Why You Need This: Today you'll "Improve Impact Position in the Golf Swing | Magic Drill"

Getting into a pro-like impact position may not look hard when you watch someone else do it...

...but until you've been shown exactly how it's done, it can be difficult.

Your legs play a big role in getting into the right position...

...because if they're not used properly, it makes it extremely difficult to hit the right spots.

Today's video has an awesome drill to help you get into that pro-like impact position...

...and includes a special section that highlights how your legs can help (and where your hips should be at impact).

After today, you'll finally know how it feels to hit all the right positions...

...and you'll be able to deliver the club to the ball with that powerful punch you've been wanting.

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 7:30

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: All right, so it’s great to have you here today. I can’t wait to share this drill with you, it’s one of my favorites.

A friend of mine, a fellow Ping Ambassador, Chuck Cook, was on -- Chris Como, another Ping Ambassador -- Swing Expedition, he was going over this drill and I think it’s just a fantastic drill.

I’m going to do my little spin on this drill to get you into a position to where you can really compress the golf ball.

Really, what matters in the golf swing is how I deliver this club through impact. Pros do that by leaning the shaft forward. That delofts the club face, they’re taking about 30 percent of the loft that’s on this club when it’s at address, or straight up and down, off at impact.

That takes loft off, gets you higher ball speed, more compression. It gets your hands in front so you can be more consistent, it gets the divot in front of the golf ball, it gets the golf ball to fly much straighter and it just makes golf, as you can tell like I’m talking about here, a whole heck of a lot easier.

So grab a golf club. I can’t wait to share this progression with you. I know you’re going to have a blast doing it.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so let’s grab a middle iron for this drill. You can use anything, 6 iron, 7 iron, 8 iron, all that’s fine.

What we’re doing here, again, is we’re trying to get the feeling of a pro-caliber impact position, a pro-caliber compression on the golf ball.

So what we’re going to do here, is we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to start by leaning the club shaft forward.

Now pros typically are taking about 30 percent of the loft off this club, which means if I’m using the middle iron, I want to have my hands a good 5 or 6 inches in front of this golf ball at impact.

That allows me to when I come to impact, I’m leading the way with my hands, the club head is trailing behind in a much more consistent manner, and I’m also hitting down slightly into this golf ball so I can take my divot in front.

That’s how all the pros do it. Every single one of the pros that I’ve ever measured, hundreds of them, every single one of them when they’re hitting an iron has the hands in front.

I haven’t seen a single pro yet that has the hands back here like this. It’s just too dag-gone hard to play golf when the hands are back here.

So let’s go ahead and get this impact position first. What you’re going to do is set up to this golf ball. Get in your normal stance, and then from here, I want you to keep your body the same but push your hands forward.

Now when you push your hands forward, don’t let that face open up. I want it to stay square like that. So I don’t want to see this, I want to see this with that face nice and square.

Now from there, I’m going to rotate just my hands and arms, I’m going to keep my hips the same, to go back here kind of first parallel on the backswing.

From there, that face is going to be angled down slightly because this angle when I turn the face this way is the same as forward shaft lean.

What I mean by that, is if I turn this face closed, I have to lean the hands forward to square that up. So when you come back to here, that face is going to be slightly hooded, my body is still square.

Now from here, I want to get some knee bend, and the reason for this knee bend is I have to use my legs to rotate my body to get back to impact.

When I get back to impact, my hips are open, my chest is slightly open, and my hands are in front. That’s going to allow you to compress that golf ball.

You may see your left wrist as you’re doing this, as you rotate on through, be a little bit bowed like you see with a lot of Tour players. If nothing else, I want to see that pretty nice and flat so those hands are leading in front.

I’m going to do that a few times just going back here, face slightly closed, and then I’m going to rotate to get to my good impact position.

I’m going to do that two or three times. I’m using my legs to rotate. If my legs are here and locked, I can’t rotate my legs, I’m going to do all arms. I’m going to flip away at it.

I need to bend my legs and rotate my legs. Notice how my right heel’s coming off the ground. That’s good.

If I keep that right heel down, it locks my hips and I have to throw my hands at it, I’m not going to get that pro impact unless you’re super, super flexible, which you’re probably not if you’re anything like me.

So I’m going to be there, hips are opening, right heel’s coming off the ground. Chest is opening, hands in front, that’s money position right there. That’s as good as it’s going to get.

Then we’re going to go ahead and let it come on through to where now I rotate my entire body onto this finish.

Now my belt buckle is facing the target. My hands are out in front of me here, slight tilt of the shoulders is fine, but I’ve used my bent knees and my body rotation to come through it.

So that’s the practice swing, and then I’m going to do the same thing hitting a little easy shot. Halfway back to here, I’m going to pause, and then I’m going to use my legs to rotate on through.

You’ll there that ball took off very low, my hands were in front, and as you do that a few times, just feels really solid. You’re going to hit it nice and solid, big compression on it. Let me do that one more time for you.

Hands back to here, face down, and then from there knees bent, and I’m using all body rotation to get that ball to fly. That thing was solid. I could not hit it any better than that one. I love this drill for that.

So thanks, Chuck, for introducing us -- Chuck Cook for introducing us to that. I mean, the guy has to know what he’s doing. He’s had multiple, multiple major winners. Funny guy, really just one of the best people you ever meet, and I love this drill.

Now, the next part I want to do in this progression is I want to take a little farther back. The only thing I’m going to do here, is I’m going to do that same thing.

Hands forward, instead of just taking it to here, I’m going to go ahead and from there, I’m going to rotate my hips and shoulders until I can take it to the top of the swing.

Then I’m going to bend my knees, rotate through to impact, and then rotate through to where my body’s facing the target there, then full finish.

Basically, I’m just turning the same drill into a full swing. Let me walk you through that. Hands are forward, face is square. Rotate just my arms back, club slightly hooded. Now go ahead and turn my body to get a good, full turn.

Pause at impact, make sure my right heel’s up, my body’s rotating open, I’m really compressing the heck out of this golf ball.

Then I’m going to go ahead and finish my swing, my body’s rotating through to the target. That way I don’t stop, and throw, and flip at it.

So when I do that a few times, practice swing’s going to look like this. Making sure my body rotates through, and when I think I have a good feel for that, I’m going to do the same thing in a kind of a three-quarter swing, and I’m really focusing in on this motion at impact.

Body open, hands in front, really, really compressed. Let’s try that out. There we go. Hit that one nicely, really well compressed. Follow that compression, that series of drills, golf’s going to get a whole heck of a lot more fun.

Now I do have to say there’s one piece of this drill that gives some people problems, and that’s this squaring the face piece. Once you get the face starting to square up, it’s like a key that unlocks your swing.

Now all of a sudden, it makes sense how I can shallow this club out and still get it to compress the golf ball without being wide open like I talked about.

It makes sense how you can open your body a little bit more, get those hands in front, those things that you’ve been working on doing, but it seems really difficult to do them.

That squaring the face makes all the difference in the world. Now the way I want you to get this down once and for all is go to the Instruction tab on the Top Speed Golf website. Go to Top Speed Golf System, and then go to The Move section from there.

As you work through The Move, I’m going to teach you in the Tennis Racket Drill how to square that face up. I’m going to teach you how to get the club shallowed out. It makes it so much easier to do this drill that we just worked on.

Now it makes total sense to where when my club gets square, I can rotate as much as I want. I can turn left as hard as I want to, and the face is never going to be open.

So go to The Move section, work through those drills, ingrain that once and forever. I know you’re going to be happy that you do that, and I’ll see you in The Move.