Why You Need This: Today, you'll learn "How to Make a Perfect Downswing"

There are many different ways that you can bring the club back and be a very successful golfer...

...what really matters for consistency...  distance... you name it...

...is the downswing.

You see, even if you're making a great initial downswing move to get your club "into the slot"...

...there are 2 crucial pieces that are consistently left out that'll cause you to feel "stuck"...  rob you of swing speed... and hurt your consistency...

Find out what these simple moves are (it's not difficult to do once you know them)...

...and make life a LOT easier on yourself.

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 13:13

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Have you ever had that feeling where you’re going to let your arms drop to start the downswing?

Well what if I told you if you’re doing that, it’s not really the best way to create a lot of power. We’re going to talk about that idea, that theory, how that can be good in theory, and that swing thought can be good, but only for a certain type of player.

I’m going to go over the real ways to create power and have that perfect transition in your downswing. Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, we’ve got Q here, he’s going to man the iPad, and I’m going to do one where I feel like the club just completely drops with gravity, and then do one the proper way.

It really comes down to what I would say is the weight shift. So let me hit a couple here, Q, and let’s see the differences in these two.

The main mistake that I see with letting this club fall completely with gravity, I actually like that for a certain kind of person, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do that.

The main mistake that I see is when someone goes up to the top of the swing they say OK, I’m going to let this fall with gravity, and they close off their body.

The don’t get any kind of weight shift and they feel like when they’re doing their practice swing it looks something like this. I’m just letting this club drop.

Look how my body’s completely closed off I’m not opening up, I’m not getting a weight shift to the left.

If you do that what ends up happening is you get very stuck and you lose a lot of power, because if I let the arms feel like they’re dropping here and I don’t shift to the left and I don’t open up like I should in a good golf swing.

I end up from the last half of my swing now trying to fling the arms at it to catch up. So let me do what I just talked about, the incorrect way to let your arms drop with gravity which would be to not let myself get a weight shift and to get really too closed to the target.

Let’s go ahead and try one of those out. Yeah, threw way off my timing. I felt like I kind of let the club drop and then all of a sudden I’m so closed, I just had to flick the hands at it.

It really just felt like very uncoordinated, it felt like my arms and hands were pushing so much across my body. Not really what you want to have, but I feel like a lot of players have that feeling sometimes.

We’re going to talk about the numbers with that, then the right way to do it. So what was the numbers on my swing speed and what was the general stats there, Q?

Quentin Patterson: Right, so club head speed was about 107 miles an hour, quite a bit below your normal club head speed there. Carry distance was just 241.

Clay: OK. So whether I’m hitting it 240 or 300, or you’re hitting it 220, doesn’t matter what you’re doing right now, that same idea, that same feeling that I had is going to lead you to a lot of inconsistency.

You’re going to feel like your arms are doing a ton of the work, and you’re going to feel like you just can’t hit it as well as you know you can. So if that sounds like you, here’s the part that’s missing with that.

I don’t mind letting the hands feel like they’re dropping with gravity and being pretty soft in this first part of the downswing, as long as we’re getting a weight shift to the left and we’re letting the body go ahead and start to open up when that’s happening.

You see when I let the body open up, so if I go to the top and I feel like my hands are dropping, as I let my body open up I let my weight get to my left side, now I’ve engaged my body and I’ve started the momentum of my downswing.

Then in the second part of the swing, we’ll get to this later in this video, but in the second part of my swing, now I can go ahead and fire my arms once I’m in a good position starting down.

Let’s work on that transition here, but first let me go ahead and show the proper way to do this now.

I’m still going to feel like I stay pretty soft with my hands and arms, but I’m going to start the downswing by shifting to the left and getting my lower body really even my hips and my shoulders engaged, kind of early in the downswing here.

Let’s start with that weight shift to the left, then we’ll fire the arms. Let’s try that one out. There we go, much better, right down the left-center of the fairway.

That one carried over that tree so I know my club head speed’s going to be way up on that one. What were the numbers on that one?

Quentin: Club head speed 122 miles per hour, total distance is about 316.

Clay: OK, so that one, obviously I was able to build a lot more speed. My body and my arms were in synch, how did I do that? Let’s go through a series of drills here.

What we have to do is feel like once you get to about right here in the swing, this is a kind of a halfway in my backswing, that’s when my weight starts to shift to the left.

So a good drill for this is, let’s start out, let’s imagine we’re setting up to a ball here. Come back inside of it.

