Why You Need This:

When you boil down everything that makes a great player great, there is only one thing that truly matters….

Can you compress the golf ball time and time again?

In this video I will show you some very important alignment with the hips and shoulders so you can learn how to compress a golf ball like the pros!

What's Covered: Hip and shoulder alignments at impact.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 5:59

Video Transcription:

In today’s video we’re going to talk about some of the angles with the compression line, and how these are really, really important to not only be consistent, but to consistently hit the center of the face.

So there’s two angles in particular I’m talking about, the angle of your hips and the angle of your shoulders.

As I come into contact, the first one we’ll talk about is the hips. I want to have my hips open about 45° as I’m actually making contact with the ball.

So if you’re looking at your swing on video camera, on tape, you’re going to look and see if these hips are 45° open.

If they’re not, that’s going to make it very, very difficult to get forward shaft lean, and to consistently compress and hit the center of the face.

Let me explain why this is. I want you to do a simple drill for me, so go ahead and stand up out of your chair.

I want you to keep your hips dead square, and I want you to try to get some forward shaft lean just like you would at contact.

Now as you start to continue through the ball, keep your hips dead square, don’t let them move at all, and try to keep that going down and through the ball.

Very, very difficult to do, almost impossible to do. Now what I want you to do is instead of having your hips square, I want you to let your hips rotate about 45°.

Now you’ll notice as my hips rotate I can come down and through and release the club much, much easier.

So if my hips are square, really tough time getting forward shaft lean. As my hips open, now I can get more and more forward shaft lean, it’s easier to get in the correct angles of the compression line, and it’s easier to hit down and through that ball, really getting that very, very solid strike.

So that’s some things you’re going to be working on. I’ll give you a couple of drills at the end of this video that are going to help you with that if you’re not already doing so.

The second thing we want to make sure is that our shoulders are square.

So when we release the club properly, if I keep my shoulders square to the imaginary ball here, and I just let my arms swing back and through, I’m really not moving my body at all here, my club will naturally square up at the bottom of its arc.

Let me go ahead and show you the same thing from face on.

So as my hand swings, my club swings, at the bottom of this arc it’s naturally going to square up. Same thing with the back of my hand, you can imagine this is the club face.

The back of my hand is going to represent the club face here. As that swings down it’s naturally going to square up every time.

What happens if we start to open our shoulders, is now we’re changing that angle.

So again, if we’re swinging straight ahead here, if I let my arms swing, this is naturally going to square up if my shoulders are square.

If my shoulders start to open, that’s going to change the angle that this club is swinging, that’s going to be more of a right to left, or across the ball swing path.

For those of you that struggle with the slice, you know exactly what that feels like.

If I start to close my shoulders, I’m more pointed to the right, now we’re going to see that’s more of an inside out path, so depending on where my shoulders are pointing, that’s going to allow me to release the club properly and it squared up at the bottom without me having to manipulate the face.

So if my shoulders are open, for example, and I’m trying to come square through the ball, I have to guide this with my hand and figure out how to straighten out that path.

If my shoulders are square, I can let my arms go and it’s naturally going to square it up.

So now let me go ahead and give you a couple drills that are really going help you to ingrain this if your hips or your shoulders are off.

All right, so now I’ve got a couple drills for you that’s really going to help you to build this muscle memory and get the feeling in the comfort of your own living room.

So you don’t even have to be at a course to do this.

First what we’re going to do, is we’re going to lose the club, put your arms across your shoulders, and in slow motion here I’m just going to let my hips open up about 45° and I’m going to let my shoulders stay nice and square.

Then I can put my arms down, kind of simulating where the club would be here at contact.

You’ll also notice that with my right leg, my right heel could be barely coming off the ground at this point, so it’s just now starting to raise up off the ground.

That’s what you want it to do as you’re coming to contact, and my left ankle is going to be driving down into the ground.

So if you look at my right heel from this angle you can see it’s barely starting to come up as I’m coming to contact.

Again, shoulders square, hips 45 open. After I’ve done this about 100 repetitions, and I’ve got the feeling for what this should be like, I can then go ahead and add the club.

As I add the club, I’m going to do this same thing where I’m going to build the same repetitions in, pausing in the correct position at contact.

So I’m simply going to set up nice, easy backswing, don’t even have to make a full turn if you don’t want to, as we’re coming down, I’m going to pause in the correct position, right heel kind of barely lifting off the ground, weight driving into the inside of my left ankle.

Then I’m going to check the hips, check the shoulders again, and then I’m going to come on around to a good full finish.

I’m going to get another 100 repetitions in just like that, once we’ve done this, now we’re ready to take this to a full swing.

So what you’ve done when you’re doing these slow motion drills, is you’re getting the feeling for how this should be as you go to your full swing if you’re doing this incorrectly, it’s going to fall apart a little bit, you’re not going to be comfortable with it.

So we need to be constantly putting ourselves in the right position, and over time it’s just going to become second nature, it’s going to become really natural.

So as you go out to the range and you start to use the club in some full swings, what I want you to do is get in those practice positions, go take a nice, full practice swing from start to finish, do about five of those, and then on the sixth one, check it again, get the feeling, then go up and hit a ball.

Do this over and over again, until that feels completely natural, completely comfortable, and when you videotape yourself, you pause at contact, you see those correct angles you know you have it down forever.

So good luck to you guys, work on this drill, work on the correct angles for the compression line, you’re going to be able to release the club naturally, you’re going to be able to compress the ball better, and overall just play better golf.

So good luck, and I’ll see you all soon.