Why You Need This: In this video, "Golf Swing Made Simple!"...

You'll find out what you need to work on to...

Improve quickly while putting in the least amount of work as you reasonably can.

Too good to be true?

It sure does sound like it's to good to be true, but it's not.

If you focus on what's discussed in this video, you can make big improvements in less time.

Let me explain...

There are a few major moves in the swing that make or break your swing.

On the flip side, there are tons of moves in the swing that aren't worth obsessing over because, for the most part, they don't matter.

The key is to work hard and spend the majority of your time on the few major moves and forget the rest.

So, what are the key moves?

Here's a quick list (more info in the video)...

1. Stable spine angle. This is key for consistency.
2. Build lag in your swing. This will help you whip the club through with tons of club head speed.
3. "Compression Line"... your ankle, hip, and shoulder all lined up and stacked in a straight line (slightly tilted) at impact.
4. "Straight Line Release"...Release your built up power all the way through impact.
5. "Power Turn"...For distance, let your hips and shoulders rotate fully back and make a massive turn all the way through.

Those are the top 5 fundamentals for a great swing.

But there's a close #6...

It's what I call "The Move."

This refers to shallowing out the club in the downswing which is key for creating momentum in the swing.

Near the end of the video, you'll get some great tips on how to practice so what you learn sticks.

Watch this video now to discover the few swing moves that really matter and enjoy the golf swing made simple!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 13:39

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, great to have you here today. I’m going to do a totally different video than what I would normally do. I’ve actually got a pile of golf balls here, I’m just going to hit some balls as we talk about what’s the most important things in the golf swing.

So if I want to get better, I want to improve absolutely as fast as I can, put in the least amount of work and get the most amount of gains out of that, what do I need to work on?

I think there’s a few things that are really, really important in the golf swing. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that doesn’t really make hardly any difference at all, to be pretty matter of fact about it.

If we focus on the things that matter, and we practice them in the right way, then we’re going to be able to do pretty well.

Here I’ve got my radar set up, so I’ve got my FlightScope X2 Elite, it’s about a $12,000 pretty cool radar. It’s going to show us on my iPad the radar tracks the ball through the flight.

We’re going to track and see how far my total distance is, what my swing speed is, and so we can actually see me putting these to work and I’ll kind of talk about what I’m focusing on as I’m doing these swings.

Let’s go ahead and start out just by giving one a whirl. We’ll try to rip one and see how I do, hopefully I can hit the fairway with a lot of these.

There we go, that one was right down the middle. Hit that one nice and solid. Let’s see what my radar says. That one was probably almost dead straight.

That one was 316 total carry, didn’t pick up – or total distance – didn’t pick up the club head speed for some reason. I hit that one really nice.

One of the most important things there, if we’re going to be consistent, if we’re going to be able to hit a lot of shots in a row consistent, we have to keep our spine angle working consistently.

This is one of the first keys, I call it the number one fundamental in our Top Speed Golf System. When I’m setting up at address, my spine is tilted slightly away from the target, the direction I’m going to be hitting.

As I go to the top of the swing, I’m still tilted slightly away. At contact, because I had a weight shift to the left, I’m tilted just a little bit more. Even on through to the finish, I’m tilted slightly away.

I’m keeping that spine angle. You can imagine this is my spine, this is a very generalized idea, but I’m rotating back, I’m rotating through, and I’m not letting my spine move all over.

Something that would be different than that would be a reverse pivot where I’m letting my spine do this, and then I’m falling back. It’s going to be so hard to hit the ball consistent if I’m moving my spine around.

I call that the number one fundamental. I think that’s the most important thing to being able to hit a lot of solid shots consistently, and to be able to hit a lot of fairways and greens.

Oh, that went a little right. Wasn’t as good, just on the right edge of the fairway, just a little bit barely in the rough. Tried to hit that one a little too hard for you. Let’s see what the distance was. 323 after roll, so it’s rolling pretty good today.

All right, so the next thing if we want to get speed, we want to have those big distances, big high club head speeds, that one was almost 116 club head speed, so nothing crazy.

In order to get speed and consistently get speed, we have to get a lot of lag. This is one of the most important things, getting your elbow to work in front of your body. Getting your wrist to create an angle with the club, and then releasing that club out in front.

