Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Do This If You Can't Make Solid Contact Every Time"

Have you ever just felt “off track” in a round?

Today, I’ll show you my favorite drill to get back on track…

…and start compressing the heck out of the ball!

Trust me when I say you’ll be surprised at how far you can hit it with these simple adjustments!

If you had to do just one drill for the rest of your life, this would be the one!

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 14:54

Video Transcription:

Clay: I've got a fantastic video for you today. I'm gonna lead you through a series of drills that work to build on one another. So you start from level one, you move to level two, three, four, five, and here's the promise I can make for you. If you follow these drills with the exact prescription that I give you, you're going to hit some incredibly solid shots.

You're going to hit it straighter and you're going to be shooting much lower scores when you get done with this. In fact, this is my favorite drill. If you only had to do one drill for the rest of your life, this would be the one that I would pick to hit the ball. Fantastic. So let's jump in. Well, the key of the swing really starts with coming through impact correctly.

And if we look at PJ tour players, all great golfers, the best golfers at your home club. Best golfers on tour, all golfers on tour. When their hands are in front of the right leg, the club shaft is parallel to the ground. Then from there, they move through, their body opens, the left side is really connected, which I'll get to here in a minute.

And they have shaft lane compressing this golf ball against the face. And then from there, they're going to feel like the ball stays on the face really long. So people say, getting the ball stuck on the face, say, uh, covering the ball, having compression. I'm going to lead you through exactly what that means.

But you're going to feel like the face is on, the club face is on the ball for a long time through contact, which gives you a lot of distance and a lot of consistency at the same time. So that starts with a half backswing drill. into a full extension, and I'll show you exactly what I mean here. So to start out, let's not even hit a golf ball yet.

Let's work on it, just getting the basics down. So we're going to swing back to about halfway in the backswing, left arm roughly parallel with the ground, and from here, I either want your club just shy of a 90 degree angle, or at the most 90 degrees. Now that's all we're going to do for the backswing, a little half backswing drill, and then from there, as we open up, and start to shift our weight to the left, get our weight on our left side, We should feel as though the club sets back as our body opens up.

And that's possibly the most important thing in golf is to feel like you transition and the club is still setting back this way or lagging behind. Then from there, we're going to hit the golf ball and really extend through the golf ball. And a good way to know if you're doing this correctly. is you're going to feel like your arms or your arms will stay straight for as long as possible.

So you could stop the end of the swing here, both arms straight clubhead really far away from me. And I'm just feeling like my club is sticking on the golf ball and the golf ball is riding the face all the way through there. Or you go a little bit farther. If you want to get some more distance as you come through, the club's going to be here.

Now I know I'm doing this wrong if my wrists start to rehinge, meaning they're not an extension of my arm, or if my arms start to bend. So as soon as my arms start to bend, that's really not what you want to do here. And the reason for that is, if my arms bend, so if I finish here, what could have happened is my arms could have started to bend and fold up, I could have got a chicken wing, I could have casted the ball, I could have flipped or scooped through contact.

But down here... and it's showing up at the top of the swing. But if I make this little half back swing and I feel like my arms or my arms do get extended and it stays straight through here, I know none of that broke down. So I'll get shaft lean, I'll get compression, I'll get everything moving through the golf ball as you extend through there and your arms being straight and the club being extension of it is a telltale sign that you've done that correctly.

So let's start out with just some practice swings, half back. Extended arms through, and we're just going to brush the turf as you're doing this. It's a little half back swing. As I shift to the left, the club's going to lag behind. And then from there, full extension of the arms. You'll notice when I hit the mat here, that it's a nice brushing sound.

It's the same sound each time. So what I want you to do is 20 reps, trying to brush the turf the exact amount, the exact same amount every time. So you don't want to chop down into the turf. You can do this from a rolled up piece of carpet in your living room. You can do it on a mat like this. You can do it at the driving range on grass.

Whatever you want to do it, this is great because there's no excuses. You can do it in your backyard if you want to or in your garage. You don't even have to have high ceilings for this drill because we're just going half back, full through. Now, another key checkpoint is you're doing some more of these and getting that same brushing sound.

