Why You Need This: In this video, you’ll discover how to stay in posture and release the golf club.

And what’s really cool is that you’ll get an analysis of a Top Speed Golf member.

He’s typically averaging around 104 to 106 mph club head speed and he’s looking for more.

He’s releasing a bit early so he’s not getting that perfect straight line release, which is holding back his speed.

One more issue is that he’s standing up a bit out of the shot.

So he needs to work on his posture a bit and also his release.

In this video, you’ll get some great tips on how to fix these issues so you can get more club head speed...

And hit longer, straighter shots!

Golf Pros Featured: Tiger Woods    

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 11:14

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, and welcome back to Top Speed Golf. In today’s video we have a student, a member of the website, who’s currently swinging his driver about 104 to 106 miles an hour.

Would like to get a little bit more swing speed, is releasing a little bit early, so he’s not getting into that perfect straight line release position, and also standing up a little bit out of the shot.

We’re going to talk about those three things. I know a lot of guys out there are struggling with the same issues. If you’re struggling with those, I’m going to give you some great tips, some great keys to really getting rid of those issues and starting to hit some longer, straighter shots.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so first let’s talk about a couple things that he does really well. Now, I like a lot the lag that he has in his swing. So we can as he’s going back, big wide takeaway. That’s really a key to getting some good lag, making sure that the hands don’t set too early.

We can see as his club is parallel with the ground, he’s almost waist high, which is a very wide takeaway. The wrists stay nice and soft as he’s starting his downswing. So we can see how he’s actually increasing the angle in the ands and writs as he’s stating down.

If we look at those several frames, this is a great representation of that. So watch the angle between the wrist and the forearms, and then watch what happens with this club head, how he allows gravity for that to drop as h makes his transition.

So if you see in the next frame, allowing the clubhead to continue to drop, and drop some more until he starts his downswing. So the club head is actually still dropping down as his hands begin the downswing.

If you look at his hands here -- let me go ahead and erase those lines – watch his hands ho they’re beginning to work down as the club head is still working back. That’s a great position of lag there, tons of lag built up.

Now we need to get rid of that lag, we need to release that lag, and he’s doing a pretty good job of this. Has a little bit of forward shaft lean left at contact, but as he gets out in front, we’ll notice he’s not quite hitting the straight line release position.

His chest, if we draw a line from the center of the chest about 45° in front we’ll see that the hands are roughly in that position, but look how the club head’s already past that.

We’d like to see…or the club shaft. We’d like to see the club shaft right on that line, and being in that straight line release is going to get him a lot more consistent.

What’s happening here, as he’s kind of standing up, which I’ll show you in just one second, and stalling out the hips. So the hips are kind of stalling out at this position, and they’re not allowing the club to release properly. He’s also standing up a little bit while he’s doing that.

Let’s take a look at this view, and as I play through this you’ll see – let’s go ahead and mark a couple things here so we can see this better. There is the back of the hips at address, so now we’re going to see backswing, great amount of lag. Everything looking pretty good here.

Then he starts to stand up and tighten up the body and you can see how the hips have moved off that back line, how the hips are not rotated open enough, and then he’s kind of stiffening up the body to allow the hands to release.

Now you do want the hands to release past the body, but we have to have a good balance of this. So if we release the hands too much, and we completely slow down the body, we’re going to lose some speed.

If we try to drag the hands and arms through with just using body rotation, we’re going to lose some speed and some accuracy. It’s about finding that nice blend.

So we want to stay in our posture, we want to create a lot of these really good mechanics so that we can deliver the speed time and time again and be consistent.

Let’s go ahead and drag over to the right side of the screen. We’ve got a video, thanks Terry Rouse for allowing me to use this footage. This is some video of Tiger from probably back in 2000, if I had to guess I’d say this was 2007-ish or so, when he was playing really, really, well.

Let’s go ahead and draw a line on his hips, and let’s take a look at the same thing happening. Let’s talk about some good things that you want to do to be able to stay in posture and still be able to release that club out in front.

Number one, let’s go ahead and talk about – let’s go ahead and speed this up just a little bit – as he goes to the top, you can see that he’s staying in his posture really, really nice.

As he starts down, this is going to be the first key to this. As he starts down, he needs something to rotate with.

He needs something to rotate from, you’re going to see chest stay closed, and you’re going to see his lower body, his chest, and his shoulders are all going to first work down to the ball. That’s going to be his first move as he starts the downswing.

Everything’s going to get closer to the ball, he’s flattening out this club shaft, and now he’s basically just building this up and saving up a lot of energy that he can use later in the golf swing.

So now once he’s halfway down, here’s the real key to being able to stay in the posture. Now we want to take the left side of the body, there we talked about the right side of the body. Let’s talk about the left side of the body here.

Imagine that this line was a string that was tied to your left hip pocket, and this was a string that was tied to the left side of the torso, and this one was tied to your left shoulder, and there was a machine or a device that was pulling all three of these strings up and back as you’re that.

