Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "The Best Drill To Fix Your Hand Path | Online Student Transformation"

In today's lesson...

Professor Q will show you the exact drill that took his student Jaime from coming down too steep...

...and producing pulled shots and toe strikes...

...to getting his hand path into a much shallower position.

Check out today's video and see what this did for Jaime's ball striking!

This will also help you self-diagnose if you're making the same mistake with your pulled shots.

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 8:35

Video Transcription:

Hey, Quentin Patterson here. I'm really excited to share with you some awesome progress that Jamie has made. So Jamie is a part of my online swing review program, and he came to me struggling with pulls and toe strikes. So let's talk a little bit about what's going on there. So you can see I have these red lines drawn on here.

This is what we refer to as the elbow plane line. This is the line that goes from the ball up through the middle of the elbow, and it just gives us a really good reference of You know, are you shallowing out the club? Are you coming down steep? Are you too shallow with the club? So generally, if we're shallowing out the club nicely with an iron, that's going to look something like this, where the club kind of tracks down just underneath it all the way down.

If you're steep, right, that club's going to track down above, right? And if you're too shallow, it can be too far underneath, right? And that, you know, that, that is possible to be, um, too shallow. That's not the case here. But if we look here with Jamie, what we're going to see is how this club tracks down above that line all the way down until it gets to the ball.

So that's going to tend to lead to pulls and toe strikes because when you come down steep like that, the club path is going to work out to in, right? It's going to work to the left through contact and when the club path is out to in. And the club face is in the same direction of the club path. It's also to the left that's going to produce pulls.

Now this can also cause toe strikes because when the club is working out to in through contact, the sweet spot is working toward you, right? Which is going to tend to lead to toe strikes. So if we can get this club shallowing out, Then we can more than likely get rid of both the poles and get rid of the toe strikes as well.

And that's really exactly what happened. So what you're going to notice here is when Jamie's coming down, his hands go out away from him in the start of the down. So you can see how those hands track above that elbow plane line. They don't really get near the elbow plane line until pretty much right at impact.

Uh, and that's, that hand path is really the issue there that we're going to. Um, fight in order to get that clubbed, uh, to shallow out. So we worked on what are really my, one of my favorite drills for shallowing. Um, I call it the stick shallowing drill. And you may not be able to see, it's a little bit hard to see, but there's a stick right here in the ground.

This is Jamie on the right here, um, doing the drill. And the way this drill works, you can do this drill at home. If you struggle with the handpath, you can do this drill at, at, at home as well, or on the range. But basically what you do is you. Take a stick and you put it about six inches outside the ball and then about two or three feet behind the ball and you put it in the ground at the same lie angle of the club.

So, if you're using a six iron, usually a six iron is about a 60 degree lie angle. The easiest way to do it is just to have the club to where the sole of the club is flat on the ground and then put it at the same angle of the club. That's going to put you in a good position. So you can see. Jamie's got that stick in the ground at the same lie angle of the club there.

And what you're going to see, you're going to notice a major difference here in how his hands work down. Let's actually bring, let's just go to the top of the swing and see the difference there. So you're going to notice here that his, his lead arm is a little bit flatter and that's really 100% fine. He still is getting the arms pretty high up there.

Um, you know, we talk about getting high hands to get, to get speed. But if you're getting really high hands and it's at the cost of coming down really steep, then we don't really want to do that because you're not really going to gain any speed, speed from that. We won't talk about the physics, you know, of all, of all why that is.

But if you can get the hands up really high and get the club to shout out like, uh, John Daly, like, uh, Bob Watson, you know, there's lots of golfers that do it then that's that's a great thing to do But if you're if you're getting that that lead arm up really vertical, but then your hand path starts coming down really steep It's not really it's not really helping you unfortunately to get any speed.

