Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover the "Golf Swing Impact Position Drill for Deadly Accuracy!"

The majority of golfers I see have their body out of position at impact...

...which make it nearly impossible to make solid contact with the ball consistently.

If you want to see if you're making the same downswing mistake that so many make...

...and get a step-by-step drill to make solid contact much easier...

...then check out today's video.

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 10:13

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Hitting those perfectly solid iron shots, everybody wants to do them. Why is it so dag-gone hard?

Well, I’m going to talk about how the vast majority of players are completely out of position with their body and it makes it impossible to really hit it solid.

So Q’s got the FlightScope here, he’s going to read some of the numbers on the radar, and I’m going to walk you through some drills step by step that makes it easy to compress those shots.

All right, so first let’s talk about what most players that I see are doing that’s making it really tough to hit it solid.

So in the downswing, the hips are kind of coming toward the ball, standing up a little bit. That gets my chest, or if you can imagine my shirt buttons, getting farther away from this golf ball.

Then the only thing I can do from there, is to flip to make contact. I lose all of the forward shaft lean that the pros are having, and I get thin shots.

If you’re hitting a lot of shots kind of thin on the bottom of the club, if you see your ball not really leaving with the kind of speed that you want, it doesn’t really pop off the face, it doesn’t have that sound that you hear when you go listen to the pros hit shots, this video’s going to be perfect for you.

So we don’t want that hips going toward it, body backing up, and flip. You’ll also notice when I’m doing this, everything’s square to the ball. We’re going to talk about why that’s a real bad thing when you’re talking about compressing the golf ball.

Now let’s go over the right way to do this. When you come into contact, let’s focus in on the lower body first, the hips, knees, and legs.

As I rotate open, as you come to contact, I want my hips to be about 45° open. The reason for that is, if my hips are square, very difficult to have forward shaft lean.

It’s actually impossible to get your hands in front of your body or in front of your lower body in a swing. There’s just no way to do it. Your hands aren’t fast enough and strong enough to push this club all the way across the body.

So instead of doing this to get forward shaft lean and my body isn’t open, there’s never going to happen. I’ve never seen one player that’s been able to do that. You have to do this to get forward shaft lean.

As the body opens up, my hips get about 45° maybe even a little more than 45° open, for some players on the PGA Tour. That’s going to help them to get their hands or your hands more in front of the golf ball.

When you do that, it actually takes loft off the club and you get more compression and more ball speed.

So first, let me show you with this little impact, or this little face angle finder here, this little magnet. When I set this up, there’s no forward shaft lean. Look how there’s quite a bit of loft on that club face.

That’s going to get more of a glancing blow across the ball. Watch what happens when I get my hips more open, I can start to lean the handle forward, and I’m taking loft off the face.

Pros take about 30 percent of the natural loft off the club when they’re coming to impact. If an 8 iron has somewhere in the mid-30s, 35, 37, 38 degrees of loft standard, pros are turning that down anywhere from 25 to 29 degrees of loft at impact.

That allows more energy to transfer into the golf ball and a faster ball speed. So the first key to doing that, is getting those hips to open.

Now here’s the real key with that. When I’m standing up my hips are going toward the golf ball and I’m flipping, look how my right foot goes this way.

It comes forward and off the ground as I stand up out of the shot, but it doesn’t rotate out. When I open my hips, I want my right foot to start to swivel this way. That’s the feeling that you’re going to have.

I’m really exaggerating there so you can see it, but I want my spikes to start turning out more toward the camera at the back. I don’t want my spikes to go up this way, I want them to go that way.

So again, that allows me to rotate my hips as I’m coming through the ball. You can start to see how my foot is swiveling out, so it’s going this way instead of this way.

So let’s do a couple drills there. Go to impact, hips open. Right foot, the heel starts to go out that direction. I’m really pushing it that way. That allows me to get my hips opening up.

The feeling I’d have there is that my belt buckle is actually toward the target when I make contact. That’s never going to happen, but that’s a good sensation for you to have, especially if you’re a stand-up flip kind of player that really struggles compressing the golf ball.

So let me try one of those out. I’ve got an 8 iron here, I’m going to try to get less than 30° of dynamic loft, loft on the club at impact, and I’m going to try to see if I can get my hips nice and open just like I want to be. Let’s give it a whirl.

There we go, that looked pretty good. Just to the right of the flag, slightly, and what was my dynamic loft on that one, Q? What was my total distance?

Quentin Patterson: Dynamic loft was 23.3°, and total distance was 175.9 yards.

Clay: OK, so not bad with an 8 iron. That was how many degrees dynamic loft?

Quentin: 23.3.

