Why You Need This:

Are you tired of scooping? Do you lose tons of yards when your ball floats upward? If so, I’ve got a great video for you.

This drill is an easy one, and straight to the point. I will give you one quick tip to help you get a feel for how you get tons of forward shaft lean, and compress the heck out of the golf ball.

The secret lies in a move called “wrist extension” with the right hand. I like to call it “palm out.”

Just be sure not to try to hold it all the way through the finish. We have to let these angles go to get our max speed.

Don’t worry though, I cover that too.

Lets get started!

What's Covered: How to use the right hand to get forward shaft lean.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 3:22

Video Transcription:

Welcome back guys, I hope you all are having a wonderful day, and today we’re going to talk a little bit about how to get some more forward shaft lean at contact, and how to pair that up with the release.

It’s a drill that I call the “Pet the Grass” drill. If you’re struggling, flipping, scooping the ball as you’re coming through contact.

Maybe the ball rolls up the face and goes a little bit high in the air, maybe you tend to hit it thin in the face, and it has a lot of back spin on it, and it doesn’t really penetrate in the wind, you don’t have that good, clean compression, this is really going to help with that.

So let’s first start out without the club, and let’s simulate some forward shaft lean here. I’m going to go ahead and set up to the ball, as I’m at address, I’m a good full turn back, and as I come down, I want to have my hand pointing down toward the ground.

I want to imagine that my fingertips, the insides of my finger are going to be petting the ground, I’m going to be just brushing my fingertips across the grass.

As I come through my wrist is going to be angled back like this, called wrist extension or palm back.

As I’m doing that that’s actually in the point of releasing, so as I come into my straight line release point which would be 45 in front.

Now my wrist is completely neutral and my hand is rotated to about 45° closed, so as I do that in slow motion, good full turn back, as I’m coming down I’m petting the grass and I’m making sure to let this wrist release as I pause in the finish.

Go ahead and do that about 100 times in your living room, really nice and slow. Coming down, brush the grass, let the wrist release.

I think and then go ahead and speed that up, and what that’s allowing me to do is get forward shat lean is I’m coming through and still release that forward shat lean, so I’m still getting speed, the club releasing through contact instead of holding on through contact.

If I take the club and do the same thing, put a little inside of my ball here, as I’m coming into the down swing there’s my palm down, and as I come in the release this is nice and neutral.

So I can feel that club releasing as I’m coming through contact here, that’s what’s going to get me the speed.

I’m going to go ahead and do 20-30 repetitions on that, then I’m going to put both hands on, and I’m gradually going to build this up until I can feel forward shaft lean, but still releasing at my straight line release point.

Have a couple more practice swings doing that, so now just keep on building it up.

You don’t have to do a specific number, but you should be about 200 practice swings in.

First with the hand, then with the club, once you get that nice clean feel, we’re going to really do this with the ball and you should have some nice, low, super compressed ball flight as you go out to the range, and we can start really slow as we’re doing that.

So as I go ahead and set up to this ball, the first shot I hit is only going to be about 40 or 50 yards, and that is really low, but you can see here, my wrist has released at this point.

So it went from brushing the grass with the palm of my hand, to releasing just after that, that way the club head is releasing as I’m coming through there.

That was a low, penetrating shot. Now I’m just going to speed that up to get the good, full swing, and I should hit a nice, low, almost bullet trajectory.

Hi guys, thanks for watching, work on brushing that grass with the hand, gradually start to speed that up faster and faster until you get those full swings, and you’ll really start to compress the golf ball.

Good luck, and I’ll see you all soon.