Why You Need This: Today you'll get "Massive Golf Driver Distance Keys"

Do you ever feel cramped as you're coming into impact with the golf ball?

You know, it just feels awkward...

...like you may be too close to the ball.

Bottom line, there's just not enough room to get through the impact zone without compensating in some way.

So what do you end up doing?

Maybe you bend your lead elbow to make some extra room and end up with a "chicken wing" as you come through impact?

You might stand up and flip the club forward to create some extra space?

There's all kinds of little ways your body will sense the need to make extra room...

...but they're almost never what you're supposed to be doing.

Well, you may be surprised to know there's a simple answer to your problems...

...and it all starts with your shoulders (and where you think they need to be at impact).

If you discover where your shoulders are supposed to be at impact...

...you're going to end up with a lot more space...

...so you won't feel cramped at impact (and your swing will become more powerful as a result).

So check out today's video, and start swinging through the impact zone with a LOT more power...

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 11:32

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: I bet you’ve been told that when you want to hit this golf ball you want your shoulders to be square.

I’m going to talk about if you do this the wrong way, how that could be throwing the brakes on your swing speed, how it could cause a chicken wing, and for you to get all arms when you’re trying to hit the driver.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so let’s jump right in here. What I’m going to do is I’m going to make a couple swings. I’m going to talk about the idea of keeping my chest a little bit more closed.

Then Q’s going to read some of the FlightScope numbers, see what the swing speed is doing, and I’m going to talk about the pros and cons of opening versus closing with your shoulders and which is right for you.

All right, so let me go ahead and jump in and hit one here. The first one I’m going to do, I’m going to have the sensation of keeping my shoulders square.

We’ve probably all heard this before, we feel like as we’re coming down to contact, if I’m looking from down the line, my shoulders could kind of be pointing toward the target.

The idea is that if my shoulders are pointing straight, I’m going to hit it straight. If my shoulders are pointing to the right, I’m going to hit a little bit of a draw. If my shoulders are open, I’m going to hit a little bit of a fade.

We’re going to kind of bust that myth a little bit here, but let me go ahead and start to swing some and see what this means.

What I usually see players doing is not opening enough with their body. So as you come into contact, I see a lot of this where the shoulders are closed, trying to hit that draw, but look like my hips haven’t opened very much.

My chest or my shirt buttons, my rib cage, however you want to think about that, is also pointing toward the ball.

When I do that, when I don’t open with my body what ends up happening is I have to push across the body with my hands, and club, and arms.

So I’m trying to generate swing speed by pushing the club across my body. I get that chicken wing, and I tend to get a loss of club head speed.

So let me go ahead and hit one like that. I’m going to swing and try to keep my body kind of square to the ball. Again, that idea of hitting the draw and let’s see what happens.

I kind of pulled it. I really feel like the face was closing down very quick. It was kind of hard to time up the exact sequencing of that. I feel like the next one I may have hit straight, then maybe one to the right, then the left.

Kind of all over the place. Q, what was my club head speed and what was my total distance, my carry distance, those kind of numbers?

Quentin Patterson: Club head speed was 94 miles per hour, total distance was 243 but it only carried 187, not really your best strike there.

Clay: Yeah, so it was kind of like a low, hooking, rolling shot. So really just kind of rolled most of the distance, but only carried 190.

Again, let me go ahead and try to do that again. I’m kind of locking the body, keeping everything square to the ball, and then I’m kind of pushing across with my hands. Very, very common, I see this all the time.

Again there, I felt like I tried to not hook it to the left, and again, my club face is going from open to closed. It’s just so much arms, I really can’t square it up very consistently.

What was the numbers on that one?

Quentin: 95.9 miles per hour in the club head speed. Total distance was pretty much the same, 241.6.

Clay: OK. We see how inconsistencies can happen when that’s going on. We see how that doesn’t necessarily give me a draw every single time. We see how it slows down the club head speed a lot.

What’s the truth behind this? What should we be doing? Well in reality, what we want to be doing is opening up the body a little bit as we’re coming through contact.

As I come through contact, my hips should be opening up. I’m using the momentum of my body to get everything rotating on through, and then my hands and arms are releasing out in front.

If I look at my rib cage, so if I get rid of my hands and arms, if I look at my rib case as I’m coming through contact, it’s actually pointing out in front like this.

So my ribs are opening up. My sternum is opening up. That’s what the best players in the world are doing. Their rib cage, on average, is about 20° open to the golf ball.

Now what gives the illusion that my face or my shoulders are square is because I’m in this position and then my left shoulder protracts or drags across my body to make everything look pretty square.

That looks really square when you’re going from down the line, but if I take my left arm, you’ll see my rib cage is actually open.

So your body, your big muscles of your body, my legs, my hips, my entire upper body all the way up to my shoulders is actually open, my left arm is just protracted kind of cinched across my left pec there.

If you want to feel this yourself, put your arms straight out and then drag your arm to where it’s kind of across your chest like this. You’ll feel it pinching against your left bicep.

That’s kind of where you’re at at impact, as I bend forward and open up, that’s basically the impact position. That’s the reason it looks more square when you’re looking from the down the line view.

Let’s go ahead and do one more here where I go ahead and open up like I should be, and let’s see what those numbers change.

Again, I’m going to feel like I can really swing hard and release on out in front when I’m doing this.

There we go, I actually missed that a little bit off the toe, but we’re going to see the swing speed’s way up, the distance is way up, it’s going to be a totally different shot. What are the numbers on that one, Q?

Quentin: Club head speed 120, total distance about 307.

Clay: OK, so I picked up 20-something miles an hour of swing speed, driving it 50-60 yards farther, whatever. We all get that it’s going a lot farther when I do it that way.

