Why You Need This: Today's video is all about the "Proper Golf Swing Release."

What does it mean to release the golf club, and when is the right time to do it?

What if I told you that the common belief behind this idea is typically incorrect?

I've studied every major winner since 2000 along with all-time greats such as Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead, and they all have something in common when it comes to releasing the club.

In today's video, I'm going to answer the questions above and make sure you're not falling for the common misconception behind this idea.

I'm also going to show you the right path to releasing the club properly and give you a drill to get you started down the road to consistent golf.

You'll discover what happens when you don't release the club at the right time and you'll see an example of how much distance you could be leaving on the table!

Let's get started.....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 13:50

Video Transcription:

All right, the release. We all want to have that club releasing in front of the ball. Nobody wants to have that cast from the back and really get inconsistent through contact. So how do we do that?

Well first let’s talk about what the point is with the release. I think this is a big misconception a lot of players have is that we should be releasing at the golf ball.

So I want my club to release right at the golf ball, that’s going to get the maximum amount of speed. In reality, we want our full release or what I call the Straight-Line Release in the Top Speed Golf System to be in front of the golf ball.

What we did to put this to the test, way back when we were originally coming up with the parameters of the Top Speed Golf System, I took all the major winners from the year 2000 on.

That’s about 40 to 45 players. I also added in some of the greats like Jack Nicklaus and Sam Sneed from the past.

I found some really good -- turns out there’s a lot of video footage on major winners -- found some really good face-on video footage with all those players hitting their driver.

What I measured is what point in the swing did their club split their forearms. So if I have a bunch of lag, you’ll see that this club is kind of pointing in front of my forearms.

At what point in the swing did that club perfectly kind of split my forearms here to where it’s in the middle of them?

This would be kind of leading, this would be before the release this way. This would be after the release, and the club’s gone past my forearms. What point does it perfectly split the middle of those?

The reason for this is, the reasoning behind this is your club has an angle and as you’re getting rid of that angle coming through contact, when that angle is fully gone and kind of lined up with the arms, that’s when you’ve fully released the golf club.

So I took all these major champions, I drew exactly when this was happening, and I measured it with an angle finder, and what I found is that the average was 39.5° in front.

If you imagine this is a straight up and down, perpendicular line to the ground, 45° in front would be that club splitting that angle.

So a perfect 45°, that’s where we get the Straight-Line Release, is roughly 45° in front. The pros were doing 39.5° if you want to get precise with it. But it’s really not that precise number that matters, it’s the range that they were in.

What did from there is I took all these players again, and I chopped off a few of the outliers, you’re going to have a few people that do things slightly different.

One thing to note is I didn’t have anybody that released behind the golf ball, not a single player. I didn’t have anybody that released way up here somewhere, not a single player did that.

When I chopped off the five highest outliers on the bottom, the five highest outliers on the top, I found the rest of the guys release between 28° in front, somewhere around in here, 28° in front was when that club first started to split the forearms, and 50° in front out there.

That’s not much difference. Basically, every single player is releasing this direction that’s a good golfer. When I tested that with higher handicap golfers, guys that were beginning players, intermediate players, even some lower handicap golfers that weren’t the best ball strikers, I found release points all over the place.

I’ve seen release points back here behind the golf ball, I’ve seen release points in front. One interesting thing is I very rarely, ever see anyone that’s a higher handicap golfer with a release point that was too far this way. Just really didn’t happen.

Almost all the high handicap golfers, a few of them timed it up pretty well, most of them were well too far back this way.

So what does this mean? It means most players are just simply releasing way too far behind the golf ball, trying to get that idea, again, of releasing at the golf ball to get all my swing speed here.

That causes a cast from the top, that causes a loss of consistency at the bottom, so let’s get in to some of the biggest keys on how we can train this away form our swing, how we can release out in front just like the best players. That’s exactly what I’m going to go over in this video.

Now for the good stuff, let’s get to how we actually do this. Number one we need a system to work through.

If you just come out here and do one of these one particular drill that is going to help you, that’s what we’re going to go over today. I’m going to get you started to getting that release in front just like the best players in the world, but we need a system.

