Why You Need This: Today I'm going to give you the "skinny" on getting narrow with your swing.

Lag is a word you hear a lot these days when you hear people talking about distance, or increasing distance.

If you don't really know what lag is, or how to create it, then you're most likely not maximizing your potential output from your golf swing.

In today's video, I'm going to help you begin your journey to a swing with more lag and increased distance.

Watch now to see:

• two drills to start adding distance today,
• the critical mistake most make when trying to add lag, and
• which other Fundamental of the Top Speed Golf System is directly tied to this lesson.

Let's get started....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 5:00

Video Transcription:

Great to have you here today. In this video I’m going to talk about one of the biggest misconceptions out there with getting lag, and that’s getting too narrow in the downswing.

A lot of times what happens is that as we start this downswing, we want to create this sharp angle of lag. We see this angle between the forearm and the club, and we really try to make this just tight, or narrow as possible.

The reason you call this narrow, is because in the backswing, you’ll notice how wide my club head is away from my body.

If I was to draw a line, like a brick wall on the outside of my club head, kind of straight up and down, if I do that on the backswing, you’re going to see on the downswing because I increased the angle of lag, my club is coming down closer to my body than it did going back.

So I was wide going back, and then I narrowed that up on the downswing. Now the problem with this, or one of the things that I see people confused all the time with this that causes big time problems, is that when they try to narrow that up, they bend the arms.

So as I start down, my arms really bend, my arms get really close to my body here to try to narrow this up, and it really causes two issues for me.

Number one, the wider I swing my arms, you can imagine my arms making a circle or an arc here, the wider I move my arms back, and the wider I move those through, the more club head speed the club is going to get.

So if I make a little compact, short swing like this, I can only move the club so fast. If I have this club moving on a wider arc with my arms, at has a bigger amount of space for my hands to put force into the club, and a bigger amount of speed.

It’s kind of contradictory, how does that many sense? How do we get narrow and be wide at the same time? It kind of almost sounds silly.

The issue is, we let our wrist bend, or our wrist hinge. My arms are staying wide in the backswing. My right arm is going to bend in the backswing, but I don’t want to let my left arm bend too much in the downswing.

I want my left arm to be out away from my body. My arms are staying wide, but my wrists are allowing the club to get lag and then release that lag as I’m coming on through.

The second part of this is if I’m looking from down the line, that angle is going to look even sharper because I’m narrowing up this club and I’m letting it shallow out like we talk about in The Move of the Top Speed Golf System.

So sounds like a lot of info, but it actually can be boiled down into very, very simple couple of drills here. I want you to go ahead and set up to the golf ball and do a couple things for me.

Number one, feel like the arms are swinging wide on the way back, and they’re staying wide on the way through.

I almost want you to feel like you’re pushing the grip of the club out away as you’re creating that lag in the downswing, and coming through to the finish.

Do about 10 swings of that for me. So I’m wide on the way back, my arms again are wide on the way down, as I’m coming all he way on through.

So 10 swings, nice and easy practice swings. That’s the focus, arms wide on the way back, arms wide on the way down.

Number two, I want you to focus on the setting of the club in the downswing. So 10 swings again, that club’s going to go wide going back, but in the downswing, I’m going to let the angle of that club sharpen up here.

So that angle feels like it’s increasing, where this is getting sharper and sharper as I’m starting my downswing, then I’m letting it go.

So 10 practice swings, increasing that angle. There we go, now I really feel like I’m adding the speed to that to get the feel of letting your wrists set without pulling your arms into your body.

Now when you do those two together, you get the best of both worlds. You get the speed from wide arms and the faster path of your hands, and you get the angular speed of getting lag with the club and then letting that release.

Once you’ve done 10 swings of both of those, you’ll feel really comfortable with that, or at least a little bit more comfortable with that. You’ll be ready to take it to the range and give it a good  rip.

I talked about how to get that big wide arc with the arms, how to get a lot more lag, but one thing that I left out of here, is how to release that lag and actually get the speed from the golf club.

This is one of the things I see a a lot of players make a mistake with this, and I had the same incorrect idea in my own mind in the past, is if I create a lot of lag, I don’t want to just hold on to that throughout the swing, I have to release that lag to get the club to accelerate coming through contact.

The way that I think the best way to do this is the Straight-Line Release. We’ve got to get that club from the max lag position, I’ve got to get the butt end of that club to turn up toward my body, that’s going to create all the acceleration coming through contact. Again, the golf ball is just going to get in the way.

What I want you to do, is go to the Straight-Line Release section. Pair up what we talked about today with the lag and the wide arms.

Start to work through level one of the Straight-Line Release. Once you start to do those drills, everything just becomes natural.

All those reps build muscle memory and you start doing the Straight-Line Release without even thinking about it.

I challenge you this week to go pick the very first video in the Straight-Line Release, or pick up where you left off in the Straight-Line Release.

Do at least one of those drills this week, and you’re going to be well on your way. I’ll see you in the Straight-Line Release.