Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "How the Right Arm and Wrist Move In the Golf Swing | Hand Shake Drill"

I know how difficult dealing with casting and flipping the club through contact can be…

...almost everyone battles with it at some point.

Not only that, but they’re killing your consistency…

...and robbing you of lag.

There are just a few moves you need to add to your swing…

...that’ll allow you to build tons of lag…

...and release it at juuust the right time.

Today, I’ll show you those 3 moves…

...including how a “handshake” can help you eliminate that slice…

...and get you whipping that club through impact!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:29

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: There’s a few key moves that the right arm and the right wrist make to allow you to have a lot of lag in the downswing, to allow you to release that club in front, to stop casting and flipping through contact.

It’s actually really easy to do once you understand the right sequence and how to train this in your golf swing.

Let’s start right from the beginning. The very first thing we’re going to have happen here is the right hand wants to be a little bit under the grip.

Meaning, that I don’t want to have my right hand on top of the grip like this, that gets my right shoulder up, that gets me lining up more to the left, and that’s going to get me promoting chopping from the outside.

So if you take your right palm and you kind of extend it out like this, I want to go ahead and turn that where you can see how that closes my shoulders so it’s a little bit more underneath the grip.

Then I’m going to go ahead and take my grip there. That’s sets me more under, that promotes more of an inside-out swing path that promotes more of that ball drawing from right to left.

You don’t have to do a ton to get a lot of bang for your buck. You can get that ball to start turning over once you get that a little more underneath there.

Now you’ll notice when I do that, that actually gets my right elbow pit out. A lot of times I’ll see players, again, set up palm more on top, right elbow pit in, the elbow’s kind of pointing out, and again that’s that over the top kind of chopping down motion.

Once I get this elbow pit kind of facing up, that’s going to help with that draw. From there, I don’t want to bend my arms early. A lot of times I’ll see players that pick up the club early.

This right arm sets, there’s a lot bend from the elbow here, and what that does is that gets you wanting to feel like you’re going to throw from the top immediately.

What I want you to feel like is this right arm doesn’t bend at all in the takeaway, and now the elbow pit is kind of facing up toward the sky as you’re taking that club back.

Not only does that help you to get wider, it’s going to help you to get a bigger shoulder turn, more speed, more power, more effortless swing. It also helps you with your lag in the downswing.

So now as I keep this right arm wide and I keep my right wrist not really setting, not flexing or hinging or extending, or doing anything, it’s pretty neutral, it’s pretty passive here. That’s going to allow me in the downswing to then set those wrists.

That’s the first big key check point. Don’t have a lot of right arm action in the backswing, keep that arm straight, that elbow pit up, wrist very relaxed. Then I don’t want to fully set the wrist until halfway into my downswing.

Let me explain what I mean by this. There’s two motions that are happening with the right wrist in the golf swing.

Number one, I’m having my right wrist hinge upward like this, that’s called radial deviation. Number two, I’m having my right wrist bend back like this which is called wrist extension, and this would be wrist flexion.

Now we’re talking about the backswing and the first half of the downswing here, those are the two key moves. Bending up and bending back like this.

A lot of times players will want to get a lot of lag so they bend that wrist up and back, which would be a lot of lag, but they do it in the backswing. They get it in here.

Now most people don’t know this, but as soon as your muscles are stretched, they immediately want to fire.

It’s called a stretch reflex, and what that means is, when your muscles – there’s little sensors inside your muscles – once they feel like they’re fully stretched, they’re dying to just fire, and get going, and have a maximum amount of force there.

You probably heard me say this before, but when you bend down to grab a rebound, you’re stretching your muscles out in your legs.

As soon as you bend down, you’re going to want to jump straight up if you’re going to grab a rebound in basketball.

If you were to bend down, stretch, and then sit here for forever, it’s not really going to work. You’re not going to be able to jump very high.

Same thing’s happening with those wrist muscles and getting the lag and releasing lag in the golf swing. If those get stretched early, they want to fire early. They want to cast.

So the key is, I want to get that radial, or that up and down motion, and that wrist extension or this hinging back action, happening late in the downswing.

I want to feel like I get very little happening here with the right hand, and I’m going to save that. I don’t really want to feel like I set the wrist a lot at the top.

I’m going to wait until my downswing to get that wrist and that wrist up action, and I’m actually getting the maximum amount of bend in my right wrist about halfway into the downswing.

