Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Can This REALLY Fix The Shanks & Your Weight Shift"

If you find yourself dealing with those frustrating shanks…

…grab a water bottle and it’ll fix it.

I know it sounds crazy…

…But these simple drills are going to help you correct not only the shanks but the dreaded “chicken wing” and a topped 3-wood as well!

This little water bottle trick will also help you nail your weight shift, so make sure you don’t miss this video!

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 10:45

Video Transcription:

Clay: Anytime you're playing golf, you always have a water bottle laying around somewhere. It can really help you with your swing. I'm going to show you four drills that can help you to get your weight shift. Correct. Making that divot in front of the golf ball. If you're thinning or topping your three woods, it's going to be perfect for that.

I'm going to talk about how to get rid of that chicken wing where the left arm folds up as you're coming through the shot. I'm even going to get rid of the shanks. So let's go ahead and jump into it here. Let's start off with the most frustrating shot in golf, which will be a shank. And all you're going to do.

is when I hit this golf ball, if I was going to shank it, all that means is the hosel of my club is hitting the golf ball. Well, if I put a water bottle in the way to where I would actually whack into the water bottle, if I did that, then I'm going to naturally miss the water bottle. Now you'd be amazed just having a object there in the way your brain will naturally stop shanking it.

It's kind of amazing how it works. I reckon do recommend take the water out of the water bottle at first. If you. First couple swings until you get used to it. If you just so happen to nick it, you don't want it to explode and get water all over you and look like a crazy person on the driving range. You also, if you did happen to hit it when it's full of water like this, it could hurt you by twisting your club a little bit.

It could hurt your wrist, that kind of thing. So empty the water bottle before you do this one. And the way I like to set this one up is I'll put the toe of the club against the water bottle and the ball. It should basically be in line where I could barely not shank it, even if I nicked the water bottle.

So if I go ahead and hit, uh, set it up, like I was going to hit the sweet spot of the club, I've got about three quarters of an inch or so between the toe of the club and the water bottle. Now from there, what I found the most common, I wouldn't say the most common, almost every time someone's shanking it, they're standing up out of their posture.

It moves their hands closer to the golf ball, and then it kind of shoves the club out this way. A great little cheat for this. You've probably heard to keep your weight back. You've probably heard to stay farther away from the golf ball. If that was going to work, you'd probably already be doing it, right?

Well, when I stand up out of my posture, my club shaft raises up and gets more vertical. If I can keep my club flatter to the ground, I'm naturally going to get a little farther away from the golf ball. So if I'm really close to the golf ball and I'm crowding it and that's making me shank it, well, when I try to think about getting the hands lower, it's like, well, my legs are in the way.

So I naturally scoot back. You've been told to get your weight back on your heels. Well, when I try to get my club shaft a little lower, now all of a sudden my weight naturally goes back on my heels. So it accomplishes a lot of things with one simple feeling. Just feel like the club shaft is lower as you're hitting this golf ball.

Alright, so let's go ahead and give it a whirl. Hopefully I don't explode this water bottle here. There we go. Hit that one really nice. Not going to do a whole lot better than that. That's a great one. If nothing else, this drill is worth the price of admission. Or this video is worth the price of admission just for that one, because if you're shanking, it is not fun.

I'll tell you that. Now, number two is weight shift. Like I said, when you're hitting that three wood, most common mistake with three wood I see is weight falls on the back foot, maybe trying to hit it harder, maybe trying to get the ball a little higher in the air. You'll notice that the lower leg will be almost vertical when I'm doing that.

So my lower leg will be up and down. And then as I rotate through there, I kind of spin out on my back foot. Well, if I put a water bottle just outside my right foot, what I want to feel here, if I do this correctly, instead of my lower leg being up and down, this way, weight on my right side, divot back here, chunking and thinning the golf ball, I want to have this right knee as I, before I start my downswing, kick forward a little bit.

So my knee goes toward the target, my lower leg gets angled in now. And that gets my weight on my left side. So it looks a little something like this. If I was going to hit this golf ball, this is my transition move, the legs, the lower body start to go before my club really makes the downswing. Now that shifts my weight to the left, and when I rotate through, I'm going to miss the water bottle with my right heel as I swing through the shot.

So let me go ahead and set this up. I'm on about, uh, three quarters of an inch between my ankle and the water bottle. Let's give it a whirl.

There you go. Nice little draw again. It's pretty good. So six iron here, right at about 200 carry and have a nice little tight draw on both of those. Pretty happy with that. Now, another variation of this that is just a new way to feel it. Sometimes you can't, because you're not hitting the water bottle, you can't tell if you're doing it right.

You simply take the water bottle, put it on the inside of the right foot again, three quarters of an inch away from the leg. And then as I rotate through this shot, hit it, you're going to see that I knocked the water bottle over.

There we go. So you see it knocked over on the ground. Now, the next one, you probably have never heard this before. It's actually kind of counterintuitive when I hit a golf shot. So when I studied hundreds of PGA tour players, I gave tons and tons and tons of online lessons over a period of five or 10 years.

