Are you a fan of the movie “Tin Cup?”

It’s one of my favorites.

I love the rant Kevin Costner goes into on the range: “I’m catching it on the hosel right? I’m moving my head, I’m laying it off. I’m pronating. I’m clearing too early, I’m clearing too late! MY GOD, MY SWING FEELS LIKE AN UNFOLDED LAWN CHAIR!!

The reason this is such a great scene, is that we have all been there. Our swing is completely out of sync and everything we do feels dead wrong.

What if I told you that there is one way to sync up the entire body?

It’s true, and you can. In the “Straight-Line Release” I will show you how to synchronize your hips, shoulder, arms, and club, all with one simple move.

Lets get started!

What's Covered: Overview of the entire golf swing release.

Recommended Training Aids: n/a

Publish Date: August 25, 2015

Last Edited Date: December 20, 2019

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Transcription:

Open/Download Transcription File (PDF)

Hi guys, and welcome back. If you watched the introduction to the lag section you know that in order to get effortless speed, in order to be very, very fluid but to hit the ball really, really far, we need to create a lot of lag.

So where does the release come in? You know a common misconception I see is that we want to create lag and we just want to hold that lag all the way on through contact, and get as much lag as we can coming through contact, and that’s simply not true.

In the release section we’re going to talk about how to turn that lag into energy, how to turn that into speed so that you can hit it very far and do it like we mentioned, without hardly any effort at all.

That all comes down to pairing up the lag that you created in the downswing with the release that we go over in this system.

So simply what we’re doing with the release and how this creates energy is, as we’re going into the downswing, remember everything before the downswing we’re building lag, building, building, building.

As we come about halfway down now we’ve maxed out this thing of lag, this is where the release starts.

As we’re coming down, we’ll see that we still have quite a bit of angle in our wrist between our forearms and the club. As we’re coming through contact, we’re going to fully release this angle as we’re about 45 past contact.

So if I draw a 45° angle I should be looking at both arms, nice and straight, the club splitting those arms, everything is fully released and I’ve gotten rid of all my lag.

Now why does this create speed? Well we’re taking that angle and we’re getting rid of it, it happens just like a bull whip or cracking a whip, we’re going to get the speed from that.

So if you pause as we’re coming down, you’re going to see that there’s this great big angle and my hands are going to move about a foot and a half from here to go into contact and hit the ball, maybe even a little bit less than that.

If you look at the distance of my club though, my club is going to be traveling five or six feet. So by releasing the club, by getting this angle to release as we’re coming through contact, that’s what’s going to create the speed.

Our hands are moving a very short distance, our club is moving a very long distance through contact, and it creates that whip-like effect and that’s how you hit it really far with very, very little energy.

So that’s what we’re going to talk about in this release video. I’m going to show you how to pair up in this release series.

I’m going to show you how to pair up your lag with this release position, how your body’s going to work, how your club, how your arms are going to work so that you can get the maximum amount of speed for the least amount of effort.

So let’s go ahead and get started in those drills, I’m going to walk you through it step by step exactly how to do it, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

I’ll see you guys in the next video.

OK, so before we leave and start working on some drills, let’s take a look at some of the top pros, and we’re going to look at some very different swings hitting the exact same position.

So first let’s take a look at Dustin Johnson, releasing the club 45 past. The reason we’re going to see such similar, or such different swings producing similar positions is that this is the real physics of how this has to happen.

Here we’re looking at Sergio Garcia, again we’re going to see tons of lag coming down, and he’s releasing that club 45 past just like Dustin Johnson.

That’s how you can hit down and through the bar, that’s how you release that stored up lag to produce clubhead speed, and that’s how all these pros are doing it.

I’m going to show you exactly how to do that in the videos coming up.

There we’ve got Adam Scott coming to the release position, great release position, one of the most beautiful swings in the world, and that’s just a few examples.

There’s literally, you can line up all the pros and they’re going to be coming into very, very similar positions if not the exact same position.

So let’s go ahead and learn how to put this in our own game so we can come down, hit that ball first, release the club, get tons of speed, and just overall play a lot better golf and make golf much simpler.

So, let’s go ahead and get started and I’ll see you in the next video.