Basically, if you look at my club shaft, we’re creating a sharp angle and then we’re releasing that angle out front of the golf ball to get that club to whip on through there.

Now we could swing a lot of different ways. A lot of players tend to cast a little bit, I could cast this club out, and if I’m big and strong, and I’m swinging all out maximum effort, I could probably still get some pretty decent distance, even if I casted the club.

I would never get anywhere near my maximum distance, but it’s going to be very tough to be consistent, because as I start to cast the club, I have to put out so much more effort in order to get that distance.

I want to make sure that I get that lag, I release that out in front to let the club do a lot of the work for me. There we go, that one was just down the left center of the fairway. Hit that one hard.

That was a good ball. Let’s see what our FlightScope says. 332, 116 and a half club head speed. So I hammered that one. That’s letting the club do a lot of the work, and then letting that club really whip on through there to get a lot of speed.

Now another thing for consistency that I talk about is my compression line. What I call the compression line is at impact, my left ankle, my left hip, my left shoulder, are all going to be stacked up right on top of each other.

They’re going to be in a straight line, slightly tilted away from the target. That allows me to release the club very, very consistently.

If I start to get my hip to bump out in front, watch my shoulders drop down. I could hit behind this golf ball very easily. I’m also going to get some pain in my left hip. I’m going to have a tough time rotating through the shot.

So getting that hip to clear back out of the way is going to allow me to rotate through the shot. It’s going to keep my shoulders and my body in the correct angle, then I can just let the club go and again, the club’s going to do a lot of the work for me.

I’m not going to have to feel like I’m trying to swing really hard to get good results. There we go that one was right down the middle again. Little bit of wind behind us here today, but that was hit hard. Let’s see what that one did. Slight fade, 319, so hit that one good too.

We’ve talked about stable fluid spine, we’ve talked about lag, we’ve talked about release, we’ve talked about the compression line. Those are really, really important things. I think that those are big to be able to be consistent and to get consistent speed.

My battery’s going a little low there.

Now the last thing we’re going to talk about as far as the technique, these are the big five for technique, is what we call the Power Turn.

As I load up in the backswing, on average PGA Tour players are going to turn their shoulders about 115°. I’m letting my hips go. Very popular these days to say we want to restrict the hip turn. That’s not good for distance.

We want to let those hips rotate going back, all the big hitters are letting those hips rotate, and then as I come through into my Power Turn, I’m going to let my shoulders rotate all the way on through the shot, to where they’re pointing down the left side of the rough.

Again, I’m going to turn back and turn through. Make a good aggressive swing, and really try to get some good speed on the swing.

Now if I don’t have a good Power Turn, if I limit my shoulder turn, I just kind of pick the club up with my arms, I’m going to feel like I’m all hands and arms.

Everybody has these guys that their club, it feels like they’re just picking it up and swinging all arms like that. No way to get distance, we’ve got to turn our body back and through.

Again, that’s the fifth fundamental we talk about, or one of the five fundamentals we talk about in the Top Speed Golf System that are so important to your golf game. Let’s go ahead and try to hammer another one.

There we go, right down the middle. Hit that one nice and solid. That’s got to be right out there where the rest of them were. See what the FlightScope says. 317 on that one, hit that one good and solid too.

We talked about the five pieces of the technique that I think are the most important. Now we could go into tons of detail. I think one of the six fundamentals that are very important, those are the main five.

If we wanted to add a couple more, we could talk about shallowing this club out. We call that The Move, that’s also in the Top Speed Golf System, it’s in that same section.

We shallow that club out, get a little bow in our wrist, and then release that club. That gets the momentum of the club kicking forward.

We could also talk about early extension as a big problem that we also have on a bonus series for the Top Speed Golf System, where we talk about how to keep our shoulders in posture and keep our shoulders in posture as we’re coming on through, so we stay in posture throughout the swing.

Those are the core pieces. I think there’s five really main ones that are the most important, there’s probably two or three other technique pieces that we cover on the website that I would say are secondary, they’re still important, but not quite as important as the main five.

Then the last thing that I always talk about that I think is really, really important that hardly anybody talks about is how we practice. I do something called variability training. Let’s go ahead and hit one more and I’ll talk about variability training a little bit.

There we go, right down the just right edge of the center. Hit that one pretty good again, see what that one says. 331 again, so that one a little high on the face. Big knuckle ball, got a lot of roll. Hit that one really well.

