The holy grail of golf swing mechanics. It’s the one thing that all of the pros do that every player envies….

Lag!!

Most pros have no idea how to increase your golf swing lag. They will tell you things like “set the wrists early” or “hold lag in the downswing.”

The only problem is that if you follow this advice you will lose clubhead speed faster than John Daly can grab a ball for his fourth mulligan at Whistling Straights (hold on to your 4 iron).

So if you are ready to build massive amounts of golf swing lag, lets get started!

What's Covered: How and when we get lag in the golf swing. An overview of lag.

Recommended Training Aids: N/A

Publish Date: August 20, 2015

Last Edited Date: November 28, 2015

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Transcription:

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Have you ever been hitting balls next to a really, really good player. They’re on the driving range beside you, you’re wailing away at it, trying to really hit the ball as hard as you can, but the ball’s just not getting as much distance as you like.

Then you look over at them, they look like they’re swinging with absolutely no effort whatsoever.

The ball is exploding off the face, they’re hitting it much farther than you, much more solid than you and it looks like they’re just not trying at all. Well where is this coming from, and how can we all do this?

I think that’s the biggest question on everybody’s mind is how can we hit the ball far without putting out a lot of effort, making it look easy?

There’s really two things that are happening with this that are covered with our Five Fundamentals of the Scratch Golf System.

The first is making a good, powerful turn that we have to do, we have to load up the body. Then the second one is creating a lot of lag.

We have to have a lag in the golf swing and then release that lag to create that speed, and we’re creating a lot of leverage here.

So that’s what I want to talk to you about in this video, is how do we create this leverage and why are we even trying to create leverage?

So let me go over throughout the entire swing and how this happens, how we create lag, and then in the videos after this I’m going to walk you through exactly how you can create this in your own swing.

We really need to be clear of what lag is, and what we should be trying to do with lag before we even get started. So let me start from the beginning of the swing.

Now one of the biggest misconceptions out there is that when we want to create lag, we want to get this angle as quickly as possible with the wrists, we really want to set the wrists early, and that’s what we want to do.

We actually want to get our maximum amount of lag as we’re starting in the downswing. So as we’re about halfway into the downswing, this is when we’re going to have the sharpest angle between the club and our forearms.

We can do either forearm, but this is when we’re going to have the sharpest amount of lag. Everything that’s happening before this we should be building lag.

So as I go into my address position, as I start with my takeaway, I’m really going to have very little wrist set. You’re going to see this in a lot of the top players, very, very little wrist set.

As I’m completing back and as I’m starting down I’m actually still increasing the angle, so it’s really not getting maxed out until I’m halfway into the downswing.

Now from here, this is where you get the power. All the things that you’ve done before building up that lag isn’t going to get you any power until you release it, and that’s what we’re going to go over in this set of videos and the release set of videos.

But as we get this maximum angle, now we’ve created this sharp angle, this maximum amount of leverage, now we’re going to release that and get that, turn that into speed.

That’s what allows you to create that distance without looking like you’re doing hardly any work at all.

So in the next few videos, I want you to join me. I’m going to walk you through a set of drills that’s going to teach you how to really max out that lag, then we’re going to show you how to release it to get tons of power.

You’re going to be the smoothest player in your foursome, and you’re going to start out-driving your friends. So let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so no video would be complete without the legend of lag himself Sergio Garcia.

The first thing you’re going to notice here is in his backswing he’s not creating lag, he’s not creating a sharp angle in his wrists as he goes to the top of the swing, which as you’ll see as he completes his backswing.

He’s waiting until the downswing, this is when he’s going to start to create a lot of lag, and he’s building that angle.

Now from here, he’s just thinking release the club. Release it as quickly as possible to get the speed, and that’s a perfect position there.

So if you guys have been struggling with getting lag, and you’ve been trying to build it in your backswing, it is so tough to get lag if you do it that way.

We’re going to teach you how to build lag in your downswing which is completely different. I’m going to over that in the next series of videos.

So I’m excited to get started with you, and I’ll see you in the next lag video.