So Now this isn't something that Jamie really had to think about Jamie Just put that stick in the ground and you know, you have to start out slow with this, you know You know, some people may be able to jump right into it, put that stick in the ground and just go at full speed. Uh, but generally you're going to have to start out slow and maybe even take some shorter swings at first, get some reps in there and then work up gradually toward full speed, full length swings doing, doing the stick drill.

But Jamie's just trying to get his arms to work underneath that stick in the downswing. And he just intuitively got his lead arm a little bit flatter to be able to do that. But you can see the arms are still up there, plenty high, they're up above his head. Um, you know, we just don't want to see it down below your head for the most part because then that's going to have the opposite effect.

You're going to tend to come down steep from that position because your lead arm is going to want to throw out and all that stuff. So, uh, but if we watch here, if we watch him as he's coming down, what we're going to see is by that lead arm parallel position, you see those hands. Let's go one step there.

Those hands are on that elbow plane line. And if we look at this one, you can see how that's a huge difference there. You can see. That those hands are above that elbow plane line and that club is a little bit steeper to that elbow plane line. The one on the left, the one on the right club is slightly shallower to the elbow plane line and hands on the elbow plane line.

That's exactly what we want to see there. Now, if your hands are a little bit above the elbow plane line, that's fine. We just want to see them working pretty closely toward that elbow plane line as they're coming in. But Jamie here is doing a textbook job of getting those hands on the elbow plane line as he's coming down.

So if we keep him going down further. Let's take them to here and now we're going to see a really awesome position here. So look at the difference there between Jamie's before swing is after swing. You're going to see that club is now under that trail forearm at this point in the swing where it was above the trail forearm.

This is what we call shallow folks. This is what's going to really help you to be consistent in your swing. If we can get that club trailing the hands. And then kicking out to the ball, you're going to have much more control of your club face. You're going to have much more control of your path. You're going to have much more control of things.

You're going to be much more consistent. So that we're going to see here is we're going to see this club now kicking out to the ball. Now the club, this is probably a little bit too shallow. Um, what, what Jamie is doing here, this is just him doing the drill. You could always tone it down. I'd like to see the club just, just under the elbow plane line.

You know, for irons for a driver, this would be kind of a good place to be because you do need to shout out the club a little bit more for the driver because the ball position is a little bit more forward. But once Jamie takes away the stick, he's probably going to move closer to where that elbow plane is supposed to be.

So Jamie reported back. He said he's hitting some awesome draws and he's no longer hitting it on the toe. So. You know, changing that hand path really helped him to get the club shallowing out and it really helped him to get, uh, to get rid of those pulls and to get rid of those toe strikes. So now we've actually moved on and we're working on some short game stuff.

So, uh, and that's one thing I wanted to mention as well. A lot of people come to the swing review program and they just want to work on full swing, which I totally understand, but really the swing review program, we can work on anything. We can work on putting, we can work on short game, we can work on bunker shots.

Whatever you want to do, um, Jamie's already making some awesome progress with his, with his short game as well. So, um, anyway, if you're looking to shallow club, you're looking to get your handpath working a little bit better. This is a really great drill, um, that you can try out, but if you're looking for some other help, maybe you're not struggling with shallowing or even if you're looking for help with shallowing.

And you can't quite find the fix. Maybe this isn't the drill for you. I'd love to have the opportunity to work with you. We can work on short game, putting whatever you want to work on. Um, so if you're watching this video on the day that we're releasing it, I'm actually opening up spots for my online lessons today.

So if you would like to sign up, all you have to do is click the link below the video. Now the spots may sell out by the time you get to watch this video. No worries. All you have to do is join the waiting list. And what that will do is that will put you on a list. So that way in the future, whenever I open up spots, we'll send you an email before anybody else, um, gets, gets a chance to sign up.

And then you can click that email the day before anybody else signs up and then you can sign up right away. So. Don't be afraid to join that waiting list. Um, if you, if you happen to not catch a spot, but I love the opportunity. I have the opportunity to work with you. Uh, hope you're playing well and I'll talk to you soon.