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P5 is the first move of the downswing, the transition where your lower body should start rotating while your arms and wrist angles are still catching up. Here's what a good P5 golf swing position looks like, the faults that wreck it, and the drills that fix it.
The P5 golf swing position is the first move of the downswing – the instant your lower body starts unwinding toward the target while your arms and the club are still finishing their trip back. It lasts well under a second, but what happens right here decides whether you deliver a shallow, powerful strike at impact or spend the rest of the downswing fighting a steep, disconnected club.
I’ve been teaching golf in the Chicago area for seven years, and P5 is the position I bring up more than almost any other with mid-handicap students. Everyone obsesses over the top of the backswing or impact itself, but the transition in between is where a good backswing either turns into a good downswing or gets wasted. Let’s break down what the P5 golf swing position actually looks like, the faults that wreck it, and the drills that build a better one.
Table of Contents
What Is the P5 Golf Swing Position?
P5 comes from the ten-position “P-System” that modern coaches use to break the golf swing into checkpoints – the same framework behind our guides to P4, the top of the backswing, and P6, the position right before impact. If P4 is the last frame of the backswing, P5 is the first real frame of the downswing: the club shaft roughly parallel to the ground, hands somewhere around hip height, traveling down and in front of you rather than out away from your body.
The defining feature of a good P5 golf swing position isn’t where the club points – it’s who’s doing the moving. At P5, your lower body has already started rotating toward the target while your upper body, arms, and wrist hinge are still holding most of the angles you built on the way back. That gap between a lower body that’s turning and an upper body that hasn’t caught up yet is exactly where lag and a shallow, powerful downswing come from. Lose that sequence and you lose both. For a deeper technical reference on this checkpoint, RotarySwing’s breakdown of the P5 position is a solid outside source.
The Checkpoints That Actually Matter at P5
Golfers who’ve never heard the term still feel a good or bad P5 golf swing position every round – it’s the split second that decides whether the club comes down “in the slot” or gets stuck and steep. Here’s what separates a P5 that sets up a good strike from one that’s already in trouble.
1. Your Lower Body Leads
A good downswing starts from the ground up. Your lead hip and knee begin rotating open toward the target first, while your shoulders and arms are still essentially where they were at the top. This is the single biggest difference between a P5 that works and one that doesn’t – it’s not about the arms starting the downswing, it’s about the lower body starting it for them. This same ground-up sequencing is what we cover in our guide to clearing the left hip in the downswing.
2. The Wrist Angles Are Still There
This is lag, and P5 is where you can see whether you have any. At the top, your wrists were hinged and your trail wrist was bent back. At a good P5, those angles are still mostly intact – the club hasn’t started to release yet. Golfers who cast the club (more on that below) have already lost most of this angle by P5, which is the single clearest tell on video that something went wrong in transition.
3. The Shaft Shallows Instead of Staying Steep
“Shallowing” is one of the most talked-about ideas in modern instruction, and P5 is where it actually happens. As your lower body turns and your arms drop, the shaft angle should flatten slightly compared to where it was at the top – moving more around your body and less straight down on top of the ball. A shaft that stays steep here is the root of an over-the-top move and the classic pull-slice.
4. The Trail Elbow Drops, It Doesn’t Fly
Your trail elbow should be dropping down toward your trail hip, staying reasonably close to your body rather than pointing out and away. A flying trail elbow at P5 almost always means the arms and shoulders started the downswing instead of the lower body – the exact opposite of what you want.
| Checkpoint | What “good” looks like | Common miss |
|---|---|---|
| Sequence | Lower body rotates first, upper body lags behind | Arms and shoulders start the downswing (over the top) |
| Wrist angles | Still hinged, most of the lag from P4 preserved | Released early – casting |
| Shaft direction | Shallows slightly compared to P4 | Stays steep, chops down on the ball |
| Trail elbow | Drops toward the trail hip, stays connected | Flies out and away from the body |
Common P5 Faults (and What They Cost You)
Casting
Casting is releasing your wrist angles early – right from the top instead of waiting until closer to impact. It feels like extra effort and often feels “powerful,” but it actually spends your stored speed before the club ever reaches the ball. By P5 a caster’s club has already lost most of its lag, and the rest of the downswing becomes a scramble to square the face back up with whatever’s left. This is closely tied to the flipping and scooping patterns we cover in our chicken wing golf swing guide.
Starting Over the Top
This is the classic slicer’s move: the upper body and shoulders start the downswing instead of the lower body, throwing the club out away from you and steepening the shaft instead of shallowing it. By P5, an over-the-top swing already shows the club pointing outside the target line instead of down toward it. Everything after this point becomes damage control – usually an out-to-in path that either slices the ball or, on a good day, pulls it dead left.
A Reverse Pivot Carrying Over
If your weight drifted toward your lead foot at the top instead of loading into your trail foot, that fault doesn’t fix itself at P5 – it just changes shape. Your weight has nowhere left to shift forward, so the lower body can’t lead the way it should, and the downswing ends up arms-only. Our P4 guide covers how to spot a reverse pivot at the top before it ever reaches this point.