So if the left side goes up and back, we’re going to naturally stay in our posture. If the hips start to work this way, or to the right, that’s when we’re going to be coming out of the posture.

You’ll see now if you imagine those strings pulling, watch how he stays in his posture and that left side pulls up and back. So let’s go ahead and watch that a few times. There we go.

Since it’s not only pulling around in a circular fashion, but I’s also pulling behind him, that allows him to stay down in his posture and we can see there, completely in the posture, one of the reasons he’s, you know, great golf swing, playing really, really well at that time, and hitting the heck out of the ball.

So that’s what we’re looking for, those three moves. We want to have the load, which is that first piece moved down. We want to have the left side pull up and back, and as a result, that’s going to allow us to whip the club through.

So if we kind of pause, if we go one more piece here. We’re paused right here, this club is going kind of the opposite direction, it’s going down and away.

As we pull the left side of the body up and back, that’s going to allow the club to whip through. I’ll show you the same thing, let’s jump back over here to the left screen again. Let’s go to the face-on video, and I’ll show you from this same direction.

As that club is in the downswing, this would be the position I was mentioning where the club is pointing down and to the right. As we rotate this left side of the body this direction – excuse me, it would be a little bit more back.

We rotate the left side of the body this direction, just like we drew on tiger there, that’s going to allow the butt-end of the club to turn back up and release. We can see he’s not really rotating enough and the club is releasing past that.

So now, let’s talk about what he’s going to feel, what he’s going to work on as he’s doing this to be able to get some more speed, and what I would focus in on in the drills.

OK, so number one as he starts down, the first move down, I want him to feel like the right hip, right or the center of the chest, and the shoulders are all working down to the ball, just like we talked about with Tiger doing there.

We’ll notice that his first move is a little bit more of the right side going out. So the right side instead of feeling like it’s moving down, it’s starting to move out a little bit, and see how the right hip starts to bump forward, and the body almost starts to work up first?

We want to have the body working down first, and then that way we have some energy stored up to where from here, we can feel like this hip goes up and back, shoulder goes up and back, and our torso is up and back and our shoulder goes up and back.

What we’ll see with his swing is a little bit more of a right side moving to the right through contact. So the hips and the shoulders are moving, are continuing to move down to this ball, and that’s keeping everything going toward the shot and then his body stiffens up.

What I would like for him to do is to do about 100 repetitions, and the first move down is going to be to get closer to the ball.

So as soon as he goes to the top of the backswing, 100 repetitions, here he needs to feel like his hip is still facing down to the target. He’s moving closer to the ball with his chest, and he’s going to pause in that position.

Then the second thing we’re going to do, is from that position he’s going to go ahead and swing on through and he’s going to feel like his hip is moving up and back, his shoulders moving up and back, and I want him to come all the way around to a good full finish as he’s doing this.

So I don’t want you to pause in that halfway down position and then pause at impact, I want him to come all the way through to a good, full finish rotating the hips out of the way.

If he does that, that’s really going to help him to release that club farther out in front also. Let’s go ahead and look at it from this angle.

If as he starts his downswing, it’s here instead of stalling the hips out, he can have those hips to continue to rotate back and up -- you can see how they stalled out there -- the hips rotate back and up.

He’s going to be able to rotate the hands, the hips, and the shoulders are all going to rotate on through together, and he’s going to see himself in a better straight line release position out here in front.

So 100 repetitions pausing halfway down, 100 repetitions feeling like you pull the left side up and out as he’s coming through there, and feeling like he gets in that straight line release, like the club isn’t releasing quite as quickly.

For those of you who may be doing the opposite of this and rotating the hips really, really fast and spinning out of the shot, this wouldn’t be the drill for you.

But for those of you who tend to come up out of your posture, that tend to slow down the body a little bit too much and then flip a little bit early, this is going to be a fantastic drill for you.

So go through those 200 repetitions, work hard, and I’ll see you guys soon.

All right, so for those of you that are members, I’ve got two videos that are really going to work along with this, it’s going to be very crucial in being able to do these moves properly.

The first video that I’d like for you to watch is the one we talk about turning up the grip. So as we’re getting closer and closer to impact, we need the grip end of the club to go from pointing down this direction, we need it to turn back up in the follow through toward the center of our body into that straight line release position.

That’s going to help us to whip the club through there and get a lot more speed. That’s level 2 video 4 in the release section, that’s the Turn the Grip video.

Then also I have another video in level 3, video 2 in the release section, which is the Stop Flipping and Start Compressing, where I really key in on this left hand, and the right hand, and how these work through contact, and give you some really good drills to further ingrain that motion.

So I think it’s really important to understand exactly how the hands work when we’re doing this. Be sure to check out those videos, those will really help you with the drills that we worked on today. Good luck to you guys, and I’ll see you all soon.