banded cervical rotations
This move is great for taking tension out of the neck before working on simple and subtle joint rotation again. It is important we limit the activation of the muscles that are limiting cervical rotation first when re-introducing rotation back in.
Cervical stability and muscle activation
These drills below will continue the theme of activating the correct muscles of stability and movement while re-enforcing strength through neck movement.
1. Quadruped banded cervical extension
2. DNS 3 month prone
This drill reinforces the need for uncompensated stability at the neck. We are able to create cervical extension and centrate the joints around it.
3. DNS 5 month upper body roll
Here we get back to rotating the trunk under the neck while again driving control and centration through the shoulder complex. We can add a neutral or unchanging neck position as we roll to help restore cervical rotation.
Golf position drills
For a golf drill that helps pull these mobility and stability drills together, there is nothing simpler and more effective than having a friend hold a club just barely touching the front of your head while working through a golf swing. Have them stand in front of you, reaching the grip of the club towards your forehead. Your goal is to maintain this light contact throughout the swing.
Here is a way we can work on this at home as well.
1. Head stabilized shoulder turns
For more movements and exercises that address cervical rotation and neck pain in golfers, check out this comprehensive YouTube video and article:
Article: The best exercise for neck and upper back pain in golfers
Final thoughts
Mastering the first of the Five Simple Keys—a steady head—provides golfers with an important foundation for building a more consistent and predictable golf swing. When the head remains relatively stable throughout the motion, the body can rotate more efficiently underneath it, allowing the club to return to the ball with improved control of both the low point and the clubface. This stability helps golfers strike the ball more solidly, manage ball flight more effectively, and ultimately create more repeatable outcomes on the course.
However, maintaining a steady head is not simply a matter of discipline or keeping your eyes on the ball. As we discussed, the body must have the physical capacity to support this movement. Adequate cervical mobility, proper stability through the neck and shoulder complex, and the ability to coordinate trunk rotation underneath a stable head position all play critical roles. When golfers lack these physical qualities, they often compensate by moving the head with the torso, shortening the backswing, or placing unnecessary strain on the neck and surrounding muscles.
By first restoring mobility in the cervical spine, then building stability and motor control, and finally integrating these qualities into golf-specific drills, golfers can create the physical environment necessary to support a steady head throughout the swing. This approach allows the key to become not just a swing thought, but a reliable movement pattern that holds up under pressure and repetition.
-Dr. Nick Curtis DC, MS, TPI, CSCS
If you would like to learn more about your body, pain, and performance, send Dr. Nick an email at contact@integratedrpc.com or call at (585)478-4379, or schedule a FREE discovery visit at Contact.
Instagram @Integrated.Rehab.Performance
