Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn how to get more club head speed in golf.

Increasing your club head speed and getting more distance is crucial for lowering your scores.

The easiest way to get birdies in golf is to reach par 5s in 2.

And if you're struggling with distance...

Well, you're just not going to get many birdies.

This video is about hitting great long approach shots so you can get on the green, or close to it, after your second shot.

You'll get three awesome tips on how to increase your club head speed so you can smoke your shots and go for the green on long par 5s.

Tip #1 is about using your momentum properly so you can muster all the speed you can and transfer your energy into the ball.

You'll learn how to get a full turn in your swing, loading up in the backswing, then rotating fully through the downswing.

Then add your arms to the momentum created by your body.

Next, you'll learn where you need to hit the ball on your club face.

I'll break down the club face into four quadrants.

The lower two quadrants can kill your distance due to the gear effect.

Hitting the ball a bit higher on the club face is optimal for distance.

There's comparatively less spin and will get you a higher launch angle.

The video finishes with a drill for you to practice.

Get a full power turn, hit the ball slightly high and a tiny bit towards the toe to get more distance.

Watch this video now to find out how to get more club head speed in golf...

...slay those long par 5s...

And make more birdies!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 7:37

Video Transcription:

The easiest way to make birdies in golf is to get on the par 5s in two. So it’s so crucial to be able to hit your second shot close to the green, or preferably on the green when you’re farther away.

That takes a good club head speed though. Not only do we have to hit a long drive, a lot of times we’re going to have to hit a long approach shot, and that’s what we’re going to go over today.

I’m going to give you three awesome tips on how to increase your club head speed, and start hitting it farther right now. Let’s go ahead and start with the first tip here.

Now in golf, a certain amount of swing speed comes from your body; the hips, the shoulders, the arms, and that creates momentum. Then we’re going to add to that with the hands and arms. I’m going to cover both of these in this one video.

But as I turn back, I want to have my hips and my shoulders really load up, and then as they unwind, I’m going to be creating momentum in the downswing and then my arms and hands are going to add to that momentum with lag and release.

You can kind of think of this as a wrecking ball. Your body is the wrecking ball, it has more weight, it has more power, but it doesn’t move really, really fast.

We just want to get that momentum going in the right direction by loading up and unwinding, and then our hands and arms are going to be the really fast piece that adds on top of that.

The crucial piece for this, and the piece that I see people struggle with, is something that we address in our Power Turn in our Top Speed Golf System, and that’s loading the hips and shoulders.

As I go to the top of my swing, I want to make sure that as I go all the way back, I want to load up and I want my hips to get around 45° of turn. A lot of times one of the most popular things out there right now is to restrict your hip turn and really separate your hips and shoulders.

I want to separate my hips and shoulders, but I want to go ahead and get a decent amount of hip turn, that allows me to go even farther back and to create some momentum. Your really long hitters are always going to get a good hip turn going into the backswing.

A good way to visualize this is by thinking about where’s my belt buckle going to point? I want you to do about 100 repetitions going to the top of your swing, and I want your belt buckle to point at least 45° back, and I want my weight to be on the inside of my right foot as I’m loading up.

So it should look something like this, I’m going to check that belt buckle, make sure it’s pointing out here. That’s going to allow me to then add my shoulder turn and get at least a 90° shoulder turn, preferably a little bit more than that.

If you’ve been told to kind of stall out the hips, and to restrict the hip turn, we want to get away from that. We want to get a nice, solid hip turn as we’re going back.

The next piece that we’re going to do here after we’ve gotten this, is we’re going to turn through to a good, full finish with the hips.

As I’m coming through, my hips and body are rotating, they’re creating that momentum, kind of like the wrecking ball swinging into a house. We’re not going to go as much lateral, but we’re talking about rotating here.

I’m going to have my hips about 45° open as I come into contact, and as I finish my swing I want to make sure that I come all the way on around. If you look at my hips now, if I look at this belt buckle, it’s going to be pointing at least to the target, preferably even a little bit to the left of the target.

