When a friend of mine takes practice swings, his head rather mechanically follows the golf club. It looks ridiculous. He claims it is part of “following through”, but he also says it is only for the practice swings. Does this make any sense? Do any SDoper golfers do this, too?
I don’t do this, have never seen it done and it doesn’t make sense to me, either. Does he do this throughout the backswing all the way through the follow through?
I generally think that anyone who has problems with their golf swing probably has too much movement and/or is not keeping his eye on the ball. This method of practice swing would not seem to help. Out of curiosity, is this guy any good?
My major problem* is keeping my head still (and I think that’s true of many golfers), how in the world would moving my head during practice help?
*Well that and staying down on the ball, but, hey, one thing at a time. Unfortunately, the drinking helps with staying down, but hurts with keeping my head down. You can’t have everything…
I try to keep my head as still as possible. In particular, I try to keep my eyes on the ball rather than the club. After all, it’s the** ball **that’s the target…
I can see on some practice swings watching the club go back until it is first parallel to the ground (about a 1/4 swing), just to check your takeaway path and see whether the club face is not open or shut… but I have no clue what you’d look for if you kept watching the club past that.
Maybe at the 9 o’clock position (1/2 swing) seeing whether the club is still going back on plane, but past that seems silly. And doing it every time? Weird. And then watching the club after the impact position? Bad.
I also want to know if the guy is any good.
I’ve heard it said that there are two things you can determine when you watch your takeaway - how many hands you have and which one is wearing the glove. 
Since he says it’s part of following through, I’m assuming that he keeps his eye on the ball during the back swing, and only follows the club head after striking the ball. If he’s had a problem with following through, I can see how following the club with his head would open up his hips on the follow through.
However, I don’t think it’s a hot idea to have one swing for practice and a different swing for play. At some point, you have to practice with the swing you intend to use for play, and bring the appropriate corrections to that swing. You don’t develop an entirely different swing that is correct, but which you don’t use on the course.
I think moving one’s head would be far more likely to have an effect on one’s shoulders, not one’s hips. This just seems to me like a recipe for creating an armsy swing, rather than letting your club fire though your already opened hips.