We all get that that looks like a much better swing, and we understand that the hands and arms aren’t kind of flipping when I’m doing that.

So the big question, how the heck do I do that? What do I need to feel? Well, a big piece of that is what we talked about with the left bicep there, and the left pec, your left arm.

If I grab my chest and I have my fingertips kind of under my armpit here, I want to feel like I have my left arm across my body until I’m kind of smooshing my fingertips.

So if I’m looking at the bicep, the inside of my left arm my pec, or this muscle here at your chest, I want to feel like that’s really tight.

If I tried to pull that out of there, I couldn’t get my hand out, it’s cinched in there really nice like that. That’s the feeling that you want to have when you’re coming through contact with your left arm.

So as my body rotates open, I’m really tight and connected there. You hear pros all the time talking about being connected, that’s the feeling that they’re having. This is nice and connected.

This shoulder’s sturdy, it’s tight. This is going to control my face angle, control my hand path, that’s why I was getting those shots that are going all over the place.

My face angle was all left up to its own momentum and that kind of thing when I didn’t have this connected. Now that I have this connected in, I can really be a lot more consistent.

Also when I’m doing this, the second swing key is as I rotate on through, feel like everything is facing the target. In your mind, if you’re one of these players that doesn’t get open enough, you want to feel like at contact you’re like this.

Your hips, your shoulder, your chest, everything’s facing the target. In reality, it won’t be.

In reality, it’s going to look much more like what you would see the pros doing where I’m really opening my body getting my hips to clear out of the way.

So if you keep that left armpit connected, if you feel like at contact you’re facing the target, it’s going to lead to a whole lot more consistent shots and a lot more swing speed.

And even better, it’s going to get rid of that chicken wing with your arm pushing across your body. Let’s go ahead and try it out.

There we go, that was a lot better, right down the left-center. Numbers are going to be pretty good on that one. So what did it say on that one, Q?

Quentin: Club head 120, total distance went all the way up to 343.

Clay: OK, 343. I’m not going to do much better than that. Now Q, this brings me to another question that I have all the time.

When I’m talking about this with players I get them to open up more, I get rid of that chicken wing, but sometimes the ball starts to go out to the right.

What would you recommend if players start to slice when they’re doing this?

Quentin: Right. A lot of times when we get to where we’re opening up the body, what happens is when we’re opening up the chest the arms and the hands and everything are going to come out with us, because we’re used to coming in.

If you come in to where everything is nice and square. Club face, chest, everything is really square to the ball, we’re used to bringing that club kind of out in front of the body there.

If we keep that same relationship that we’re used to, that we’re comfortable with, when we’re opening up, now we’re just going to come over the top. Yeah, just like that.

We’re going to be coming over the top. So what we want to do is we want to feel at that same feeling like what Clay was talking about.

You have the arm really cinched to the chest, you really want to feel like it’s really pushing up against your chest here and that’s going to help you keep the club behind you more so you can swing more on plane.

Because if you don’t, that’s where those big slices or pulls are going to end up coming from.

So how about you hit one where you’re really trying to put all those things together, where the club is really coming from the inside nicely.

Clay: OK, so what he’s showing there is, if you keep doing this motion, you’re almost going to feel like with this new swing that you’re getting way back in here. The club’s coming way from the inside.

But in reality when you open up more, that’s going to be nice and square. So let me go ahead and hit one, and now we’ll have kind of all the pieces.

You’ll be opening up, getting rid of the chicken wing, you’re adding the club head speed. But now, with that arm cinched and the club feeling like it’s well in here, now when you open up it’s going to be square. You’re not going to get those slices.

Let’s go ahead and try one out here again. All right, hit that one well. Numbers are going to be really good on that one, basically square face, square path.

I opened up my body, but then I also got that club coming from the inside. That way when I opened up, everything is nice and straight, not going left. What were the numbers on that last one there, Q?

Quentin: 119.6 club head speed, total distance was 327.

Clay: OK, awesome. So hit that one really good. Nice and square on it. Now let’s recap on what we need to do here.

Number one, we have to get the body opening up. If you’re one of the players that stands up, everything’s too square, maybe the chicken wing.

Feel like at contact your body is facing – notice how my body’s rotated around here, my hips, my shoulders – you’re going to feel like this at contact.

It’s never going to happen, that’s not anywhere near where you’re really going to be, but that’s the feeling that you’re going to have.

Number two, I want you to feel like so you can come from the inside, this left bicep is pinched against your left pec.

If you tucked your hand under there, you almost couldn’t yank your hand out, that’s how tight it’s going to be as you’re coming into contact.

Then number three, the idea of feeling like you’re swinging way to the right is actually the right idea for you, because as you start to open up more, that’s going to be square, nice and straight through the ball and you’re going to have so much more club head speed the distance is going to go way up.

Now in this video we really focused in on how we’re coming through the ball, really getting that speed on this side of the golf ball, opening the body, making sure that everything’s coming square through contact.

But we’re missing a piece. We’ve really got to load up if we want to take advantage of any of this.

I have to make sure that my hips and my shoulders really turn in the backswing so that I can get tons of speed starting my downswing to really make this pay off.

If my backswing isn’t very good, and I have a great follow through, that will be OK, I’ll hit some good shots, but I’ll never get the swing speed that I want.

The key to get the big swing speed is to go to the Power Turn section once you’ve done the drills in this video.

Go to level one of the Power Turn in the Top Speed Golf System, click on the Instruction tab, click on the Top Speed Golf System, go to the Power Turn section, and as you work through level one you start to get more familiar with those drills.

Then level two, level three, it becomes completely natural to where you just step up to the golf ball, you make a swing, and all this is happening without you even having to think about it.

Best of luck, I can’t wait to see you in the Power Turn. Let’s go ahead and get started.