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February 20, 2018March 23, 2024

Speed Before Impact

Speed and contact. That is all the ball cares about. The golf swing can be broken down into power accumulation, speed, and contact/delivery.

Power accumulation

is what the backswing is for. The golfer must make space for speed by coiling around the back leg.

Speed

The primary swing speed factory of the body is the arms and hands. The lower body, torso, and shoulders add speed but are primarily used for delivering that speed to the ball. A golfer creates the bulk of her swing speed by extending the arms and snapping the wrist.

This may be done passively or actively. I prefer to actively extend the arms as it creates more speed than the passive method. If you don’t believe me, just go outside and start throwing a ball sidearm again. Try the passive method — let the rotation extend the arms — and then try actively extending the arm and see which one goes farther.

Contact

Almost every swing fault can be traced to trying to use the arms to create contact instead of speed.

The purpose of the lower body, torso, and shoulders is to contact the ball, not primarily speed. While speed is created by all these muscles, the biggest mistake that golfers make is trying to get all the speed with the big muscles. Moving the body into a solid contact position is what you are after with the body.

Take a look at the picture of Jeff Flagg — World Long Drive champion — above. Pay particular attention to frames 2, 3, and 4. You may not be flexible enough to get anywhere near his position in frame one, but every golfer should be able to get the rest of these swing positions. Notice in frame 4 how when his lag is gone his right hand is in line with his right pectoral muscle.

Jeff has maxed out his club speed over his right side several inches from the static hand position of his setup. To compensate for the delivery of speed behind the starting position of the hands, the lower body, torso, and shoulders have moved the hands forward and down to crush the ball. Every good swing has this in common.

To get the feel of this speed and contact take a club and flip in so you are holding the clubhead side in your throwing hand. Start making some sidearm throws focusing on the arm speed and moving your body as little as possible. Then once you have this feel start adding body rotation. To make sure you are maxing out your impact put a club or alignment stick down in the middle of your stance. Focus on maxing your extension out past this line. Once you are consistently whipping the club past this impact line, start making a descending throw with your arms keeping your body motion the same. Now add your other hand and get both arms synced up.

January 30, 2018February 2, 2018

Uncork Hand Speed for Massive Distance

Hand speed is king in the golf swing. Just ask Tiger Woods. Mr. Woods has come back from a fusion of his lower back with a driver swing speed in the 120’s. The fusion has reduced his mobility or stretch he can obtain yet he is blasting it 300+ yards.

To get how to max your hand speed spend a few minutes watching a fastpitch softball motion. The legs hips core and shoulders are all moving in a linked motion to make the arms and hands rocket past the body.

Watch as the left hip and glute pulls the right hip around as the right leg pushes forward. The rotation moves up through the core towards the shoulders. As the right arm rips down toward the right hip all the big muscles start to slow down and the all the energy is transferred to the arm and wrist snap. This is the whip effect. The real speed is caused by the brakes, not the accelerator.

The second thing that most golfers get wrong is that the target is not the ball. The target you are trying to max your speed to is a line about 45 degrees forward of the center line of your body. To find this line, take your stance and feel stacked over your feet and hips. With the butt end of the club aligned with your sternum rotate your shoulders until your club and sternum are pointing 45 degrees forward of the midline of your stance. Let your body move freely to make the club point correctly. This is the target of your speed.

Now with your target in mind, we can start maxing out our speed. Start slowly at first and try to make the club fully extend to this target. Do not use a ball at first and do not move at more than 60 percent of your max speed. Experiment with where you need to let go of the club to max out at the target line. The point of letting go is where everything on your right side is slowing down to let the arms race past while the left side clears out of the way of the speed.

Use the image that the club head is loosely attached to the shaft and that you are trying to have it pop off as hard as possible at the target. As you build up speed make sure you let your left side clear and do not try and stop at the target line. Once you have got a good feel for the sequence add a ball into your practice. Again not going more than 60 percent of your max. Once you are comfortable with your ball striking start to add speed until you are at 80-85 percent of max.

The last piece of the puzzle is to manage how much lateral movement and left shoulder motion you need to get the ball flight you want. For now, just work on getting every bit of hand speed you can. Do not worry about flight or direction except that you should see a fairly neutral or slightly push draw flight.

September 6, 2017

The Secret to Great Putting?

A golf glove. That’s all you need to master the devilish art of holing putts.

Take your glove and put it in your right or back arm pit. Hold it there with gentle pressure from your arm. This should look familiar as many PGA Tour players use a similar technique to work on the arms staying connected to the body in the downswing. For putting we have a small range of motion that is best controlled by connection with your shoulders and your back arm.

Now gasp the putter so that right hand and putter handle are in line with your sternum. Your right hand should be bent to a 90 degree angle to the ground.So that if there was a wall in front of your hand you could you could hit it flatly. To practice this new pattern you can set up to a door or some other place that allows you a flat surface you can get a feel for square contact in the putting swing.

Once you are comfortable with the basic motion, put your left or front hand on the grip to gently support the putting motion. Your right hand is the control position Think of your hands as sharing 100 percent of the grip pressure. The right hand should have 70 – 80 percent of the hand pressure. With the rest in your left hand.

The ball position is determined by the setup of your triangle. This should be roughly the center of your stance. The zero position is where club hangs in a square position flat to the ground. We are not trying to hit on the down or up swing. We are only letting the club face find the ball at zero with momentum needed to drop the putt.

To test this, use some tees to make a gate just wide enough for your putter head to move through. Now place the ball at the edge of the back of the gate. Now setup behind this gate. Start by making small swings back and through, removing the ball if necessary to get the motion right.

The secret to putting is consistent square contact on your intended line. I didn’t mention speed because without the ability to hit your intended line, speed is irrelevant. You can have the best speed control in the world, but you will never hit anything outside of 3 feet without hitting your line.