Why You Need This: Today you'll learn about the "Golf Downswing - How to Stop Rushing Your Downswing Drills"

Modern instruction would lead you to believe that a short, compact swing is going to make you a more consistent golfer...

...but today, I'm going to explain how it doesn't accomplish that at all.

In fact, all it's doing is robbing you of a ton of distance...

...and making it nearly impossible to have a smooth swing.

In this video, I'll share some major keys for the transition from the backswing to the downswing...

...that will give you that smooth power you've been looking for...

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 9:34

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Now I know you want to have that perfectly smooth, powerful swing. But what if I told you a short, compact swing, one that looks good on camera makes it impossible to have a smooth swing?

I’m going to talk about why and the right to get smooth power in this video. Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so I’m joined here with Q, he’s going to be reading the FlightScope numbers, the radar numbers for me. Let’s jump right into it.

Let me go ahead and make that short swing and talk about why it’s almost impossible to be smooth when you have that short, compact swing.

So the idea is that if I’m only bringing the club to where my hands are about shoulder height here, and my club is short of parallel, a lot of people really like that idea that if I eliminate kind of degrees of freedom, if I eliminate extra movement in my swing, that’s going to allow me to be more consistent.

The problem with that is when I have this short area to accelerate in, I have to be really quick to get any kind of club head speed.

Let me make that short swing and try to get some decent distance out of that, see what that would look like.

So there, very fast with my swing. I felt like my hands were tighter, I felt like I was really having to muscle to really get much distance out of that. What were the numbers on that one, Q?

Quentin Patterson: So 108 mile per hour club head speed, and distance was 285.

Clay: OK, so not the worst swing in the world. It probably looked OK, but inside my body I felt like I would be inconsistent and I would be rushed all the time.

Now, what happens if I smoothed out that short swing? So we went from 108 miles an hour, let’s see what I do if I’m smooth and I kind of hit that same position. Let’s see what happens to the club head speed.

Again, down the middle. A little to the right, but it’s actually in the fairway, this is a dog-leg left hole. Hit it OK, not too bad, but let’s see what my swing speed was.

Quentin: Club head speed went down to 90.4, total distance was 201.5.

Clay: OK, so if I’m making that short swing and I’m smooth, I just don’t have time to accelerate the club. If I make that short swing and I want to hit it far, I really have to accelerate quickly.

I get tight with my hands, I get jerky with my swing, and to me, when I made that short swing that went a decent distance, I felt like there’s no way I could play that way every day and be consistent. It would really be a grind to be consistent.

Now if I do a couple of things, I can really trick my body into being smoother and still have power at the same time.

One of the biggest ones that I see is getting comfortable turning away from this golf ball, and you do that by loosening your hips.

Now one of the things that’s big with this is I want to go ahead and push into the ground with my right foot. I want to feel like my right leg is kind of pushing my right hip out of the way. That’s the first key there.

So when you set up to this golf ball, feel like in your backswing I’m doing this motion, almost kicking my hips open. Imagine you’re driving a car, I’ve talked about kick the clutch with your left foot.

Imagine the clutch was on the right side instead of where the gas is, that was a clutch pedal, and I’m going to kick that clutch in with my right foot. That’s going to rotate my hips in the backswing, really get me loaded up better.

Number two, I need to stay soft with the knees. If I’m rigid and tight, and try to feel like everything is locked in here, now it’s going to make me be short in my swing. That’s going to get you quick, that’s going to kill your distance.

I want to feel like my knees can move a little bit here, I don’t want to be locked in with them. That’s going to allow my hips to rotate.

So if I push with this right leg, and I keep things loose, now I’m really rotating my lower body and it makes it much easier for my upper body to rotate in the backswing.

Look how now my hands got higher, and I don’t really feel tight there, I feel like my hands are just kind of flowing back into that higher backswing position. That’s the first key there.

Let me go ahead and try one out. Bigger swing, really engaging that right leg in the backswing to clear the hips and staying nice and loose so everything rotates back.

Let’s give that a whirl. There we go, left-center of the fairway. I know my swing speed was up, I’m guessing that’s kind of high teens, and a lot more distance. What’d it say there, Q?

Quentin: Actually 120 mile per hour, and 317 total distance on that one.

Clay: Yeah, so I picked up a lot of yardage there when I let my body rotate a little bit more. That doesn’t mean that you’re going to hit it 317, I can’t promise you that. But I can promise you if you get rotated that way, the swing will smooth out.

So that’s leading up to the downswing. Let’s talk about what’s really going to get you over the edge when you’re in the downswing.

Q, you were talking about this earlier, you had a really good tip for this. How do you recommend people start that transition?

Quentin: Right, so even if you’re doing everything like Clay talks about where you’re getting that big backswing, if you start that downswing with the push of the upper body, that’s just going to get things rushing in the downswing.

So we really need to get our legs started in the swing first, and then allow that pulling sensation in the downswing instead of that pushing sensation with the trail hand.

