Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "How to Finally Compress the Ball With Shaft Lean."

Do you feel like you’re not getting everything you should out of your irons?

Are you struggling with hitting them solidly?

Today, I’ll show you what the most common mistake is that causes these issues...

...you’ll see that it’s not as hard to fix as you think...

...and you’ll discover a sneaky wrist trick (revealed at the 3:56 mark) to square the club face.

Once you get past this hurdle, you’ll see a ton of improvement in your game!

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 10:41

Video Transcription:

Quentin Patterson: To compress the ball we really need to get the body more involved in the swing.

You see if you’re early releasing and flipping at the ball, it’s usually because you’re just using all arms in the swing, and you’re just not using your body enough.

So this is a great drill to help you get that body more involved. What you’re going to do is you’re just going to take an alignment stick. You can pick these up at about any home improvement store, just a couple dollars.

You’re going to take half of it and you’re going to put it out the other end of the butt end of the club. Then you’re going to grip it up against the handle there.

Initially here, I just want you to do some practice swings to get the feel for this. As I mentioned, if you’re early releasing the club it’s because you’re throwing the arms in front of the body and you’re letting your wrist go, letting the club head release.

What we want to do is what the opposite of that is. The opposite would be you’re opening the body and then the arms don’t go away from the body, and the wrist don’t do anything either.

We kind of want to hold this angle and turn the body through. What that’s going to do is that’s going to get the handle in front and the face squared up.

So how do we do that? First, what we’re going to do is we’re just going to take some short, slow swings. The reason why a lot of people struggle with using the arms a lot, is because the arms are fast. The wrists are fast.

If I just sat here, if I took the alignment stick here, if I just sat here and I just swung the club all arms, I could get a good amount of speed out of it.

But if I just took my arms, put it straight out in front of me and just tried to turn my body, it’s just not very fast.

Keep in mind that when you’re doing this drill, you’re not going to be hitting the ball very, very far. The idea here is to overdo using the body and get the sense of how the body needs to work to get the hands in front. Then at the end, we’re going add the hands into it to get the speed back.

Like I said, we’re going to put this alignment stick up here next to the body, or next to the club, and that’s going to be next to your ribs here.

What we want to do, is we want to create this angle between our chest and our arm, and then our arm and the club. So you see I’ve got these angles right here. I want to keep those angles throughout this swing.

If you imagine if I’m sitting here and I create these angles with a little half swing, and I just turned, well look, I’m way above the golf ball. In order to get down to the ball, I need to get my butt down to the ground.

I need to get my chest down closer to the ground. That’s what we need to feel as our backside goes back and down, and our chest goes forward.

We’re going to flex in the knees here, we’re going to push the butt back and down and our chest is going to go down and forward. Sorry if I hit the mic there, but we’re going to go down and forward when we do that.

When we do that, that’s going to allow us to get down to the ground. You see how I’m opening up when I do that.

What I’m opening up, I want to have the sensation that I’m standing on top of a pickle jar and I’m trying to open up that pickle jar as I’m coming through. I’m trying to twist into the ground.

So that’s by applying what’s called sheer force. These are direct forces into the ground, normal forces. I want sheer forces which are like that.

That’s what I want to feel when I’m going to into the ground, like I’m twisting off of a pickle jar. You’re going to be putting forces into the ground just by the weight of your body. To get the body to open, we need to feel sheer forces.

We need to feel pushing out away from you with this leg, and then pushing back behind you with that leg to really open things up.

If I put those together, I get down, flex my legs, push my backside back, get my chest lower, and then feel those sheer forces while trying to hold these angles.

Now I can come in and get lots and lots of shaft lean and I can have that face nice and squared up.

Here’s how we square up the face when we do this. We need to change our wrist angles. If you’re someone who’s flipping at the ball, your wrist angles are like this. We need our wrist angles to be bent back.

So I want to feel like this club face is pointing at the ball at this point in the swing. To do that, I’m going to feel my lead wrist bow down like the emblem of my glove is pointing down.

I’m going to feel my trail hand is pointing back down toward the ground. That’s going to get that face in a nice, strong position there so that way I can turn through.

When I turn through, I want to feel like I hold that angle all the way through. In order to do that, I have to use my body to rotate.

If I come here and I stop my body, look what happens. That’s going to hit me in the body. We want to make sure that this never gets closer to us, we want to feel like that is never, ever going to come close to hitting me in the side of my body when I’m doing this.

Again, we’re not going for speed here, we’re going to get that compression, to get that shaft lean as I’m going through here.