That’s what we have in the Top Speed Golf System. We have level 1, you work through a variety of drills and you build on that in level 2, and then build on that in level 3, that way you can make this automatic where you don’t even have to think about it.

That system approach works better than anything else out there that I’ve tried. One single drill will get you started on the right way, will get you hitting the ball better, will get the release farther out in front.

But if you want to get the whole way where you don’t even have to think about it, it’s about building one drill on top of each other, which is exactly why we designed it that way in the Straight-Line Release section of the Top Speed Golf System.

Number two, how do we get rid of this? Let’s get right into some drills today that are going to get you started, and get you well on the right track.

The idea of releasing out the golf ball we’ve already talked about. When I do this, when I think OK, I’m going to release at the golf ball, let me go ahead and make a swing, and let’s take a look at my FlightScope numbers and see what this looks like.

My idea here, is I’m going to have this club straight up and down, splitting my forearms, right as I hit this golf ball and let’s see what happens here.

There we go, so immediately for me, that ball started to spin up in the air, it went a little bit higher, and I think sometimes players that have maybe a little bit lower swing speed, they want to get that ball higher, so they start releasing improperly to get that ball to launch a little bit higher and it kills your distance and club head speed.

So let’s see what my numbers were here on the FlightScope. OK, now on that swing, I had a club head speed of 109.9 miles an hour, so a little bit slower than what I would normally do.

Now, I will tell you this. If you release a little bit early, you’re going to lose a few miles per hour, but what really goes down the tank is all your impact conditions and your impact parameters.

My carry distance went 246 on that one, which is much lower than what I normally get, so I lost 20 or 30 yards, at least, of carry distance on that swing.

My spin, where now I’m adding loft to that club, my spin skyrocketed up, I went 3,500 RPMs of spin, that’s way too high from what I would like to have to get the most distance.

You want that ball to kind of knuckle through the wind and keep the spin low on that shot. I didn’t get any rollout, it only rolled two yards because it’s kind of doing this balloon and coming down because of that flip.

Then my dynamic loft, so how much was on this club when it made contact with the ball was too high. I was around 18° of dynamic loft. So I really got kind of a flippy swing that got up and down, I lost some distance there.

So let’s change that idea or our focus, so the first drill here that I would work on is think about releasing everything out to the target in front.

As I do this, I want to make sure that I open my body. One of the things I notice with all players that tend to release way too early, I talked about studying a lot of amateur film too, is when players open up their body it’s much easier to get the idea of this club releasing out in front and to make that happen much more consistently.

Players that tended to close their body down started to release at the golf ball much too far back.

So here, what I want you to do, do about 20 reps, 20 swings, you can do this in your living room to start out. I want you to have your focus of attention away from this golf ball and toward the target.

I’m thinking about releasing everything. I have this good angle and I’m going to release all that going more toward the target. If I do this properly, I’m going to go to where my Straight-Line Release is, about 45° in front.

So here let’s make a swing, where I’d say much more like my normal swing where I’m going to have my mind thinking about releasing toward the target out in the distance instead of the golf ball. Let’s see what the numbers do here.

There we go. Hit one down the right side of the fairway, definitely felt faster. Probably not my best swing in the world, but let’s see what the numbers are here.

So my swing speed on the last one was 109, I got up to 113. Had a little bit of a fade on it, not my best shot, but I still picked up about 20 yards. That one carried 264, rolled out to 268.

My spin, again where I didn’t hit it as well, I kind of had the face open, I hit it a little thin. It was 3,100 so still higher than I wanted, but it was about 400 RPMs less, or 400 RPMs better than the last one.

My dynamic loft went from 18° to 14°. So even on my mis-hit, I was still picking up 20 yards with my release in front, versus my idea of releasing at the golf ball.

Now the second piece, let’s add to this. So it’s good to have the right kind of focus of attention, be thinking about where I’m releasing as being more out in front. But what’s another misconception I see all the time, and it’s what we do with our wrists.

When most players have this idea that they’re going to release farther out in front, what they think is I’m going to hold this angle of lag and I’m going to drag this through there. I’m going to drag that club through.

Well notice what that does to my golf club. Look at my wrist kind of holding out toward the target. Look how my face is wide open now.