Let’s start out with our feet together, and what I want to do is I want to start to take a little step in my backswing. So I’m going to step, I’m going to put weight into my left foot, and then I’m going to swing down into the follow through.

That looks like this, if I do this correctly. Step, weight, then swing down. If I do it at full speed, it’s going to look like this.

So you can see how my step was very early, my weight got there before my hands and arms started to drop down in the downswing, then I started my downswing.

That’s the right sequence that you want to have. Almost every single player that I ever do this drill with, doesn’t like this drill in the beginning. Here’s the reason they don’t like this drill.

They’ll go to the top of the swing, start down with the hands and arms, and then try to take that step forward. That’ll give you the sensation that I got in that first one, everything’s out of whack.

I don’t have any speed, I don’t have any power. I don’t want it to look like this, where I’m stepping in my downswing. The proper weight shift in the golf swing looks more like this.

Step, weight left, then swing down. Let me go ahead and do two or three more of these so you can see these. Those are just nice and smooth ones there, and we can see how it looks very fluid.

That’s how you can effortlessly get that power. Do about 10 to 15 of those, once you feel comfortable with it, let’s get the same feeling without moving our feet. Here you’re going to feel like you unweight your left heel.

Lift your left heel just barely off the ground. As I start to complete my backswing o as I complete my backswing, weight goes to the left, then I swing down.

So as I’m putting weight into my left side, I do feel effortless with the hands and arms here. I’m not flicking at the hands and arms, I’m not rushing the swing from the top, I’m just getting my weight left then I’m going to swing down.

You can do the exact same thing when you’re actually making a swing with the ball. I’m going to go ahead and lift my heel here a little bit.

I’m going to push into my left heel, then I’m going to start my downswing, so it looks like this. I’ll go ahead and give this one a good rip, let’s see if we can get over the last swing speed.

There we go, I couldn’t hit one any better than that. That one’s going to be way up there, so probably around the same swing speed, but that one probably carried a good 310, 315, I’m guessing.

Quentin: Yeah, so 124 mile per hour in the club head speed there, total distance went up a little bit, 326.

Clay: OK, so that one perfectly synched up. I didn’t feel like I rushed from my hands and arms. I got that weight shifting forward first, then I swung.

If you’re swinging 80 miles an hour right now, those same drills are going to help you to get to 90. Once you get to 90, try to get up to 100.

So doesn’t matter if you’re swinging really slow or really fast, those same principles apply to everybody. So we’ve got to get that weight shift first.

Now Q, one of the big mistakes I see other than waiting way too long in the downswing to get the weight shift is kind of getting that club steep, getting it over the top.

Then when that club gets steep, now I feel like I’ve got to, again, all hands and arms, everything’s all out of whack. So what do we do from there?

Quentin: Yeah, so that’s the big key there. The first thing was getting that good weight shift, that’s how we get everything started.

But if we get steep, if you just want to go at the top of the swing, and then get a little bit steep in the transition.

So in the start there, steep, basically what that means is we’re getting this club in more of a vertical place. When you’re right here in the downswing, you see that’s pointing well inside the golf ball here.

When you get in this kind of position, you either have to continue to either come down over the top and you’re going to kill your distance, hit a bunch of slices, and pulls, and things like that when you do that.

Clay: Really be chopping down into it too, yeah.

Quentin: Yeah, lose a ton of distance when you do that. Or, what we see often players do, especially good players, good players who are good at getting the club on plane, is what we’ll do is we’ll actually stand up.

What that does is that raises the handle, that drops the head, and now that club is on plane as you’re coming through, but what happens is, is we have to stand up in the downswing and we know what that means when you stand up, right?

Early extension. You’re going to flip at the golf ball, you’re going to lose a ton of power.

Clay: It’s block city.

Quentin: Yeah.

Clay: Those balls are going that way when you start standing up.

Quentin: Blocks, hooks.

Clay: At least the ones when you’re doing bad swings.

Quentin: Yeah, really, really tough to control. So what we want to do is we really need to get that club into a nice, shallowed-out position.

If you go back to that steep position again, we need to get this club shallowing out here where the butt end of the club is pointing outside the golf ball.

So we’re going to need to feel this elbow coming into the body here, your trail elbow, you’re going to need to feel your lead elbow kind of pointing in the same direction as the shaft, pointing outside the golf ball.

