Why You Need This: In this video, "How to Start the Downswing in Golf," you'll find out the technical ins and outs of the downswing...

What are the most crucial points in the golf swing?

The downswing?

Building lag?

Hip rotation?

Maybe release?

All of these points when in tune will allow for not only an effective swing, but also a good looking, solid to the core swing.

In this video, I'll show you the most important points of the swing while guiding you to a place where chunking, topping, and slicing are a thing of the past...

Watch this video today to graduate yourself to a new level of golf swing!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 7:18

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, and welcome back. Are you sick and tired of coming over the top in your golf swing, hitting the big slice? Or maybe you have some left hip pain. Well that can all be the result of a poor start to your downswing.

I’m going to give you one simple key that’s going to allow you to get the proper downswing, to feel like you’re in rhythm, and start hitting better shots.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

OK, so to go ahead and get started here, I’ll go over two common mistakes, and then I’ll show you the correct way to do it, and I’ll give you some great drills to build this, and to build the proper start to the downswing.

One of the most common things that I see, and a lot of golfers struggle with, is an over the top. That means they’re swinging right to left across the ball often coming in too steep and chopping down into the ball. You lose a lot of distance, up to 50-60 yards off the driver when you’re coming over the top.

When this happens as you go to the top of the backswing oftentimes we’re leaning back a little bit, we’re not staying in our proper stable, fluid spine like we talk about the in the system.

We’re leaning back here, and then we fall and our weight as we start down goes to the right leg, cast a little bit with the arms, and then I’m coming over the top and across this ball as I’m coming through. That’s going to result in the big slice.

I’ll go ahead and give you a demo of this. I’ll do my best representation of an over the top, but you can see how I’m not getting my weight to the left side. I’m staying back on the right and coming from right to left across the ball.

That’s obviously going to cause a lot of problems, and a lot of lost distance as I mentioned earlier.

The second problem I see, more for better golfers, is starting down by bumping the hips to the left. This is something that unfortunately I was taught this growing up, I thought this was the correct thing to do for a very, very long time, but you’ll see a lot of professional golfers and golfers on the PGA tour, they shift their weight starting with the lower body but they don’t bump the hips way out in front.

An example of this would be as I’m starting down, I’m throwing my hips to the left, and now you can see my left hip outraces in front of my left ankle, my hip is in front, and then my shoulder is back, and that’s an incorrect move.

If you’ve seen our compression line series on the website, you’ll notice how that should all be in a straight line, and we’re going to be stacked up with that. When we do that, that puts a lot of strain on our left hip.

If you play a round of golf and your left hip really hurts after the round, that could be something that you’re doing that also causes you to drop down and your right side gets so close to the ground, now you’re either going to be picking the ball up off the ground, or you’re going to be chunking the ball sometimes.

If that sounds familiar, I’ve got a great set of drills, I’m going to lead you through the correct motion now, and I’ll work through starting without a club, all the way to with the club to get you one motion that’s going to help you get the correct downswing every time.

Now let’s go over the proper motion as we’re starting the downswing. The main thing that I want to focus in on is my footwork and where I’m putting the weight in my feet.

As I start down -- let’s go ahead and go to the top of the swing – I want to feel like my arms and hands aren’t really doing anything at all. Everything from my ribcage up is going to stay very, very still, it’s not going to start down first.

My first motion is going to be to put a little bit of weight from the inside my right foot and shift that over to the inside of my left foot. Now a lot of times as we had the over the top move, what’s happening is our weight is going on our right foot as we start down.

That’s going to lead to a lot of problems. There’s no way to really make a proper downswing if our weight is still on our right foot. I want my weight to start to shift with just a little bump from the lower and upper body together, to get to the inside of my left foot.

If I go to the outside of my left foot, that brings in the other problem where we talked about the hips outracing the lower body and now this left hip gets way too far in front, and I’m doing this where I’m angled back and a get a lot of left hip pain.

I want to be taking both my lower and upper body as an entire unit, and just getting a little tiny bit of shit to start my weight going to the left, and to really initiate the downswing.

My hips start to rotate a very small amount, that’s OK as I’m doing this, but I want to make sure that I’m not racing with my arms, I’m not racing with my shoulders, and burning up that very valuable speed as I’m doing this.

If you really focus on the inside of the left foot, that’s going to help you to get the proper shift. Now if I elaborate on this a little bit more as I start down, I’m also going to be feeling like I’m actually increasing a little bit of la as I’m starting down.

I definitely don’t want to be burning up any lag and releasing that at all, I want to actually be setting my wrists and feeling like the club shaft goes more toward my shoulder or more toward my head as I’m starting down to make sure that I keep a lot of good lag, and store up that energy.

Then as I come down to impact, as I get this good shift from my weight going to the inside of my left foot, then I can come to impact. My left ankle, my left hip, my left shoulder are all going to be nice and lined up, just like we talk about in the compression line series on the website.

If we can tie that one simple key, very, very loose with the upper body, weight into the left side, that’s going to help us to build a better downswing and to get started with that.

I’ve got a series of drills that I’m going to walk you through, that are going to help you to build this in your own swing. Good thing is you can do them right from your living room as you’re starting out, and they’re going to really make it easy to ingrain this motion.

Let’s go ahead and go through those drills.

As I’m starting out, I just want to put my arms across my shoulders. It’s always best to start a lot of these drills whenever you’re working on your swing without a club. I’m going to go to the top of my backswing, good, full shoulder turn here.

As I start down, again I’m just going to let my entire body shift to the left, a little bit of hip rotation as I’m doing this to start. My shoulders are staying back, everything is loose in my upper body, and I’m just going to get a little bump to the inside of my left foot.

I’m going to go ahead and go back to the top and do that little shift about 10 times, just to start to feel that motion in the shift. Back, weight shifting to the left. It’s a very small movement to the left, only an inch or two with the lower body.

As I’m doing that, I’m going to go ahead and then go all the way down to contact, and I’m going to make sure the weights on the inside left ankle, left hip, left shoulder, are all nice in a good straight line. That’s going to allow me to deliver that club through contact nice and crisp, and get a lot of compression on the ball.

Do about 100 repetitions just like that. All the way to the top, shift to the left, pausing at impact making sure that I’m in the right alignments here.

Then after you’re comfortable with that, let’s go ahead and add a club, and try to recreate that same feeling with our body with the golf club. So again, as I go to the top, I’m shifting to the left. My upper body isn’t going to do anything at first. Then I’m going to go ahead and swing all the way on through to a good, full finish.

I’m going to do about 100 repetitions doing that. You can see how my lower body starts first, my upper body is nice, and relaxed, and waiting. Then I’m swinging all the way on through once my lower body gets moving, hip to the left very, very slightly.

After I’ve done 100 repetitions doing that, now I can go ahead and grab a golf ball, go out to the driving range, and I’m going to try to recreate the exact same feeling, now with a full swing.

There we go. Get that weight going slightly to the inside of the left foot, feel like you’re driving that down almost as if you’re pushing a stake into the ground to the inside, and you’re going to hit some better, more consistent, clean shots.