Why You Need This: In this video, you'll discover how to improve your golf follow through.

You'll learn, in great detail, how your left hand fold is crucial for dead solid, consistent contact.

First, realize how important your left wrist is in the downswing.

You don't want to flip the club early and lose all of your lag.

What you do want is to have plenty of shaft lean...

...with your left wrist straight or even bowed through impact.

Forward shaft lean at impact delofts your club and will help you compress the ball.

Quick tip...

Make sure your hips open up.

This will give you plenty of room to hit with forward shaft lean.

Because if you don't open up your hips in the downswing...

...it's easy to get jammed up and flip the club early.

Next, here's how you should release the club...

As you make contact with the ball, make sure you allow your wrists to release.

Otherwise you'll block your shots.

Since you're hitting with forward shaft lean...

...your hands and club should fully release about 45 degrees ahead of the impact area.

In the TSG system, I call this the "Straight-line Release".

Here's a quick drill to practice the key follow through positions...

Position #1...

In the downswing, come in with plenty of lag and bow your left wrist.

Also, make sure your hips are opening up.

Position #2...

Swing your club through to a full Straight-line Release...

...while your hips are completely open.

Position #3...

Finally, let your left wrist fold up at the top of your follow through.

Do about 100 reps, pausing at each position.

Then practice full swings, eventually hitting balls.

Watch this video now to learn why your left wrist is so crucial in the golf follow through...

And get a great drill to ingrain these moves to make consistent, dead solid contact!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 6:19

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, and welcome back to Top Speed Golf. In this video we’re going to talk about something that’s really important. I’ve been getting a lot of questions on this lately. It’s absolutely crucial for you to hit that ball dead solid, consistently coming through contact.

Are you not really getting the solid strike on the ball that you’d like to have? This is something you should pay attention to, and use the left hand properly as we’re coming through impact and into the release.

We’re going to talk about how the club comes all the way through impact, how you can perfectly compress this ball, how we’re going to get a flat spot at the bottom of the swing, and then how that wrist is actually going to fold up and cup as you come into the follow through.

If that sounds good to you, let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so the left wrist is a very confusing topic in golf. We know that we don’t want to start flipping the club. If we start to flip the club in the downswing, that’s going to add loft to our club face.

As the shaft goes back, it adds a lot of loft, the ball’s going to kind of slide up the face. You’re not really going to get a lot of compression on the golf ball.

So we know we want to have some forward shaft lean. We want to have this left wrist nice and flat, or even a little bit bowed forward, but then how do we follow through? I feel like I’m kind of jammed up here, I really can’t get through the swing.

Well the left wrist does need to release, and we’re going to go through that. But first let’s talk about what needs to happen as we’re actually coming through contact.

So here with this golf ball, let’s imagine I’m going this way, and what I want to have happen is I want to create enough forward shaft lean to where I can deloft this face, and actually compress the ball a little bit more.

PGA Tour players are taking about 30 percent of the natural loft of the club off at impact. This is what’s called dynamic loft, or how much loft there is actually on the club as we hit the ball.

So a good easy way to think about this is a pitching wedge roughly 45° of loft on the club naturally as it’s sitting on the ground.

A PGA Tour player is going to deloft that club about 15°. For those of you who have a little bit lower swing speed you may not want to deloft it quite as much, but the idea there is that we do want to take loft off that club.

Now the way that we’re going to be able to do this, is by getting a little bit of bow or at least having the left wrist flat in the downswing. So as I’m making my downswing, you’re going to see this is nice and flat, I’m taking, I’m closing this club face down.

We talk about this in The Move section where we want to flatten this club out and we want to close it down with our wrist, we go over that in the Top Speed Golf System in The Move.

Then what that’s going to do is set me up in a position now to where this left wrist can be releasing, I actually want the left wrist to be releasing through impact, but it’s in a position to where as that’s happening, I still have forward shaft lean as I come through contact.

Now as you finish through contact, and we get into the straight line release, now let’s pretend I’m hitting one right for the camera. I’ve come down, I have the bow, my hips are clearing out of the way to make room for me to have forward shaft lean.

So sometimes if my hips are going to bump and stall out, I’m going to have to flip to keep the club moving. I want to keep these hips moving out of the way so that I can get that forward shaft lean coming through contact.

As I’m releasing, as I get to what we call the straight line release, meaning that I’m letting everything go, the angles in my arms are letting go about 45° in front of this golf ball, now my left wrist is going to be dead flat.

So we went from a slightly bowed, kind of lagging position, we let our hips clear out of the way, this club is releasing to the straight line release. The impact, the forward shaft lean it’s having at impact, that 33 percent of loft we’re taking off, is just happening naturally on my way to release.

Then what’s going to happen to the left wrist after this is very important, because I think a lot of times people try to force this instead of letting that momentum go on through. So as I release the club, my momentum is going to be coming all the way on through.

As I come on through the shot, now my left wrist is going to cup. So after the straight line release – let’s actually pretend I’m going to go this way, I think this would be the easiest way for you guys to see this.

After the straight line release and all those angles are fully gone, this wrist is nice and flat, now as I come on through look how that left wrist starts to cup up. That’s completely fine.

So a lot of people out there are trying to hold that all the way on through there, and what ends up happening is we block it out to the right. We hit thin shots, we really just drag the club on through and we don’t ever get a lot of the speed from releasing that club.

We want to go ahead, let that release and then it can fold on up, the left wrist can cup as we come through to our follow through. That’s really crucial to getting a lot of speed, because we want to let that left wrist go.

I’ve got a great drill for you. I want to recap on a few things that we’re going to work on. I’m going to go from this face-on view since it’s a little bit different than what we usually show, and I think it’s the easiest way to see the left wrist.

Position number one, what I want you to work on is let’s go ahead and get some lag, and let’s get this left wrist slightly bowing like this. So this would be a cupped left wrist, you see my face is wide open.

I’m going to go ahead and start to bow my left wrist as I’m coming down. Now it’s OK to have the left wrist just flat there, that’s fine. If we get a little bowed that’s good too. The main thing we want to go against is we don’t want to cup this wrist and start to add a bunch of loft to the face.

I’m going to have a flat or slightly bowed wrist, my hips again are clearing out of the way. I’m going to go right on through to my straight line release.

Now from there, I want my hips about 45° open, and I want my left wrist nice and flat. I’m going from lag, and I’m releasing that lag. So I had angle like this, I’m letting that angle go, and this is nice and flat.

Then third position, we’re going to come up nice and high and I want you to go ahead and let your left wrist cup a little bit, that’s completely fine.

So pause in those three positions, getting about 100 reps. Number one, letting the hips open, bowed or a little bit…flat or a little bit bowed.

Coming through to the straight line release, hips are completely open. This is nice and flat with the left wrist, I’ve released that lag.

Then finally, I’m letting that left wrist fold up as I come all the way on through to the target.

So we’re going to go ahead and do about 100 reps nice and slow, getting that feeling, and that’s going to help us to get this release coming through the ball. Now since my left leg is kind of posting up, it’s going to be nice and shallow.

I’m going to have a little flat spot, so I can compress this golf ball any point along this contact area. Then after we’ve done those 100 reps, I want you to go ahead and do a full practice swing coming all the way on through, and then we’re going to go ahead and hit some shots.

Work through these drills guys, break them down piece by piece, you’re going to hit it great.