When players try to do this and they say OK, I’m going to release farther out in front, I’m just going to pull that club down the target as far as I can, it ends up looking something like this.

Kind of a weak slice to the right. So yeah, maybe my release was a little farther out in front, but where I was dragging that club through, the face is wide open, let’s take a look at the numbers here.

I held off the face by holding off the release of the club, my club head speed actually went down, only 107 miles an hour on that one.

My carry distance was 234. My dynamic loft and my spin was less because I had this club forward, but I wasn’t getting any more distance here.

If I look at the face angle, let’s go ahead and turn my…My face was open as I’m coming through there. So I was actually swinging, holding off to the right, my face was even more open, and if you look at that golf ball, it was a weak slice to the right.

So that’s usually what I bet you had probably found in the past. You try to release farther out in front, you hold this club off, hold all this lag, and all of a sudden you get a terrible shot.

But here’s what we need to be thinking about. I want to go ahead and release this wrist. I want this wrist to go ahead and be turning on over, I don’t want to hold that off.

But instead of my wrist releasing at the golf ball, I’m now thinking about everything releasing here in front. So if you look at all the top pro players, as they’re coming through the shot, you’ll notice that as they swing on through, that left wrist is actually cupped quite a bit.

See how that’s broken down there and cupped. I’m not doing this and holding that off this way. I want to go ahead and release that golf ball.

So two motions are happening with this. Number one, I’m going to think about this would be the flexion of my left wrist, and extension of my left wrist.

So I’m getting this kind of motion where I’m letting the golf club release, I’m letting my wrist release, but in my mind, I’m visualizing that wrist release out here somewhere.

If I hold off on this, not going to be any good. If I let that wrist go ahead and whip on through, it’s going to be much better.

I can let that face square on up and turn on over, then my face is still wanting to release, it’s just releasing out in front.

So the idea of holding off in the golf swing, is really just not going to work. Your swing speed’s going to go down, the ball’s going to slice to the right, it’s not going to be any good.

We want to go ahead and release this wrist as fast as you can, but again, the idea needs to be Straight-Line Release on out in front. Really let that club whip on through there, get as much swing speed as you can.

Now finally, let’s go ahead and do one the right way, in my mind I’m thinking release as hard as I can. Get this club to go. No hold off at all, I’m actually releasing that as fast as I can in front. Let’s go ahead and see what we do when we pair this together.

There we go, right down the center-right center of the fairway. Hit that one really nice, definitely farther than the last ones. Probably carried it a good 20 yards, 30 yards past some of the other ones.

Club head speed is 114, so I got a nice boost there. Carry distance went up to 280 from 240 for 40 yards longer, 286 total. 2,500 RPMs of spin which is right where I want to be, and my launch angle, or my dynamic loft, the loft of my face was 14°.

So all better numbers when we’re thinking about releasing in front.

To recap, what are the two things? Number one, my focus of attention has to be toward the target. Just like the pros, everybody’s releasing somewhere in this zone, and we tested it with the best golfers in the world on video.

Number two, I can’t be holding this club off. This wrist has to go ahead and release, I just have to release it out in front.

You follow those simple rules, you’re going to be well on your way to building that release in front, just like the best golfers in the world.

All right, so if you’re a member of the website, we don’t want to stop here. Remember earlier in this video I talked about the way to really get that release in front is to work through these drills, to work through and compound these drills.

This is awesome to be working on this rill here today, to get familiar with this, to start in the right track, but if we really want to make that automatic, what we need to do is go to the Straight-Line Release section of the Top Speed Golf System.

You’re going to click on Instruction at the top of the website. Go down to the Top Speed Golf System, then click on the Straight-Line Release and start from level 1, start working through those videos.

Once you get through level 1, you’re going to start to feel a little more comfortable with it. You hit through level 2, level 3, things are going to get tons easier.

It’s all going to become automatic to where you don’t even have think about that release in front, and you’re hitting those numbers just like we saw with the top pros over the last 20 years or so.

Best of luck, go to that Straight-Line Release section, work through those videos, you’re going to have an awesome year. I’ll see you soon.