Why You Need This: Find out how to stop shanking your ball once and for all!

That's right...

No more shanking your ball into the lake or the housing development.

For those of us that have ever had the shanks (most of us)...

You know it's hands down the worst shot in golf.

You've experienced the incredible frustration and embarrassment that comes with squirting the ball out of bounds.

But before you throw your clubs in the lake...

Let's take a look at what causes the shanks and what you need to do to stop the suffering.

And if you've never had the shanks...

Well good for you (you're among the few!).

But it's still a good idea to watch this video just in case the shanks creep up on you.

You'll learn a few drills to quickly straighten out your shots.

Watch this video now to cure the shanks once and for all!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:03

Video Transcription:

Oh, man! The worst shot in golf, that was the shank. I’m going to talk today about how you can eliminate those from your game once and for all. Incredibly frustrating, incredibly embarrassing, if you’ve ever caught the shanks and couldn’t get rid of them, this is a good video for you to have in your arsenal.

So there’s a couple things that we want to do to first address the shank. Now there’s the typical instruction which is fine. We want to always check this first, a lot of times we’re going to be crowding the ball.

If you look at my address position here, I’m a little too close to the ball. If you look at the butt end of my club, it’s almost right up against my leg. I want to have about a hand width or so between the butt end of the club and my leg as I’m addressing the ball.

That’s going to give me enough room to swing my hands and arms and make sure that I don’t hit it off the hosel. If I start to crowd up against the ball, then I can definitely get into the habit of shanking.

That’s the very first thing. Now a good way to do this, is as I set up here, nice good, tall posture. I’m going to let my hips hinge back until I can let my arms hang straight down from my shoulders. That’s going to be about where I would like to have my hands hanging in the golf swing.

Go ahead and try that out a good 10 or 15 times while you’re in your living room. You can do it right now where you’re watching this video. Grab a club, if you look down you’re going to see that nice space there.

Number two, a lot of things in golf, I think we over complicate things. We make it a little more difficult than it needs to be.

Whenever you shank the ball, your club, or your ball, is hitting on the inside of your club right here by the hosel. If you look at the angle of the hosel there, as you hit right here, the ball shoots off to the side because it’s hitting off this angled edge.

The first thing I want to do immediately, I want to hit all the way off the toe. I want to get the feeling of hitting off the toe, and I promise you, if you have a couple shanks in a row, if you have the feeling that you go all the way over to the edge of the grooves, or even on the flat spot of the toe and you make a couple swings, I guarantee you that you won’t be that far out there.

You’re going to be closer to the center of the face. Look at where the ball makes a mark on the face, and you’re going to be able t automatically adjust that. So you’ll usually start to notice before you start to shank, my divots or my impact, the grass on the club starts to work closer and closer to the hosel until I start hitting them off the hosel itself.

So start to feel like you’re getting them off the toe. That’s the non-technical answers there. We’re going to scoot a little bit farther away, we’re going to aim a bit more for the toe, that’s going to get rid of our shank.

90 percent of the time, that’s going to help you to start salvaging the round and hitting better shots, and get rid of the shanks during the round.  But that’s not really getting to the root cause of what’s happening here.

When a player’s shanking, 99 percent of the time what I see happening are two things. Number one, as we start the downswing if we can imagine the elbow plane, so from the hosel of the club up through the bottom of my elbow.

Number one is that player’s getting too far inside and the club is getting underneath this plane. As my club continues to swing forward, now we can see that the hosel is headed right for the golf ball.

It’s usually a better player’s problem, I think that may be where the idea came from that a shank is close to a good golf shot, or close to an ideal golf shot.

That’s absolutely not true, not close to an ideal golf shot, but better players tend to catch the shanks, because they tend to get more to the inside, too much to the inside, and then hosel’s headed out for the golf ball, and it’s very easy to start catching it too much on the hosel.

Now in combination with this is the real culprit here, is as I’m coming in to my downswing not only do I get a little bit inside, but now my hips start to move up.

So I’m standing up, and my hips are moving closer to the ball, and all of a sudden I lose room to swing my hands through and now my hands start working out away from my body and the hosel is headed straight for the golf ball.

What we need to do are two things. I’m going to do some practice drills here, I’m going to go ahead and set up as though this would be the golf ball. Again, remembering that there’s some good space between my body. Feeling like I’m going to hit it off the toe.

On my downswing, I want to feel like my hands are inside my club head. So now this would be a bit of a cut-type swing, and I’m going to visualize hitting a little bit off the toe as I’m doing that. That’s getting me to be less and less from the inside.

If you look at the palm of my right hand, how it’s facing up toward the sky, that’s a very inside swing plane. If I’m more on plane, my palm is going to be facing more vertical like this.

If I want to get over the top, it’s going to be facing a little bit out where my club’s parallel with the ground. Here’s my inside swing plane, palm up. Here’s my on-plane swing plane, palm out.

So I’m going to feel like my palm is a little bit more down to the ground like this, and that’s going to help me to rotate that face and come in more on top without getting stuck to the inside.

That’s the first part of it. Do about 50 swings, pausing as you’re about halfway down, palms more down to the ground. I’m going to be covering that golf ball a lot better inside of dropping to the inside.

Second half after we’ve done about 50 golf swings or so, until you feel comfortable, you can do more than that if you need to. Now we’re going to work on our hips.

Typically when a player is moving their hips toward the golf ball and we’re losing room, the hosel’s headed for the golf ball, what’s happening there is you’re usually sliding forward instead of rotating the hips.

As I’m coming into the downswing, as I start forward my hips are bumping out this way laterally, instead of moving back and out of the way. So this would be me rotating my left hip back and out of the way, this would be me sliding my left hip without rotating at all.

See the difference in the club there, this club is opening and my hip is clearing out of the way. That’s giving me room to stay down into the shot. This hip is sliding and standing up, and that’s causing my hands to go out toward the ball, which we obviously don’t want if we’re hitting shanks.

This second drill here, what I want you to do, we’re actually going to start out taller. We’re going to feel like our body’s nice and tall, our hips are nice and tall.

As we’re at address, go to the top of the backswing, this nice little half backswing, then from here I want you to feel like you left hip goes back away from the ball and clears out of the way.

You could imagine if you’re the camera guy, you’ve got a string tied to my left pant pocket, the back of my left pocket, and you’re going to pull on that string. I’m going to pull this hip out of the way, and it’s going to go back away from the golf ball to clear it out of the way.

So that’s going to look like this, I’ll exaggerate for you guys here. Nice and tall, as I come down, tons of room, clearing the hip out of the way.

The incorrect way would be me starting low in my backswing, so instead of being tall in the backswing, starting low in the backswing and then standing up.

From this direction, looks like this. Here’s the good, proper way, standing nice and tall, hip clearing out of the way. Here’s the improper way, starting bad and low, and then driving up toward the ball letting the hip slide forward like that.

Do a good 50 repetitions, just practice swings, nice and low, getting those two things in line for the swing, adding those two the two set-up things. Now, we’re going to be able to hit a nice, solid shot right off the middle of the club face.

There we go. A little tiny bit low on the face, but my grass is dead center in the club head, and that was a nice, straight shot. Definitely nowhere near a shank.

Go ahead and work those drills, they’re going to help you guys out to get rid of those shanks once and for all, get rid of that frustration.

Work through these drills, let me know in the comments below what you guys found, if you were struggling with the shanks and how this helped you guys out.

I really look forward to hearing from you. Good luck, and I’ll see you guys soon.