A Steep, “Chopping” Downswing
Even golfers who sequence reasonably well sometimes keep the shaft too steep at P5, coming down almost on top of the ball instead of shallowing into a flatter approach. This tends to produce a mix of fat and thin contact, because the steep angle leaves almost no margin for a slightly early or late low point. A shallower P5 gives you a longer, more forgiving path through the ball. RotarySwing’s glossary entry on this checkpoint and Golf Smart Academy’s shaft-parallel lag checkpoint breakdown both dig further into what a shallow versus steep transition actually looks like on camera.
How to Check Your Own P5 Position
The P5 golf swing position happens fast – too fast to feel accurately in real time, let alone adjust on the fly. You have to actually see it, which means video.
- Film down-the-line. Set your phone on the ground behind the ball, aimed straight down your target line. This angle shows you most clearly whether the shaft is shallowing or staying steep.
- Film face-on, too. This view is where sequencing shows up best – you can actually see whether your hips are already turning while your shoulders are still closed.
- Scrub frame by frame through the downswing. P5 sits roughly a third of the way down from the top to impact, when the shaft looks close to parallel to the ground. Pause there and check your sequence, your wrist angles, and your trail elbow.
- Compare a slow-motion rehearsal to a real, full-speed swing. A slowed-down practice swing almost always looks better than your real one. Film at game speed and review after, not while you’re swinging slowly to “feel” the position.
If you don’t have a tripod, propping your phone against a golf bag or a bucket of range balls works fine. The angle matters far more than the equipment.
Drills That Build a Better P5
- The pump drill. Swing to the top, then make two or three slow “pumps” down to roughly the P5 position and back up before finally swinging through. This trains the feeling of the lower body starting the move without your hands and arms racing to keep up.
- Step-change drill. Set up normally with your feet together, then as you start the downswing, step your lead foot toward the target before the club changes direction. This physically forces your lower body to initiate the transition instead of your arms.
- Hold-the-angle drill. Take slow, three-quarter swings and consciously try to feel like your wrists stay hinged well past the point where they want to release. It will feel exaggerated at first – that’s normal, and it’s the same feeling that protects your lag at P5 in a real swing.
- Pause-at-P5 half swings. Using half swings, pause right where the shaft looks parallel to the ground on the way down. Check your sequence and wrist angles, then finish the swing. This is the same pause-and-check approach that works so well for the top of the backswing.
A few training aids that help build a better P5 golf swing position (affiliate links): wrist hinge trainers, an weighted swing trainer for feeling sequence and tempo, and a simple phone tripod for filming both camera angles.
Does P5 Change With Different Clubs?
A good P5 golf swing position follows the same core idea – lower body first, wrist angles retained, shaft shallowing rather than steepening – across every club in the bag. What changes is timing and stakes. With a driver, the backswing is longer and there’s more time and more speed for a poor P5 to go wrong, which is why a bad transition costs the most distance and accuracy off the tee. With wedges and short irons, especially on shorter, half-swing shots, the margin for error is smaller in a different way – there’s less time to recover from a rushed transition, so a smooth, unhurried P5 matters just as much even though the swing is shorter.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the P5 golf swing position exactly?
P5 is the first checkpoint of the downswing in the ten-position P-System, occurring just after the top of the backswing when the club shaft is roughly parallel to the ground and the hands are around hip height. It’s defined less by a specific look and more by sequence: the lower body should already be rotating while the upper body and wrist angles are still catching up.
How is P5 different from P4?
P4 is the very top of the backswing, the last moment before the club changes direction. P5 comes immediately after – the first real position of the downswing, once the lower body has already started turning toward the target.
How is P5 different from P6?
P5 is earlier in the downswing, right after the transition starts from the top. P6 comes slightly later, when the lead arm is approaching parallel to the ground on the way down – the shaft and wrist angles typically look meaningfully different between the two, with P6 much closer to the delivery position you’ll see at impact.
Why do I lose my lag in the downswing?
Almost always because the upper body or arms start the downswing instead of the lower body. When your hands and shoulders take over first, the natural reaction is to release the wrist angles early to keep the clubhead moving – that’s casting, and it usually shows up by the time you reach the P5 golf swing position on video. Training the lower body to lead, using drills like the pump drill or step-change drill above, is the most reliable fix.
Can I feel P5 in real time, or do I need video?
You can train a feel for it over time, but you can’t reliably diagnose it without video first. The downswing happens in well under half a second, which is too fast for most golfers to accurately self-report what their wrists or lower body are actually doing. Film it, confirm the fault, then use drills to build the correct feel.
Does P5 look different with a driver vs. irons?
The fundamentals don’t change, but the driver amplifies whatever happens at P5 because of the longer shaft and higher swing speed involved. A sequencing fault that costs you a little distance with a 7-iron can cost significantly more with a driver, which is why better ball-strikers are especially disciplined about transition sequencing on their longest club.
Putting It Together
The P5 golf swing position isn’t something you consciously steer the club into – it’s what happens naturally when your lower body starts the downswing before your arms do. Chase that one sequencing change and the shallowing, the retained lag, and the connected trail elbow tend to follow on their own.
If you take one thing from this: stop trying to hit the ball from the top of your backswing. Let your lower body start the move, let your upper body and the club catch up, and trust that the speed you built on the way back is still there waiting for you at impact. Film it, check the checkpoints above, and give your transition the same attention you already give the top of the backswing and impact themselves.