Clay: So I really got it low, slightly thin, so that may have made it read even a little bit lower than I wanted, but not a bad shot. I’ll definitely take 170-something with an 8 iron in the middle of the green.

Now the second piece here is my chest. One thing that most players have never been told before is that when you hit a shot, you actually want your chest to be opening up too.

When I come to impact, my hips are about 45° open. PGA Tour players chests, or their rib cage, what’s called your thorax, is about 20° open on average.

The only reason it doesn’t look open is because my left arm is cinched across my chest and now my shoulders look square, because my left arm is essentially doing this as I’m at impact.

So you can really feel, if you’ve ever heard somebody say “stay connected,” that’s that left arm kind of coming across the chest like that. My left bicep here is really cinched tight against my left pec.

If I had my hand in there, I really feel like I almost couldn’t pull it out. When I’m at impact, that’s that connected feeling I want to have. That’s my entire body helping to lean that shaft forward.

Let me go ahead and hit another one here, and I’m really going to feel like my chest is opening and my left side of my body, my left arm, is pressed together and that’s going to be really nice and tight there.

Let’s go ahead and try that one out, and we’ll see what the numbers are on that.

There we go, that’s right at the flag. A little better hit than the one before. What are the numbers on that one, Q? That one’s actually really tight, I’m not going to do much better than that.

Quentin: 22.5 dynamic loft, and the total distance was 178.4 yards.

Clay: So getting close to 180, and I’m almost taking a little too much loft off there, which is fine. That’s a good problem to have.

Now, lastly with that same idea, if your body is opening up – the dog wants in on this drill – the body opens up, the left arm is across the body, look if I turn my hips and my body back toward the camera.

My left arm is across my body like this. Again, if you’re standing up and flipping, your hands are trying to push cross your body this way.

I need my hands back here at impact if I’m going to have forward shaft lean. If that’s where my hands are at impact, as I get my body in position, now we can see that’s a really, really good spot.

So feel like your body’s opening up, your hands are almost on the right side of your body as you’re coming into contact.

Let me go ahead and hit another one there and feel like that. Again, my body’s opening, my hands almost feel like they’re in front of my right hip when I make contact with this golf ball.

There we go. That was really solid there. I’m not going to hit one a lot better than that. That one was a little more solid on the face, may show a little bit more dynamic loft on that one.

What were the numbers on that one, Q?

Quentin: Numbers on that one were 22.4 dynamic loft and 180 total yards.

Clay: Yeah, so that one really caught up nice, all the way up to 180, 22 dynamic loft. So I’m not going to do much better than that.

There’s one piece of this that you’re still going to get wrong even if you’re doing your hips and your body.

Now most players tend to get this right arm over active, flip the club out here, and kind of push it across their body with their right arm.

The real key here, and I kind of alluded to this in the last part of this, this last drill where I said your arms actually want to feel like they’re back here at impact, is that I have to square the face by rotating the club.

If I don’t do this, I’m going to block it to the right. I’m going to slice it every single time, if I get in the right impact position.

So here’s how we do this. If I come halfway down, my body’s in a good position. My right elbow’s tight to my body, my club is lagging here, but my face is wide open.

As I open up and rotate, my face is pointing way out there to the right somewhere. I have to do this motion where I take my left wrist and bow it, I take the club head and turn it down to the ground, that’s what squares up the face.

Now when I rotate through, look how I’ve taken all this loft off, but my club face is square. When you do this drill at home, do this same thing.

Pause here, right elbow tucked in, bunch of lag with the club, and then I’m going to rotate this face square. When I come to impact, my face should look dead square to the target.

My face shouldn’t be open like that at all. Has to be square to the target. That’s how you know you’re doing this correctly.

Do a few reps where you come to here, feel that, go to impact, feel that. Then you’re going to go back to your normal swing and try to recreate that same sensation and get tons of compression.

All right, so another good one there, just left of the flag. Not going to do a lot better than that one. What were the stats on that, Q?

Quentin: Dynamic loft was 26.1° and total distance went up to 181.2 yards.

Clay: Yeah, so hit those nice. Anything under 30° of dynamic loft, you’re going to be compressing it pretty well.

Now in the last part of that video I talked about this squaring of the club face. A lot of players really struggle with that motion. There’s a couple secrets that you have to do with the wrist to get that to really work correctly.

Now if you want to ingrain that in your own swing, you want to really hit those well-compressed blistering draw shots, go to the Top Speed Golf home page, go to the Instruction tab. Click on the Top Speed Golf System, and then go to The Move section.

I’m going to build on what we learned here today and it’s a program that walks you through it step by step. I’m going to talk about how to finally shallow that club out, square up that face, so you can really be in that pro-caliber impact position.

Go to The Move, I’ll see you there. I can’t wait to help you get The Move down once and for all.