You’re also going to want to feel like your wrists are kind of turning this way, almost like you’re turning a door knob to the right.

From Clay’s point of view, my point of view here, we’re turning the doorknob to the right. From your view, it’s going to be to the left, but that’s the kind of feeling.

That’s what’s going to get all that nice and shallowed out. Then from there, it’s really, really intuitive from there to be able to just rotate into the golf ball and use that great weight shift that we just got to be able to get a lot of speed and power.

So Clay, how about in this one why don’t you try a steep one where you show what happens when we get a little bit of a steepness in the transition, and then we’ll do one where we get it nice and shallowed out.

Clay: I’ll be honest with you, I really struggle getting any of them steep, because I feel like I loose complete awareness of where the club is. I can hit them kind of anywhere.

I’ll try to get this steep and then kind of let it shallow late like I see a lot of players do. I’ll do my best effort at that at least.

Yeah, there I felt like I tried to save it. When I first hit that ball, my natural reaction was oh, I think I hit that one pretty good.

I would have thought that that was a pretty straight shot, but you just lose awareness of where this club head is. I can’t tell if it’s going 50 yards right or 50 yards left. What happened on that one?

Obviously, I saw it hooked way to the left, it was the swing speed’s probably down too, because now I’m making all these compensations.

Quentin: Yeah, so 110 miles an hour in the club head speed, it went quite a bit down. Got some pretty good distance out of it, but that’s just going to be so hard to control when it’s coming in steep like that.

Clay: So when you’re doing that, when you have this club this steep, it’s not saying you can’t hit some great shots. You may hit some fantastic shots, you may even be a good player that’s doing this.

But man, it’s really reliant on the timing. It’s really a lot tougher to get that ball, that club squared up at impact. So let’s put that together with what we’ve talked about in the first part.

I’ve got to get that weight shift to the left. Again, let’s make it really, really simple here. All you need to feel like you’re doing is when you’re about halfway into your backswing, start to get your weight going to the left side.

Once your weight feels like it’s on your left foot, then you make your downswing. Don’t feel like your arms rush from the top.

As you’re feeling like you’re really nice and soft as you’re beginning, go to the left, let that club shallow out. Get that right elbow in like Q talked about.

Get these hands feel like they’re turning the doorknob to the right like he’s talking about. Then you’re going to be in a great position to start the downswing.

Engage the lower body first, engage the weight shift first, feel like the arms are soft, then go ahead and let it rip.

The final piece there is once I’m in this good position my weight is to the left, my club is shallow, I’m really loaded up, tons of lag here, now I can just hammer at that ball as hard as I want to.

My body’s in the perfect position to hit really nice, solid, straight shots. So let’s go ahead and hit one more here, putting it together.

Weight shift, soft arms and shallowing, and then just go ahead and let it fly. There we go, now on that one, even on that one, a little low on the heel.

Not even the best swing, but what felt like a bad swing was still on the fairway versus what felt like a good swing being kind of left and right and all over the place. What are the numbers on that one?

Quentin: So about 122 miles per hour and 311 total distance.

Clay: Yeah, so pretty dag-gone good for a mis-hit. That’s what you can get when you’re getting the correct technique. You get the right sequence. Even your mis-hits are going to be a lot better.

Now I bet you’re going to get that weight shift pretty quick. Once you start to feel the power of getting your weight to the left and then making that downswing, you can really feel like you hammer the ball a lot harder, and you feel like you’re in synch even better once you start to get that weight shift down.

One of the things that really pays dividends if you take a little extra time with it though, is the shallowing of the club.

Feeling like this club shallows out, especially if you’re one of the players that wants to push a little bit from the top. If you want to cast that club a little bit too early, maybe you don’t have as much lag as you’d like.

That shallowing move can really be a game changer. What I want you to do to build this into your swing forever is go to The Move section of the Top Speed Golf System.

So go to the Instruction tab, TSG System, go to The Move there, and really work through those drills. You’ll be surprised.

I have several key insights that are only mentioned there that are really going to help you to break through once and for all.

You follow that, and you’re going to be able to really have that lag that you want, to really have that club shallow, to feel like you can go out it and still know where the club face is.

There’s a lot of really good things that that system does, but you can only get it if you follow through the step.

You follow those steps piece by piece, you do the drills that I recommend, and man, you’re going to be getting that club nice and shallow, you’re going to be playing some of the best golf of your life.

I’ll see you in The Move.