Why You Need This:

How would you like to be athletic in your golf swing, just like an NFL quarterback?

Surprisingly an athletic golf swing starts with your setup. Then it is a simple shift to the right and shift back to the left. It won’t be much, but you will start hitting shots with more power and effortless speed.

Learn how your nose will make this easy to learn.

What's Covered: How to align your nose throughout the swing for more power and an athletic swing.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 5:51

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, I’m Clay Ballard. I’ve got a great question for you today in regards to your golf swing.

How would you like to be athletic, just like a top college quarterback?

You’re going to be really athletic, strong as you’re throwing the ball, you’ll get a good weight shift to the right and then back to the left.

Well it’s actually very similar to what we have in a golf swing. As we’re throwing a football, we’re first going to load up on our right side, then we’re going to shift to the left and let that ball launch.

A very similar thing happens in the golf swing, and that’s what I’m going to go over in this drill. I’m going to talk about how one key piece can help you tie in your weight shift to the right, back to the left, and a good, full finish, that way you can make very consistent contact with the ball.

I’m going to give you a great drill to do this, then I’m going to go over a couple common mistakes at the end of the video that you could be doing that will also be helpful.

So let’s go ahead and start out by setting up to our golf ball here.

And as I set up, my golf ball’s going to be basically off the logo of my shirt, or my left ear as I’m addressing the ball.

That’s going to be slightly in front of the center of my stance, the reason for this is because we’re going to be coming down and through and fully releasing on kind of the inside of the left foot as we’re hitting the golf ball.

But I’m going to put a line here, or put an alignment stick right in the center of my stance.

That’s right between the center of my ankles, and that’s going to help me to realize where my weight is going throughout the swing.

As I address the golf ball, I want to have a little bit of spine tilt like we talk about in our stable, fluid spine series.

As I set up to this ball, you’ll notice that my nose, if I was to draw a vertical line down from it, it would be just outside to the right side of this alignment stick from my perspective if I’m looking down.

If I’m going to get a good weight transfer to the right, I’m going to have to shift a little bit more to the right as I go to the top of the swing.

So if my nose is starting out just to the right of the stick, it’s going to shift two maybe three inches at the most as I’m going to the top of the swing.

So as I go to the top, there now I’m 2 or 3 inches behind the ball, or behind the center stick here, and that’s to ensure that I’ve got a little bit of weight transfer to my right.

I don’t want to go 7, or 8, 10 inches, that’s overdoing it, that’s going to start sliding in the swing. But if I do this correctly, I should be able to feel a little weight on the inside of my right food, and now I’m really loaded up and ready to transfer back over to the left.

It’s much easier to transfer to the left if we get a small transfer to the right first, that’s going to make it rhythmic, and fluid, and able to repeat it over and over again.

So let’s go ahead and go from the top down now, as I go to the right, now I’m about two, three inches to the right.

As I go to the top of the swing, as I start to transfer back down to contact, my nose is starting to move back to the left as my weight shifts left, my hips and lower body starts to unwind.

And now my nose should be just to the barely to the right of the stick at contact because it’s starting to move back to the left now.

Then as I go to a good full finish, it’s going to finish all the way up in front of my left foot here.

So those are the four pieces that you can measure, and I think that’s a lot easier than trying to break down a thousand things with your swing, it’s a lot easier just to focus in on this one piece. So I’m going to set up here at contact, do 100 repetitions of this.

At address, just barely outside that centered stick with my nose. As I go to the top, a little more shift to the right.

Now I’m going to be going back to the left at contact, my nose is going to be just to the outside of the stick, and then coming through to a good full finish I want to make sure I go all the way to the left, and now I’m going to be outside of my left ankle there.

Do about 100 repetitions in our living room, on the driving range, wherever you want to, practicing these moves to get that in slow motion.

Then we’re going to start to make that a fluid motion, we can go ahead and get rid of the ball, and I’m going to practice this same thing, 100 repetitions making a fluid swing.

A little outside the stick, a little more, now everything’s going to the left. Let me go ahead and do that again.

See how it’s just a small weight shift to the right, and then a nice weight shift to the left as I’m coming through.

Once we’ve done that, now we can take it to the driving range, and we’re going to go ahead as we’re doing this, we’re going to do the slow motion pausing repetitions, pausing in each piece, checking my nose and alignment with the center of my stance.

I’m going to do that, and then I’m going to go ahead and make a nice full swing.

There we go, hit that one pretty solid, nice and balanced as I was coming through there, and you can see my divot is definitely in front of the ball, well in front of the ball when I do that.

Now let me go over real quickly two things that are very common that people tend to get wrong.

The reverse pivot for one of them. In this example we went right and then left, in a reverse pivot what’s happening is, a lot of times I’ll see people set up too far to the left.

As they go to the top, now their nose is on the left side of the stick.

Then as they swing down they end up falling back away as they’re coming through the ball it’s on the right side of the stick, so things are backwards.

You can see how this would be a reverse pivot, and that gets you hitting behind the ball oftentimes, because now you’re falling back away, and then also skulling the ball, or hitting it thin, because I’m pulling back away and I miss the ground, hit the top of the ball.

That’s very, very common, and that has to do with what I’m doing with my weight, it has to do with what I’m doing with my nose.

This drill will really help you to fix your reverse pivot. Also if you’re coming over the top, and you’re coming down and chopping down over the top, now look at contact my nose is in front of the line, that’s the big slice swing over the top swing.

So this very simple drill, focusing in on one key piece is going to fix seven, eight, nine things in your swing without having to break them down piece by piece.

So work on these drills, it will really help you to be consistent.

Good luck to you guys, I’ll see you all soon.