A great example, a great visual of someone who does this to the extreme would be a John Rahm. I want to get a big turn, very little set, and then in the downswing, then I’m going to set my wrist.

If you feel like you’re John Rahm, that club is still going to set plenty in the backswing. I rarely see anybody that doesn’t set it enough going back, so you really can’t over do that too much.

So you’re in your downswing, the reason you’re wanting to do this is now all this is loaded up. As I start to open my body, now my wrist is extended back, it has that radial deviation, that bent-back angle.

Now all the muscles on the inside of my forearm are fully flexed, or they’re fully stretched. They’re ready to fire.

Then from here, I’m going to throw this club as hard as I can. I want to feel like if I had this club in my hand, I’m not going to throw it here, or I won’t throw it hard here, but I want to feel like I’m throwing it and releasing it out in front.

Now let me go grab my club, and we’ll talk about how this is going to happen here. Most of the time when I see players doing this, they’re throwing at the golf ball. That ends up with me standing up and kind of flipping through contact.

I want you to stretch these muscles out late, and then throw them in front and that gets the club to whip through contact and really get a lot of speed coming through impact.

The last piece of this, is the handshake. When I throw my hand, imagine someone is right here standing in front of me shaking my hand here. Kind of almost bent down a little bit.

When I throw my hand, I’m going to act like I’m shaking that person’s hand down here. What I don’t want to do, and what most players do, is have that hand open like this, facing up toward the sky.

That would be the slice move, look how open that face is there. I want to feel like when I throw this club to this person down here shaking my hand, I went ahead and released that right hand. Look how the toe of my club is now up and down.

If you do that, that’s going to allow you to set the wrist late, build up a ton of lag and a ton of speed, and then release that speed to shake that person’s hand and man, you’re going to get a lot of club head speed, a lot of distance without even really feeling like you have to swing that hard.

I’ll tell you what, on this one I’m actually going to swing super slow, nice and smooth, but I’m really going to hammer on it.

I’m really going to let that club release through contact, and you’re going to see how good my club head speed is without even really feeling like I’m making a hard swing.

All right, hit that one really solid, couldn’t be more happy with that. Nice swing there. Really, what this is called, there’s a name for this.

It’s so important that it’s one of my five real fundamentals of the Top Speed Golf System, and I call this the Straight Line Release.

What we’re talking about with this right arm, and what kind of ties it all in together, is when do I release that right arm?

We talked about how we don’t want to set the wrist or the right arm until the downswing. But when do I let that go? I actually want to let my entire body, not just my arms go, 45° in front.

That’s what allows me to sync up my swing. So when I start my downswing, my hips are leading the way. You’ll notice when I start down, my body starts opening up and this club and this right arm is still lagging behind, big wrist angles here.

Then I’m going to release, I’m going to shake hands. I’m going to throw my hand into this player down here that I’m shaking hands with, letting the hand turn over. Letting the arm go out in front.

At this point, you’ll notice my hips, my shoulders, my arms, my hands, my club, everything is releasing to that 45° out in front.

If I can do that, it kind of marries my entire swing up. It blends every piece of the swing together into a single point where you release the club. That’s what I call the Straight Line Release, because everything is releasing there into a straight line.

Now if you can just nail that one thing, I will guarantee you that you will hit the ball more solid, you’ll get more club head speed with less effort, and you’ll feel like your swing is really simplified.

What I want you to do now, if you’re a member of Top Speed Golf, go ahead and go to the Instruction tab. Click on the Top Speed Golf System, go to the Straight Line Release, and I challenge you to work through just one video in level one.

As you start to get familiar with this and start to build that in your swing, it’s going to become automatic.

This video is really going to help you to learn the pieces of the right arm, get a better understanding of that, improve your swing right away.

But if you want to make it automatic, you’ve got to go to the Straight Line Release, and you’ve got to work through those drills.

If you do that, like I said, it gets a whole heck of a lot easier. Golf gets fun, it’s not too much of a challenge anymore, because it feels like your entire swing is kind of synched up.

As you start to work through level one, level two, level three, you’re going to have a ton of fun on the golf course.

So head over there now, I can’t wait to see you in the Straight Line Release and tell you some of the secrets on how to just tie that all in together, get your release down once and for all, and I’ll see you in the Straight Line Release now.

Let’s go and get started.