I'm going to feel like I get as much speed through the ball as I can without letting this break down. So I want to feel like my club is really accelerating from here on through impact, getting the speed into the golf ball. And again, as long as my arms are straight, that's okay. Now if I'm looking from down the line, what I don't want to do is start coming across the ball.

I want to feel like my arms as they extend would be pointing at the target or even a little to the right of the target. So as I extend, it's going to be like this, where they come through. Pointing a little bit more inside out. That way I know I'm from the inside. And when I finish, I'm not going to be over here somewhere.

I'm going to be at the target when I come through there. So I'm going to do 20 swings, brushing the turf. Once I get the feel of that, I'm going to go ahead and start hitting some golf balls doing this. So again, let the body lead the way. And let the arms extend through the shot.

There we go. Now what you'll notice here, I'm hitting it pretty far for a 9 iron. with this follow through and this little shorter backswing. So I hit it 142 yards in the air, 148 after it rolled out. That's pretty good for a nine iron for a half backswing extension drill. You'll be surprised how far you can hit it when you're doing these little, those little shots.

Now, another thing is when I hit this ball, I don't want to feel like my club. is glancing across the ball. What I mean by this is I don't want to feel like I extend through it and my club kind of rolls to the inside of the ball and the ball rolls off kind of this way off to the right of the club. I want to feel like when I hit this golf ball, I extend through it and my club gets to the outside of the golf ball.

So if you can imagine that with a giant impact bag here. I'll grab one of these. You could use a pillow, an impact bag, whatever, you don't even have to do this, more for demonstration purposes. I don't want to feel like I, let's imagine this is the golf ball, this is my club, I don't want to feel like I come through and let my club slide across the inside of the ball.

I want to feel like I come through and my club releases on the outside of the golf ball. That's going to ensure that I keep the energy into the ball as long as possible, and it's going to ensure that the ball draws from right to left. As you get better and better at this, you'll start to feel a club that goes across the ball this way is going to be a slice.

A club that releases outside the golf ball that way is going to be a draw. And a ball, and a club that releases through the ball and it feels like the ball stays square on the face as long as possible is going to be a straight shot. So I'm really starting to feel how does my club face release. As it moves through the golf ball here.

So if I want to hit a draw again, compressing the ball, I'm extending through it, and my club is releasing on the outside or the right side of the golf ball is going to be my, my sensation here. So let me go ahead and draw one. And again, if I'm drawing it, releasing this way, I'm not releasing that way over here.

Let's do a little half swing. Really long arms through contact. There we go. And a nice little draw there. 145 yards again, I feel like my club is stuck to the ball and it's staying on the ball all the way through here and it's like my club is almost touching the screen before the ball comes off the face.

That's obviously not what's happening. The ball is maybe stuck to the face for a quarter of an inch or so, but that sensation is what you want to feel if you're going to be really, really consistent. Now, another thing here as we're doing this. You want to feel like, as you're in transition, I don't want to pop up out of my posture.

I want to stay down on this golf ball. That way that I'm closer to it and I can really extend through there. I'm going to feel like my chest is almost covering on top of it. That's what covering the golf ball comes from. I feel like I'm on top of it. And the cool thing about that, when you get more on top of it, you automatically start to get a little more shaft lean, and that compresses the golf ball more.

So as I turn this loft down, I get more and more energy from the club out into the golf ball. And when you do this, it just feels amazing how much you can get from it. So let's go ahead and hit a hard one here. I'll do a half back swing again. I'll put a little extra into it, a little more speed through the impact zone into the follow through, and I bet you I can get maybe even one 50 with this nine iron for a little half back three quarters through

1 59 with my nine iron on that one. Now, another key here when I'm finishing. My body has to be in the right position in this follow through if I'm going to do this correctly. My right foot has to be completely off the ground. That's the only way I can get my body moving through there to keep the club feeling like it's on the ball.

If my body stops, if my right leg stays glued to the ground, no matter how much I want to extend, I'm going to fold up and I'm going to have this kind of a collapsed position in the follow through. The only way to get that extension through there Hips have to rotate, that foot has to come completely off the ground.

You'll also notice my weight when I'm doing this is completely balanced on the front leg. So I'm going to feel like all my momentum is moving through that golf ball, like I'm hitting it with a heavy hit through the ball, rather than feeling like I'm falling back and coming across the ball. or flipping at the ball with my hands.