So when you want to feel that pull is actually in your left hand or the lead hand, and you want to feel it in the first three fingers here.

If you hold it up like this, first three fingers, your pinky, ring, and middle finger. You really want to feel the pressure in the grip in that area of the hand, and that’s where you’re putting the force in the handle.

You really want to feel like you’re pulling it through instead of pushing it through with that trail hand.

We want to do that, our trail hands most of us, that’s our dominant hand, and that’s where we get that rushing of the swing, because we really want to push through and get that hit impulse and hit it.

But that’s how you rush things. You want to allow it to pull through and that’s going to allow you to create that speed in the downswing.

Clay: So if I’m doing that pushing action, where do you think I would feel, where do you see players really feel that with their right side where they are trying to push and cast?

Would it be in the hand, the elbow, the shoulder? What do you kind of feel is the main thing there?

Quentin: You’re going to feel the shoulder coming out away from your body. It’s going to be that over the top motion that we see oftentimes.

You’re going to feel like your elbow’s also coming out away from your body there, that’s always coming out.

Clay: That’s a bit one. As soon as that elbow comes out, I mean, it’s dead. It’s definitely that pushing type casting motion.

Quentin: Right. The hand, the trail hand, you’re going to feel like it’s more relaxed, and it’s almost like it’s going to be pointing up to the sky at the top of the screen, or at the top of the swing.

You’re almost going to feel like you’re a waiter holding a tray at the top here, and that’s going to allow you to relax that hand a little bit, and allow you to pull with that lead hand so that you’re not rushing so much in the downswing.

Clay: When I do that pulling one, for me, I really feel like it’s almost like on my left side of body, where would you say to focus in on if you’re struggling getting that pulling action, you are dominant with the right side? What do you think is a good trigger for that?

Quentin: Well, you want to feel the pressure in the ground. You want to feel like you’re getting to your lead side, you’re feeling that pressure in your lead foot, almost on the inside of your lead foot and then the heel.

You almost want to feel like you’re pushing into the ground there, and that’s what’s triggering you and allowing you to pull that club in the downswing, because if you’re not feeling that pressure in that lead foot, you don’t have anything really powering your lead arm.

You’re kind of just still thrusting with your upper body, which would be better than pushing with your trail side.

But to really have that power and to have that sooth-looking powerful swing, we’ve really got to get that lead leg pushing almost just like what Clay talked about with your trail leg, he was talking about how you’re pushing down and out to rotate your hips in the backswing.

Clay: To load it up, yeah.

Quentin: You’re doing the same thing in the downswing. In the downswing you want to feel like you’re pushing down and out away from you to rotate that hip open and get the body rotating and pulling through as opposed to what we see with people who rush the swing, where they just come out and just throw everything at it with the trail side.

Clay: Yeah, I like that a lot. So if you’re doing this the wrong way, rushing the downswing, it’s a lot of right arm. Weight’s staying on the right side. Even if you try to pull from back here, you’re kind of falling back and it’s not going to be a very good shot.

So if I was to boil this down, I would say let’s get loaded up at the top of the swing, then let’s get a weight shift to the inside of the foot like you’re talking about.

Quentin: Right.

Clay: And then let the left side clear out of the way. So let me go ahead and try to hit one doing that. So my main swing keys here are make that big backswing.

If you don’t have the big backswing, it’s impossible to be smooth. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing the rest of your swing.

Once I get that backswing where I’m freeing up the body, loosening up, then I’m going to shift to the left, really before I feel like I’m starting now and shift to the left, then clear the left side of my body out of the way.

That’s going to allow it to whip on through there. Let me go ahead and give that a whirl here on my FlightScope, and let’s see if we can get a really big one here. I’m really going to go after this.

There we go. Left edge of the fairway and I swung pretty hard on that one. That definitely felt like I didn’t rush, I got up there, I shifted to the left, then I cleared everything out of the way. What’d I hit on that one, Q?

Quentin: Got to 122 miles per hour, total distance 322.

Clay: Not going to do much better than that. So shift left, then rotate, that’s going to smooth out that downswing.

From here, we talked a lot about how to loosen that body up and make that bigger backswing. That’s really the start of it.

If I don’t make the bigger backswing, it doesn’t matter what else I do, I’m going to be tight and I’m going to be quick. My downswing is never going to feel right.

To really nail that down, we need to not only add what I talked about here today with the lower body, but also the shoulders. That’s what we call the Power Turn in the Top Speed Golf System.

You want to ingrain this for a lifetime. You need to work through that system, so go the Instruction tab, click on the Top Speed Golf System, click on the Power Turn.

Then from there, you can work through level one, level two, level three, and what that does is that helps you to blend all this to where you’re making that big turn without even having to realize it.

You’re going to get smoother and get more powerful at the same time, but it only happens if you stick with that process.

So today’s video helps get you started. Those levels help you to ingrain it for a lifetime. I can’t wait to see you in the Power Turn. Let’s go and get started right now.