Early Extension: Two Big Causes, One Incomplete Diagnosis

Last week at a range in Los Angeles I watched a 58-year-old club golfer place a chair behind the ball and swing. Every time his hips hit the chair, he stopped, shook his head, and did it again. After the third try I asked what he was fixing. “Early extension,” he said. I asked why. He said the internet told him to keep his hips back. This is the golfer GOLF.com's recent instruction piece — “2 huge reasons golfers have early extension — and how to fix them” — was written for, and this is the golfer that piece only half-fixes. Early extension is not a new disease. It is the hips thrusting toward the ball during the downswing, reducing the room for the arms and club and forcing the body to rise. The GOLF.com article frames it not as a symptom but as a compensation — the body rescuing something else. That framing alone is the piece's strongest asset. But framing is not diagnosis, and that is where the article slips. The article names two causes. First, a steep or over-the-top downswing, where the club approaches the ball on too vertical a line and leaves no room for the body. Second, poor pressure transfer — trail-foot pressure retained too long, trapping the arms behind the body. For both it prescribes upstream fixes: a fuller backswing turn for depth in the first case, loading the inside of the trail foot and shifting to the lead side through transition in the second. This is better than the downstream cue “keep your hips back,” because it touches the root rather than the symptom. The piece gets interesting when it turns its skepticism on itself. It notes that the wall or chair drill builds awareness of the symptom, not the cause. That is correct, and it is the article's most honest passage. But then the same article does not present its two-cause framework as complete — the headline “2 huge reasons” implies that is all there is. Yet instruction literature commonly attributes early extension to limited hip and ankle mobility, grip and posture setup errors, and poor pelvic tilt control. The article mentions none of these. A professional eye helps here. In 2026, when the pandemic erased my calendar, I reopened my kinesiology textbooks. That year Bryson DeChambeau won the US Open having added roughly 20 mph of clubhead speed. Since then I have viewed the swing as a physics problem: force, pressure, and the limits of the body's joints. Early extension is a failure of that physics. But in physics, not every problem has the same fix. Naming two causes without saying which applies to whom is half a diagnosis. I remember 2026, when I sold India a game it hadn't asked for. I learned then that a market tells you its price before it tells you its story. Golf instruction works the same way. The author tells a story — “two big reasons” — but does not give the price: how do you know which cause is yours? Without that price, the reader keeps drilling and does not improve. There is another flaw: the article presents the two causes as separate fixes. In reality they are coupled. If your downswing is steep and you only fix pressure transfer, the compensation can relocate. If you only work on backswing depth, the pressure sequence can stay broken. The compensation does not disappear; it moves. The article does not warn about this. Rory McIlroy appears only as a movement model — to show what clearing the hips looks like. The article itself says you do not need McIlroy's flexibility or athleticism. That is honest, but it is also true that using a tour-level player as a model is a shiny lure. When you are 61 and your hip internal rotation is limited, McIlroy's pelvic clearance is not a target; it is a dream. The article's “modest improvement” framing acknowledges this, and that is its most practical note. In my experience, most golfers who come to the range to fix early extension make the same mistake: they grab one drill without knowing their cause. A few weeks later they quit, because the body has changed the compensation, not the fault. I have seen golfers with limited hip mobility doing pressure-shift drills, and the result was extra load on the lead hip and ankle. The article does not mention that risk. So what should you do? First, video your swing. From behind and from the front. See when the hips move forward — early in the downswing or late. If early, suspect pressure transfer. If late, suspect path. Second, ask a coach, especially if you are over 50. Third, work on both at once, not one after the other. As for the article, it is an honest attempt but incomplete. It correctly turns early extension from symptom into compensation, but then commits the same error it criticizes by presenting its two-cause framework as complete. The lesson for readers: do not treat “two big reasons” as a final list. It is a start, not a diagnosis. And the next time a golfer swings with a chair, ask: “How do you know which cause is yours?” If there is no answer, he is still on the range, not on the course.