It's going to feel like all my momentum from my body is just transferring into the ball and delivering it through and back into the follow through. That's the sensation you want to have if you're going to hit it really solid and consistent. So, weight stacked over my left. In fact, I want to feel like I could make a, have a conversation with somebody as I'm getting this follow through.

So let's go ahead and hammer another one. I'm going to step on it a little bit. I may go a little past half on the backswing, but I'll try to go halfway back. And let's see if we can... Step on this nine iron and really get long through the follow through.

And I probably tried to overdo it a little bit. My hands folded up a little. If you start to do that, you may be going too fast back off of it. But from there, 158 yards carry, again, it doesn't look very fast. Watch how slow I can do this too. The cool thing about this is it saves up the energy and then, bam, it delivers it through the ball.

With all this compression and you don't feel like you have to swing fast at all. So again, here's a nine iron. I'm going to go just buttery slow on this thing. And let's see what kind of distance I get. All right. That was almost barely moving. And I got 122 yards. Felt really, really solid on the face. So I'd recommend starting out like that.

And again, the big key here, you just got to feel this face. That's probably the number one thing that I find with players is they're not paying attention to the face because we get so much instruction that we start to think about what does the body do? What's the arm do? What position is my club in?

Like a hundred swing thoughts and we're not feeling the face through contact. I want you to feel the face, feel the ball gather on the face and feel the face stuck to the ball all the way through there. Let that club release on the outside of the ball and man, you're going to be hitting some great shots.

I don't think I could possibly hit a ball better than that. Half back swing, little 3 quarter follow through here. I'm standing up as though I could talk to someone comfortably in my finish position. Arms extended, and I hit that 149 yards with a 9 iron. And it's compressed as good as I've ever compressed one.

In fact, if I'm ever off track, this is probably my favorite drill to do. To start feeling the solid strike again. Now, this sounds different than the top speed golf system. Sounds like there's something, like I'm teaching a new way of hitting the golf ball. This is just a great way to get down the pieces of the top speed golf system.

So in this video alone here, if we do a little half backswing, what you'll notice is if you're going to hit it very far, you'll feel like you have to turn your shoulders quite a bit. Just that little backswing move. That helps you with your power turn. As you transition, remember we talked about getting the body to open in this club to kind of swing back or lag back behind.

Well, that's lag in the downswing. We talked about the hands kind of being here and the club being parallel. That's the lag in the downswing that we have in the topspin golf system. We also talked about having that club long and extending through the target. That's a straight line release. And if there's one thing that I like the best for golfers to feel the club through impact, starting it really solid, it's a straight line release.

And feeling like... Today, like we mentioned, that ball stays on the club face a really long way and our arms stay long through there. Now this video is going to help a ton to start getting that feeling of a straight line release, but it's not going to be automatic until we do quite a few of these. So let's do 20 reps in the beginning, like I mentioned, without a ball and then 20 more reps feeling those positions that we just talked to as you're hitting a golf ball.

Now that's going to get you started. If you want to ingrain that forever, you need to go through the system. Talk to me, golf system. If you're a member of top speed golf, you just click on the instruction tab, talk to me, golf system, straight line release. As you get to level one, it's going to build on what we did here today.

And it's going to feel a lot more comfortable. You're going to be hitting it really solid. The problem is, is if you go away and forget about it in a few weeks, you're going to be going back to what you've done before when you didn't hit it as well. But as you work through this system, you get through level one.

It's, you still have to think about it. Level two. You don't have to think about it as much. It's starting to get ingrained. But as you get to level three, it's completely ingrained. It's baked into your swing. You just make what feels like a completely normal swing to you. And all of a sudden, you have this great extension through there.

The ball's just sinking into the face. It feels like it's melting into the clubface. It's so solid. And you don't have to think about it at all. That's what I want to get you to. So head over to the Top Speed Golf System. Start in the straight line release. Just doing one video today. As you get to level three, you're going to completely ingrain this in your swing.

And that's when you're going to play your absolute best golf. Trust the process, trust the system. I can't wait to hear about your amazing results.