Why You Need This: Today you get "An Easy Way to Create an Inside-out Swing Path"

I know how frustrating it can be to step up to the ball and wonder if the ball is going to fade 5 to 10 yards, or slice 20 or 30 yards into the rough.

When you play a fade (or slice), you're only delivering a glancing blow to the ball rather than a powerful smash through the ball.

You may be swinging just as hard (or harder) than your buddy who's smoking the ball 270 yards down the fairway, but your ball is only going 210 or 220.

It doesn't seem fair!

Today you're going to learn how you can set up a certain part of your body before you even swing to help get rid of that over the top swing and start delivering that "smash" instead of that "glancing blow."

Don't you want to use the club's energy in the most efficient way possible?

You're going to see a perfect example of just how much distance you're possibly losing by playing that nasty slice and you'll learn exactly what you need to do to ingrain a better swing path that will have you making more solid contact with the ball.

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:02

Video Transcription:

Oh, man. Hitting those fades can really be frustrating. It takes some distance off your drives, you can swing really hard like I did on that one, that drive could have gone a really long way.

But because I’m swinging across that ball or to the left, it’s a glancing blow. That energy isn’t going through the golf ball like I’m hitting it with a hammer, it’s kind of slapping across the golf ball.

So if we take a look at my FlightScope numbers there, if I look at the path or the direction, and this is just measuring this right when my club is moving through contact. If I look at my path, I’m going to see that was 7.7 to the left.

Now I like to see with pro players, anything being under 3, where there’s a path being under 3° of zero, or dead straight through the ball. Any under 2° is phenomenal.

Now there’s a great way to see if you’re doing this without having an $18,000 launch monitor. It’s a really easy way to do this, which I’m going to get to, and I’m also going to give you a really simple drill.

The most simple way to get your path going more to the right so you’ll hit those straighter shots. But first, how do we know if we’re doing this, how do we know if we’re going pretty straight through the ball?

Well, a good rule of thumb, if my ball is curving more than say 5 or 10 yards with a driver, then I’m too far off with the path.

If my ball starts down the left center, and it fades like that one did almost 15, 20 yards or so from left center to right center, or let’s go even more than this, let’s really have a big over the top type slice, we’re going to see there, that one really, really, really moved.

I don’t even know if that will pick that up in the FlightScope here. That ball ended up in the middle of the fairway, but it really slung out there.

The path on that one was 16.8 to the left. That’s that big over the top across the ball. You’ll notice that even though I’m swinging really fast, 117 miles an hour which is really fast, you can drive it well over 300 yards doing that.

I’m only carrying that ball about 214. So if you see more than 5 or 10 yards curved from left to right on the ball, your path is too much to the left, we need to straighten that out. We’ve heard all the tips.

We’ve got to shallow the club, we use the wrist, we swing from the inside, we get the club in the slot.

We have our weight distribution, our feet, all these things that you could be working on, what’s the number one thing that I see that easiest, the easiest way to get that path more to the right, and it’s your hips.

Here’s exactly what I mean by this. If I set up and you’ll see on my original video, those last two, I would set up and it’s like my upper body, so if I hung a golf club from my shirt buttons here, it’s going to be in front of my belt buckle.

Meaning, that my body is tilted almost a little bit to the left at address. Now this is setting me up in a way to where now my hips are behind my upper body, and it’s really easy to swing to the left when I’m doing this.

If I want to get an inside out path, I want to swing more to the right so I can hit that nice draw, I need to reverse this. Here’s the way I would think about this.

A lot of times I’ll see players struggle, when they think about taking their hips – so this is the direction my hips are facing, look at my belt buckle here – they think about taking their hips and bumping them forward, and bumping their upper body back and keeping everything straight to the ball.

I want you to actually turn your hips a little bit when you’re doing this, or close your hips. As I line up here, not only do I want my hips in front, but I also want to get them a little bit more pointing to the right.

So what I mean by this, if I stuck a club out of my belt buckle, if there was a laser coming out of my belt buckle, I’m going to turn my hips so those are facing back this way a little bit more.

What that does, is that sets my body up in a position now where it’s much easier to swing from the inside. If my hips are going this way and I’m open, now I’m going to swing to the left.

So grab your hips, I’ve got a really easy step-by-step drill to do here to make you be able to feel completely comfortable while you’re doing this.

Put a club across your belt buckle, or across your hips. I want you to feel like that club is pointing to the right like this when you set up.

Go ahead and let your hips do this, drop down with your hands and arms and we’ll see now how I’m very much tilted.

