Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "How to Release the Golf Club"

When it comes to "releasing" the club, there are always a lot of questions.

Whether it's not knowing what it means to "release the club"...

...not understanding when you should be releasing the club...

...or not knowing "how" to release the club properly.

Today, not only will you understand the first two concerns...

...but I'll give you the 2 keys to making sure you know how to release the club.

You'll also see how something as simple as sitting in a chair can help add major yardage (35 yards in this example) to your swing...

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 9:28

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Now one thing that all great players do, is they all come through contact in a very similar manner. Forward shaft lean, releasing the club out in front. Hitting it squarely through contact.

Those are all common traits that you basically take everybody that’s good at golf, they’re all going to be doing those very, very similarly.

Now players that struggle with golf are usually doing the exact opposite of that. I’m going to talk about the right and wrong way to come through contact. Q’s got the FlightScope, we’re going to read some of these numbers to you.

Let’s go ahead and jump in and get started.

All right, so let’s talk about something that all great players do, and I actually took all Major winners from the year 2000. I measured their stats on this, and the average amount in front that they release the club is about 40°.

Now what this means is, and what I’m talking about here, let’s talk about what the release is in general.

When you’re starting your downswing, I have a big angle of lag when my left arm is parallel to the ground. Big sharp angle between my forearms and this club.

If I was to grip up on the club, you’ll see how the club angle, club shaft angle, is well outside my forearms.

Now from here, I’m starting to release. So as my wrists are releasing this angle, you’ll see this club starts to get closer and closer to my forearms.

At impact it’s something like this with an iron, and then eventually, it splits those forearms. So all my wrist angles are gone. This is what I would call the release point.

So in a good golf swing, just like I was talking about the pros doing, you have lag here and then you’re releasing that all the way through the shot. It’s fully released when you hit the golf ball.

Then it fully releases out here, I like to say about 45° in front just to give a good visual. I think 40.5-something is the Tour average.

When I release out in front like this, a lot of good things happen at contact. Number one, I’m going to have some forward shaft lean. My hands are going to be in front of this golf ball.

The average loft on my 6 iron here is 31° for most, depends on your set, but most lofts of a 6 iron are going to be around 30°.

Tour players are actually leaning this club shaft forward to where it only has 20°. Now if I fully released, my shaft would be straight up and down, splitting my forearms at contact.

That wouldn’t be good. I’d have the 30° of normal loft on there. So by releasing in front like that, my hands are going to get in front of the golf ball. I’m going to deliver more energy into the golf ball.

When I have the shaft leaning forward, that makes less loft on this club and more energy is going into the golf ball, getting a hire ball speed and more distance.

Let me demonstrate this for you. On this first swing, I’m going to have a good release. I’m going to max out my lag here, and I’m going to release it out in front.

The golf ball’s going to get in the way, and I’m going to have this nice forward shaft lean. Let’s go ahead and try one of those out first.

There we go, hit that one perfect. Not going to hit it much better than that. Q, could you tell me what my dynamic loft is, and some of the stats on there?

Quentin Patterson: Your dynamic loft was 22.3° and your total distance was about 210 yards with a 98-mile-per-hour club head speed.

Clay: So good swing speed, good loft. Tour average is around 20°-21°, that was 22°, so just a little bit higher. I could even get a little bit more forward shaft lean there.

Obviously hitting a 6 iron over 200 yards, hit it pretty dag-gone solid.

Another key there with that, is this is a question I get all the time, wouldn’t my club head speed be slower if I’m releasing in front of the golf ball? Don’t I want to release everything at the golf ball?

Well, the key with this is, the more my club is lagging behind, as that’s releasing, it’s picking up speed. As it starts to get closer to being fully released, I don’t have this big angle whipping through contact any more, or whipping through any more.

If I was to release at the golf ball, club shaft straight up and down, club splitting my forearms, it would speed up really fast back here and as it gets closer and closer to splitting the forearms, the acceleration would be less.

So it’s not accelerating as fast, it would actually start to peak out its maximum speed back here and then slow down slightly at the golf ball.

If I can get that good angle of lag and then be releasing it through contact, and it doesn’t fully release until up here, I’m getting the peak velocity right at the golf ball and then I hit the golf ball and it starts to slow down afterwards.

So your peak swing speed isn’t when the club is fully released, your peak swing speed is just prior to when the club is fully released, it’s still accelerating really quickly through there.

That’s another reason that you want to be releasing in front and you want to have that forward shaft lean. Just to give an example of this, let me do one the wrong way.