Some people that don’t have as much flexibility, just to the target is going to be fine. But again, that’s getting me to load up going back and to rotate that coming through to create that overall momentum in the swing.

Now that we’ve got the momentum of the body, we’ve got that baseline for speed, let’s add to that with the arms and the hands. This is where you’re really going to get the leverage in the golf swing.

As I’m coming down in the golf swing, we all know that we want to have lag as we’re coming into this golf ball. Then the key here is we’re going to release this lag out in front.

So lag is simply an angle between my forearms and the club as I’m starting down, and then as I release that I’m going to get rid of those angles, and that allows this club to whip through contact.

What I’d like for you to visualize here, is let’s imagine in the backswing, let’s imagine there’s a wall right here, a giant brick wall.

In the backswing, I want to be nice and wide. I want my club head to bash into that brick wall. So I’m going to slam my club head into the brick wall going back, I’m getting really, really wide.

I have very little wrist set, and as I’m coming down, I want to imagine having that angle of lag, and I’m going to miss that brick wall. I’m inside of it coming down, then I’m going to release all that speed.

I want you to go ahead and do about 100 repetitions with that good visual in your head. Wide, club head is going to be going through the brick wall going back. As I come down I’m going to miss the brick wall, and then I’m going to let all that release.

Do about 100 repetitions of that, also do 100 repetitions focusing in on the belt buckle that we did first. Then I’ve got one more drill for you that’s going to really help to take this over the top.

All right, one thing that people don’t often think about is where we’re actually making contact on the face. There’s different pieces of the face that are going to allow you for a lot more speed and a lot more distance. There’s some that are going to absolutely destroy your distance.

If we imagine the club face broken into four quadrants, we’re going to have a vertical line here straight up and down in the sweet spot, and then we’re going to have a horizontal line in the middle of the face.

So we have quadrant number one, two, three, four on the club face. Now whenever I hit in the bottom smaller, lower two quadrants, so three and four, what’s going to happen is what’s called gear effect.

As my club hits the ball, it’s actually going to roll the face forward because I’m hitting below the center of gravity, and as that face rolls forward, it creates spin, more backspin on the golf ball.

If I do this off quadrant number three, not only does it create a lot more backspin, but it also twists the face open, or excuse me, closed this way which is going to spin the ball to the right.

If I hit it off quadrant three, I’m going to have a ballooning fade kind of shot. So if we’re going this way, it’s going to balloon up and fade, and that really, really kills your distance. We can’t have that happen, that’s the weakest part to hit the club.

The second weakest part is the lower toe shot, that’s going to also get you more backspin, but now the ball’s going to start hooking. It’s not going to launch high enough, and it’s really just going to give you bad results there too.

If we go higher on the face, we’re going to have less spin and a higher launch. If we can launch the ball high with low spin, we’re really going to hit it far.

If we go off quadrant number two up here, high and off the hosel, that’s going to slow down our club head speed, or our ball speed a little bit, because again, that face is going to twist in.

Where we really want to hit the ball is just slightly high on the face, either dead center on the sweet spot, a little above the normal sweet spot where you’d think of it, or slightly on out to the toe. That’s going to get us a high launch, it’s going to get us low spin, and that’s going to promote a little bit of a draw.

If we had a par 5, a second shot on a par 5, and we’re not sure if we can quite get there, go ahead and take a good rip at it, and try to hit it high on the toe. You’re going to get the farthest shots that you can get.

Now that you’ve done 100 repetitions pausing, we understand where to hit it on the club face, we’re going to do another 100 repetitions. You can do this in your living room, making sure we get a good turn with the hips going back, nice lag, release that lag, good turn with the hips coming through.

On every one of these practice swings, I want you to visualize a nice, high contact on the face, and slightly on the toe if you can. Once you get comfortable with that visualizing it, we’ll go ahead and take it to the course and make some full swings.

All right you guys, focus on those keys and you’re going to hit it a lot farther. Good luck.

That was right on the stick.