Once we have the technique pieces down, and we understand what those are, the thing that matters the most is how we practice, what’s called deliberate practice.

If you read a book called “Peak,” there’s two really good books, I think they’re the best two books every written on how to get good at anything. One of them is called Peak by Dr. K. Anders Ericcson, he’s the guy that came up with the 10,000 hour rule, or what’s been called the 10,000 hour rule.

In that book he talks about deliberate practice, which means we have deliberate practice, we have to have a clear goal of what we’re trying to do and a clear way to measure that goal.

If we can do that, then we can – Ah, I cut that one a little bit, it may stay in the fairway, right on the edge of the fairway. But if we can do that, have those clear goals and measure those, then we can improve really, really fast.

I’m coming up to the golf ball – ah, 310, not quite as good as the other ones, but I’ll take it. So I’m coming up to this golf shot, and I’m thinking about anything in my swing, and I’m just using the ball flight as whether or not I’m hitting it well.

So I’m just using did my drive go 320 yards down the middle, as whether or not I made a good swing. There’s just too many variables there, I have no idea if I’m doing it right.

I have to set up a camera like I’m doing here today, and I’ve got to measure what is my Power Turn look like. Am I getting my good shoulder turn? Am I getting my good turn coming all the way on around?

I’ve got to work on those time and time again to ingrain those. That’s a big piece of it, is deliberate practice, having a way to measure what we’re doing.

I’m also going to go into a big series of videos that we’ll have coming up in the next few months, I’m going to talk about what’s happening at contact.

We’re going to work on hitting draws, on hitting fades, on hitting different shot shapes so that we can really practice those, and we’re going to have deliberate practice. We’re going to learn how to control our ball, get complete control of the ball flight.

That’s the big piece, is deliberate practice. Then the last one is variability training. When you want to improve quickly, you actually have to try to vary things up.

See how hard I can hit this one, I’m going to really go after this one. Oh, swung a little too hard, down the left edge of the fairway. See if it will come back. May just barely got out of the fairway. Yeah, so 325, 118 club head speed, so a couple miles an hour faster club head speed.

When I’m working on anything that I want to work on, I have to vary it up. Let’s say that I’m going on Power Turn. I think it’s a good idea to do some where I get a huge Power Turn, really load up as far as I can load, and then come all the way on through as far as I can go on through.

A couple that way, and then I also want to – sounds counterintuitive but it really works well – I’m actually going to go where I go a short Power Turn, not very good, and then a short turn through, and I’ll be able to feel the difference.

If I do that, I just can’t get any speed. If I compare that to a really big one, I’m going to go way too far here. Really load up, I can feel a huge difference, and I can start to feel how much is a lot, how much is not enough.

If we do the same thing that we’ve always done, maybe we’re not making a very good Power Turn, but we just can’t feel it in our swing.

Having this variability training, training going too much, training not going enough, to be able to get that feel jumps to us right away of what’s enough. Then again, using the feedback of the camera to tell us if we’re doing it right. That’s the last piece.

The five fundamentals that we went over earlier, those are the most important techniques. If we can work on those, we’re going to improve the fastest that we can improve, because those are the core pieces that are going to control your ball flight.

Reading Peak by Dr. K. Anders Ericcson, talks about deliberate practice, having something you can measure, having a clear goal, and being able to check that as you’re practicing, that’s really big.

Also variability training, where we’re actually varying up what we’re doing is really, really big. Another book that I’ll leave you on here is “The Talent Code,” which is just a fun read but it talks about how we can do a lot of repetitions, and that’s the last piece.

We’ve got to have a lot of repetitions. We’re going to have to practice, we’re going to improve really quickly, so it’s going to be fun, but we will have to practice if we want to improve our golf game.

Let’s go ahead, I’m going to try to see how hard I can hit this last one, see if I can get it up around 120, maybe, with the club head speed and we’ll end on a good one.

Oh, swung too hard. Came out of that one, went a little bit left into the rough. See what the club head speed was, 120.6 club head speed, 330 total distance, but that one’s in the woods. It’s not going to do good on that one.

Go out there, work on those big pieces. Work with the Top Speed Golf System where we have everything formatted exactly to work that system on how you can improve the fastest. You guys are going to have a lot of fun. I’ll see you all soon.