I’m going to do one nice and slow here. That’s what we’re trying to do. By any means, we’re trying to keep those angles and move the body as well as we can, as fast as we can, to keep the hands in front and not let that stick come by.

If you do this drill and you feel that hit you, it’s most likely because you’re not turning your body fast enough and you’re not resisting that urge to throw it. Keep these angles as you’re coming down, and you will have success with this.

So let’s try one, and again, this isn’t going to go real far, the idea is to get it really low and compressed, a really nice low and compressed shot when I’m doing this.

Let’s give this a try, this is just going to be a little half swing. Nice and slow, and nice and compressed.

I thinned that a little bit, but you can see how that launched really, really low. I kept the stick away from my body as I went through there. It only launched at 8°, that’s like what a 4 iron launches at. This is a 7 iron.

Now, what I want you to do is I want you to get 10 good ones of those. 10 good ones where you’re coming through, you’re not letting it hit your side, and you’re turning your body.

Again, that was only 49 club head speed. This is a 7 iron, that’s probably half of what my normal speed is with a 7 iron. I’m basically taking maybe a little bit more than a half swing and I’m not trying to go really, really fast with it.

Now what I’m going to try to do is now that I’ve got 10 of those, now I can crank it up a little bit and take it up to three-quarter swing and again, I’m going to try to hold that off as much as I can.

Basically, I want to come in and I want to finish like this with the club never ever passing my hands. So I want to go slow enough to where I can come through there and be in that kind of position.

Let’s set this up, and let’s get some practice swings where we’re getting that same kind of feeling. Now I’m going to go up to about three-quarters swing. I’m going to get that same feeling as I’m coming through there.

So three-quarter, never letting it pass my hands. You can see as I’m doing that, I’m getting my butt down. I’m getting my chest down lower. I’m opening up, and that’s going to allow me to get some decent speed when I do this.

Again, this may be, I’m guessing this will be close to 70 miles per hour, maybe? Because I’m just cranking it up just a little bit.

Let’s see, I probably won’t be able to get it at 8°, because that one was a little bit thin, unless I thin this one. But ideally here, I would get this to go under 14°. I think that would be pretty good.

So I pulled that one a little bit, got that one to go 9.1° but you can see I got this up to 73.8 miles per hour on that one. It went 128 yards.

That’s just not a lot of speed there. That’s very little speed compared to what I normally do and the ball went a pretty good distance there.

Now what I want to do, is I want to crank up this up a little bit more. I want to get the same feeling of my body opening up as I’m coming through here, and I want to feel like I’m holding it, but then at the end, I want to go ahead and let it come all the way around.

I’m getting full swing, and I’m feeling my body opening up. I’m retaining these angles, and I’m feeling like I’m coming through with my hands in front, still, of the club head.

Once I get up here, I want to go ahead and let it come all the way around into the full finish there. Let’s see if we can get a good compressed 7 iron.

I would say a 7 iron for me, if I’m around 15° of launch, that’s going to be a pretty well-compressed shot.

Again, I’m adding the arms into this a little bit now with that same feeling. I’m going to get a little bit more arms, which is going to make me release a little bit more, but I’m going to get a much better result than what I usually get because I worked on this drill.

All right, so didn’t quite get the 17° or the 15° launch there, probably got the arms in there a little bit too much, but you see my speed went up to almost 92 miles per hour, but 185 carry with a 7 iron, I’ll definitely take that all day.

I touched on this earlier when I was talking about the lead wrist, the emblem of the glove pointing down, in the trail wrist the palm of the hand pointing down to square up the face.

This is what we call The Move on the website. What we talk about in The Move is at the very start of the downswing, we want to get that club shallowing out to get it in good position, and we want to get those wrists bowing and that trail wrist bending down.

That way, you can more easily keep those angles as you’re coming in to impact and have that good forward shaft lean and compression on the ball.

If I don’t have this club in the right position, well, if I’m down steep like this, I’m just going to have to stand up to get it on plane. Now I’m flipping, I have no choice but to flip.

If I do what I did in this drill, well I’d be way above the ball, and I just have no chance to hit it. If I have the face really open as I’m coming down, well now I’m going to have to release it to square it up and stand up.

So it’s really, really important when we’re working on this drill, we work up to the full swing to be able to get The Move working properly. Otherwise, it’s going to be very, very difficult to get that release out in front like we’re talking about.

If you want to work through The Move course, this is included with your membership, click the Instruction tab at the top of your screen, then click the Top Speed Golf System, then The Move there.

Start working through those drills, getting that club nice and shallowed out, getting that face square, and I’m telling you what, this drill that we talked about here is going to be a total cinch if you get that down.

So play well, and I’ll talk to you soon.