Why You Need This: "Do You Want an Effortless Golf Swing?  Here Are 3 Drills"

I'm sure you can tell a difference when you see someone who looks rigid or tight when they swing...

...versus someone who has a loose, free-flowing swing.

The loose free-flowing swing tends to look effortless, yet the ball tends to go a LOT farther (and is typically more consistent).

If you feel like your swing may fall into the tight, rigid category...

...and would like it to feel (and look) more effortless...

...I have 3 keys that will help get you there (including a backswing move with your trail elbow).

And you'll be swinging smoother, hitting the ball more consistently, and watching the ball travel much farther!

 

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Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 8:03

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Do you ever get over the top of the golf ball and feel really tight? Well I’m going to show you some ways to make a more effortless swing, get more club head speed, and just have a lot more fun playing golf.

We’ve got Q here who’s going to read some of the numbers. Let’s go ahead and get started.

Now there’s things you can do in your swing that are going to make you really tight. One of the most popular things is keeping the right elbow kind of tucked into your side in the backswing.

We don’t really want to do that. What happens when we keep that arm tucked in, we make a shorter hand path.

So our arms don’t go back as far and that slows down your club head, your club head speed, or how far you can hit the ball with the driver.

So if you think about this, the only place I’m touching this club is right here in the handle. The longer the period of time, or the more space that I have to move that handle, the more club head speed I’m going to get.

It’s also the smoother and the more effortless your swing is going to be. If I keep my right elbow just kind of tucked into the side of my body, I’m not really going to get a lot of swing speed.

Let’s go ahead and try one out like that. That was a really good swing, I hit it great. You can hit great shots doing that, there’s nothing wrong with that as far as how solid you can hit the ball.

What were the numbers on that one, Q, as far as distance?

Quentin Patterson: Club head speed was only about 105 miles per hour and total distance, it went 275 but you hit it really, really well.

Clay: Yeah, so a perfectly hit shot. That’s about all I’m going to get out of that. So 105 miles an hour club head speed. Now, let me free this up.

As I go to the back swing, imagine I’m letting my elbow go up to the sky. I’m letting my arm reach a little bit higher. The good thing about this is, you don’t have to be very flexible to do this.

If you can take your arms and lift them this way, that’s really all we’re doing. We’re lifting them over the right shoulder.

Where people tend to lose some flexibility is when they think about going back this way, trying to swing back behind their body because they simply can’t rotate their shoulders and their arms enough.

So don’t worry about getting tons and tons and tons of rotation, think of it mostly as getting those arms higher, that right elbow higher.

Let me try that out on this one, and let’s see if we get a little bit more swing speed and a little bit more carry distance.

So that one wasn’t even hit as solid, dead straight, right down the middle of the fairway, but I can see just from a visual without even Q telling me the numbers yet, that one carried a lot farther.

The other one landed short of this hill that I’m looking it, that one carried completely over the hill. So what were the numbers on that one, Q?

Quentin: Yeah, 119 miles per hour on that one, total distance was 315.

Clay: I picked up 14 miles an hour of swing speed, feeling like it was actually a little bit less effort, and hitting it a heck of a lot farther, almost 40 yards farther with the same amount of effort, actually a little bit less effort.

So when you keep that elbow in, I have to get really quick, I have to get tight, everything feels like I’m just trying really hard and not getting a lot of swing speed out of it.

Now, piece number two, when sometimes when you get those arms a little higher, you may have a tendency of coming a little bit more over the top or hitting a little bit more of a slice. That’s why the second piece here is really, really important.

As I start my downswing, the next thing that’s going to make this effortless is getting some lag. Now, what I feel like and what I think you should feel like to get the most lag that you can, is in the backswing don’t get very much wrist set.

Feel like the club’s not setting very much. So the arms are getting higher, the wrist aren’t setting, this club is short of parallel, and then as you start the downswing, then that’s when you want to feel like the club is setting.

Now another secret to making this lag happen is you have to feel the club going this way, shallowing out a bit.