This is exaggerated, but you’ll see how my shirt buttons are behind my belt buckle, and you’ll see how I’m a little closed off now where I can come more from the inside.

Now another key to this, I can’t get in this position very easily if my weight is on my left foot. We really want to have the weight shifting to your right foot very early in the backswing, and if I want to make it a path more to the right, it’s a lot easier if I put a little weight on my right side.

You’ll see how naturally that gets my hips a little more closed. That gets my upper body tilted back a little more, if my weight is a little bit favoring my right side at address.

If my weight is favoring my left side at address, that’s going to want to make me open. If I try to close my hips and have my weight to the left, it’s going to feel super awkward, feel like I can’t even do it at all.

 

Go ahead and do 5 or 10, little weight to the right closing the hips, and then just let your arms hang down and do a practice swing.

So 5 or 10 practice swings, really coming inside out. Now from there, let’s go ahead and try to hit a ball while we’re doing this.

Little bit of a hip bump, weight’s on my right side. My chest is to the right of my belt buckle, and this is closed here.

The biggest part, I want that a little bit closed at address to aid in that inside out path. Let’s see if I can get that path tilted a little bit more to the right now.

There we go, see that one’s a nice little draw there, and because I got those hips bumped, that makes it a lot easier to that.

If I look at my FlightScope numbers here, that ball drew just a yard or two, really, really nice. Ideally, that’s what we want to have. Very small amounts of curve on the ball, and we’ll see my club path was 3.9 to the right.

Almost exactly where we wanted, remember anything under 3 is very good. We saw that one, very little curve on it, right down the middle of the fairway, nice little draw, and I’m right there, right around 3.

Remember, before I was carrying the ball 214 on my big slice? Swinging 117 miles an hour. That one, I swung a little bit faster, 119 miles an hour, but the carry distance went all the way up to 304.

So 90 yards farther by not swinging harder, not being more athletic, but just adjusting how I was set up so I could come more squarely through the ball and deliver all the club’s energy straight to the ball versus slapping or going across it.

All right, so one of the things I see people really struggle with whenever they’re getting this more inside out path.

They get the path to go more to the right, that makes it easier to hit a draw, but they’re used to having the face open.

If you’re used to swinging to the left, you have to have that face open in relationship to where you’re swinging or that ball’s going to hook way out of bounds left.

I have to have that face open to get the ball to curve back into the fairway. So now that you’re swinging more to the right, you may have some of those start to the right and then don’t draw back.

Well, there’s a very specific way that makes it super easy to always square that face up. That’s what I call The Move.

When we do that, we use the wrist in a certain manner, squaring up these hands and wrist to make that easy to square up the face and now that we’re swinging more to the right, the ball’s always going to want to come back to the center of the fairway.

You can see what a big difference it makes in driving distance. You start to hit that ball square, in my case on those couple swings, it was 90 yards farther, which is just absolutely insane.

Now what I want you to do, if you really want to ingrain this, we’ve already got started today with what we talk about in the Stable Fluid Spine.

We get that little hip bump, and now all of a sudden, our upper body is behind our lower body. That’s the angle away we have in the Stable Fluid Spine.

Every single pro player on the PGA Tour, when they come into contact, their upper body is behind their lower body. Average is a little over 20°, that’s exactly what we teach in the Stable Fluid Spine.

So go through the Stable Fluid Spine section, and ingrain that so it becomes completely second nature. What we did in today’s video is going to make it easy to get started, but I want you to grab a club, not even be thinking.

Fresh out of the car, first swing you’ve had in two months, you set up to the golf ball and without even realizing you’re doing it, you’re setting up correctly to promote that nice square strike.

That’s what you’re going to get when you work through the Stable Fluid Spine system. You’re going to lock it in so you never have to think about it again. Then once you’ve done that, go to The Move section.

That’s where we’re going to talk about what I mentioned on squaring up the club face, making sure that it’s always releasing so that you don’t have those blocks that go to the right or those slices that start to the right and then keep on fading.

Once you learn The Move, you’re going to get that ball to come from right to left, deliver a lot more energy into the ball. Again, you can do one video, we can do one drill and get some good gains on it.

But if you work through The Move system, The Move section of the website, you do each one of those drills, it’s going to be locked in so you don’t even have to think about it, you’re going to hit those nice draws after taking a month off, or two months off.

So jump into the Stable Fluid Spine, then do The Move, you follow that advice, I guarantee you’ll be hitting those nice draws.