And. Every time I did a lesson, I always pulled up a PGA tour player and I didn't like doing the same one every single time. I like to study different swings. So I had this database of literally hundreds of swings. And every time I did a swing review, I did an online lesson. I'd pull up a different player.

I'd show what the tour player was doing. I'd show what they're working on. I give a drill. What I noticed is with the left foot. Pretty much every single PGA Tour player, unless somebody was like freakishly flexible, maybe one or two out of a hundred, every one of them got their foot to open up, and it would actually rotate.

So if this is toward the target, my toe is toward you, the camera, or perpendicular to the target. As they came through the shot, that toe would rotate open, and that really allowed them to open up the hip, and then rotate through the shot. Now, if you keep your foot forward, Especially if you're not freakishly flexible, what will happen is you'll stop rotating your body.

This is what you see pretty much across the country. If you go anywhere and find the players that are struggling the most at any club, they're going to lower, they're going to lock their lower body, they're going to take over with the arms, and you're going to see this chicken wing. So kind of stay down in here, uh, chicken wing and fold up.

What tour players are doing is they rotate through it, this toe opens up toward the target. And if I was to put a water bottle just outside my toe, well, I would knock it over, which is counterintuitive because you're always thinking you've probably been told, you know, the less moving parts you have in your swing, the less moving parts you have, the easier it'll be.

Not the case. If you want to play good golf, you've got to get your lower body clearing out of the way. You've got to get this left foot to open up. So when I hit the shot, especially if I'm hitting fuller shots, if I'm hitting driver, I'm hitting longer irons or really just any full swing. When I rotate through the shot, it's going to knock this water bottle over.

And I at least bumped into it. This is one that if you're on a mat like this, I probably nudged it out a little bit. You might want to go ahead and put it right against the foot there. So I also have it full of a lot of water. So you may want to lower it down a little bit. So it's not quite as sturdy. So you don't just bump it over.

An empty water bottle would definitely do it. I'm not going to take the time to pour out the water to show you here. But I will hit another one and just pay attention to my left toe. Look how it's facing this way at address. And when I finish, it's much more open to the target. Or, this is another great one.

If you don't want to do the water bottle, you don't want the foot to rotate open, you say, Man, I would really like to just have less things to worry about. Go ahead and take your foot 30 or 40 degrees. Up until the 90s, everybody did this. That became kind of out of fashion and that forced people to rotate their foot open and knock over this water bottle.

But I'm totally fine if you want to set up with a foot open and then you don't have to worry about the water bottle that's already open there. If you are going to set up square, you better be swinging in a way to where at least you're bumping into this water bottle in your follow through or you're really just not going to keep the hips moving and you're going to struggle to hit your solid shots.

Got it on that one. And you can see how that foot rotates open a little bit. That one, you just have to nudge it a little bit. I don't want you to like cranking this water bottle open. It's just enough to let you know, there's a misconception that the feet need to be still. The feet don't need to be still look at the greatest ball striker on tour right now, Scotty Shuffler.

I wouldn't recommend that footwork necessarily, but it shows you that moving feet. Hey, he's hit it the best anybody's ever hit it in the last 10 years as far as strokes gain and his feet are anything but still. One more thing I want to mention before we leave here, there's something that can solve a lot of this for us, and it's the power turn in the top speed golf system.

So when you do the power turn, what's going to happen is I teach you a way to get this full finish, even if you have no flexibility. And as you get this feeling with what you're supposed to do for your upper body, it makes everything we worked on easier. Your weight is more naturally going to shift to the left.

You're going to rotate through the shot a lot better. And the best part is you pick up 10, 20, even 30 yards as you're doing this. So it helps with your weight shift, helps with your distance, helps you to feel like you can swing easier and still hit it pretty daggone far. That's the Power Turn in Top Speed Golf System.

If you're a member of Top Speed Golf, head over to the instruction tab, click Top Speed Golf System, then go to the Power Turn. In Level 1, you're going to start to get used to it and have to think about it. You're going to hit some amazing shots, but if you stop there, it's not ingrained forever. Level 2, you start to get more comfortable, and then by Level 3, it becomes built into your swing.

You've hit so many good shots with it, and you've had the feeling with it so many times. It's naturally just the way you swing from then on and you never have to think about it again. That only happens when you work your way through the levels. So that's the perfect, uh, accompaniment to what we worked on here today.

Do this drill, work with the water bottle, start hitting it better, then go into the power turn, build your way up through the levels so that you become the golfer that you really deserve to be. I don't want you to turn around in a year, six months, even three months. and still be struggling to try to figure out what to do.

It's laid out for you. There's five fundamentals, five real fundamentals of the golf swing. Power turn is one of them. You work your way through the three levels and you're going to play good golf. It's really just as simple as that. Best of luck. And I'll see you in the power turn.