If I’m trying to get lag by going this way, cocking the wrist straight down with this club shaft steeper, I’m really going to struggle to hit solid contact.

I want to feel like as I shallow the club this way, that’s when I’m getting my lag. So the club feels like it’s working this way more to the inside.

That’s a great thing to pair up with our first piece, higher hands, because now you can take advantage of having those higher hands.

You’re still going to be from the inside, and now you get this huge angle that you can let whip through contact there. You’re going to get a lot more swing speed.

Let me go ahead and try again here, adding that nice bit of lag in there. Let’s see if it even increases my swing speed a little bit more.

There we go, hit that one nice and solid. Exact same line the last two shots, that one flew over the hill again, too, so I know that one’s going to be pretty good.

Quentin: 119 again on the club head speed, up to 320 in the total distance.

Clay: So a little bit more distance, right around the same great swing speed. The big mistake there, I don’t want you to feel like you’re getting a lot of wrist set in the backswing.

I don’t want you to feel like you set the wrist early. Feel like you don’t set the wrist early, you let them set later, and you also want to shallow that club out.

Now the final piece to getting an effortless swing, is making sure that you finish the swing. So many times I’ll see players that do everything right in the backswing.

They get big loaded up, they start to get a little bit of lag, and then their body stops and they flip it and everything at impact just gets destroyed, all the good work they did in the backswing gets destroyed in the downswing.

A great thing to do to make sure that we take advantage of that good backswing, and we actually deliver that swing speed through the golf ball, is to finish the swing.

Whenever you come on through, I want you to feel like you’re rotating as much this way toward the target as possible. Notice my right heel.

If my right heel stays on the ground, there’s no way for me to go through this shot. My body’s going to stall, it’s going to feel like a lot of effort.

I have to let that right heel come off the ground and swivel all the way around this way.

Another trick to this. Open that left foot a little bit, especially if you’re a little tight in your hips, you don’t feel like you have tons and tons of flexibility, opening this foot is going to allow you to finish your swing, come all the way around to that lead side.

Then finally, your legs with this. If my legs are bent as I start my downswing, I have some ability to rotate my hips.

So when my legs are bent I can fire the muscles in my legs to rotate my hips. If my legs are locked, now I don’t have any ability to open my hips because the muscles that open your hips are in your legs.

You have to make sure that you feel like you have some flex in your legs, and you don’t go like this at the start of the downswing.

I don’t fire my legs completely from the start, I keep them bent and that allows me to rotate around to that good, full finish.

Let’s try one here and I’m really going to feel like I get to a great finish and we’ll see if we can get it even a little more distance than I had on the last couple.

All right, I hit that one well. I really felt like I got my legs driving through the shot and finishing that swing. I didn’t close my body off and do all arms. So what was the numbers on that one, Q?

Quentin: 123 mile per hour total club head speed there, and then total distance was 321 yards.

Clay: That definitely great distance there, definitely helped a lot by finishing the swing.

You know if I had to pick one thing that most players go wrong, they get off track with this, that’s the second piece here, when we talked about getting more lag.

What I’d recommend that you do is go through The Lag series. If you’re a member of the Top Speed Golf System, start going to the instruction tab, go to the Top Speed Golf System, then go to The Lag section.

I walk you through there piece by piece how to build that lag into your swing once and for all. Most of the time, we can get those higher hands. We can finish our swing.

But it’s really not going to be the swing that we want if we’re still losing some of that lag in the downswing. It’s never going to feel quite as effortless.

That’s kind of the sticking point that I see for most golfers. When you work through that lag section, as you go to level one, level two, level three and you build through it, it just gets a lot easier.

You’ll start to look at your swing on camera and see that angle getting sharper and sharper, and the swing just looking a lot better.

You feel like you’re getting good club head speed when you’re really not even having to swing that hard to make it happen.

So I can’t wait to share with you some of the secrets I’ve learned in teaching lag, helping you get more lag in your swing, and I’ll see you in The Lag section. Let’s go ahead and get started.