I’m going to start doing what I see a lot of players do when I’m giving lessons and I see swings, they’re releasing this too early and the club is splitting the forearms, they’ve released at the golf ball. Let’s see what the numbers go to when I do that.

So I hit that one, actually this will be a great test, because I hit that one as solid as I could hit it. I happened to match up the dead center of this club head with the golf ball on that one, but I flipped it.

So what was my swing speed and my stats on that one?

Quentin: Your total distance went down to about 174 yards, your club head speed was 95, so not much lower, but the dynamic loft went all the way up to 29°.

Clay: Almost had the shaft straight up and down, the normal loft that’s on this golf club, this 6 iron. My carry distance went down.

I’m pretty strong, pretty fast, so I was still able to swing fairly fast, but not as fast I could when did it the right way. And, the ball went just way up in the air. It didn’t have that penetrating solid ball flight.

It didn’t even feel that good, even though I hit it dead center on the sweet spot. The one before felt way better because I’m transferring more energy into the golf ball.

So finally, this is all great Clay, I understand that I should be releasing in front. It’s great for swing speed. How the heck do I do this? Let me give you a couple key feelings to make this happen.

Number one is the legs. If I start to extend my legs too early, so if I start to do this with my legs and now I’ve lost all this angle, I’m going to have to flip and release early just to be able to reach this golf ball.

I’m getting farther from the ball, I have to flip to catch it. So what I want you to feel like, is in the transition in your downswing, feel like your legs really bend here.

It’s not going to actually happen that way, I’m really exaggerating here, but I want you to feel like there’s a chair behind your butt. I’m going to sit in that chair and my legs are really going to bend.

The closer I get to the ground, now the more I can lean the shaft forward. If my hands are tall, I have to release all this angle to reach the golf ball.

The closer I get to the ground, not more I can lean it forward. So if I wanted to put my hands all the way on the ground, I could have tons and tons of forward shaft.

Obviously, that’s not how we’re going to swing the golf club, but that just illustrates how when this club gets lower, it gets more forward. That’s the first piece. Make sure you bend your legs.

Piece number two, make sure when you do this you’re opening the body. A lot of times what will happen is that the body will stall out.

Imagine this is a fan blade and I have a golf club attached to it. As long as I keep the fan moving, this club is going to lag behind. I’m going to have that forward shaft lean.

If I stop the fan, all of a sudden, the club’s going to fling past it. So my fan’s turning and all of a sudden I slam on the brakes, the club’s going to release.

That’s why you have to keep rotating and keep accelerating through the golf ball, get your body opening up, which allows you to have that forward shaft lean.

So on this one, I’m going to bend the legs, I’m going to keep the body opening up, and you’ll see that I’m able to create a ton of forward shaft lean, hopefully get even a little bit less loft on this and hit the ball really, really crisp and clean.

There we go, that one felt fantastic. When I’m looking at that ball land, that was pretty hammered for me. It’s right up there with some of the best ones that I’ve hit.

I’m guessing that’s probably still around kind of low 20s, right around the one before?

Quentin: Yeah, 22.6°, very similar to the one before.

Clay: Yeah, so I feel like that’s a very solid shot. Anything within a couple degrees is going to be perfectly fine. I just don’t want to get it up there by 30° of loft, which would be the shaft straight up and down.

So I had a nice 8° of forward shaft lean there.

Now when you’re doing this, one key for this is that I need to square this face up more, and get this coming from the inside for all this to work.

If I have the face open, and I try to open my body, all of a sudden that ball’s going a mile to the right. It’s going to be really weak. I need to get that face squaring up and then coming through contact.

So what you want to do is go through The Move. This is a series of videos where I teach you how to deloft the club, get more forward shaft lean, come from the inside, all these great things we’ve been talking about in this video. I have a program that’s built along that.

So if you go to the Instruction tab at the top of your screen, click on the TSG System, and then go to The Move from there. Once you work through these videos, that really helps you to ingrain for a lifetime what we talked about here.

We’re going to add this great body position, these great leg positions, but now we’re also going to work and learn how to square up the face and come from the inside to get kind of in the slot, so to speak.

It makes it completely automatic. You go through this series once, you’re going to have tremendous results in your game. You’re going to hit the ball a heck of a lot more solid, and you’re just going to have a lot of fun doing it.

So I can’t wait to go ahead and get started with you. Go to The Move section, I’ll see you there. Let’s go ahead and get started.