Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Must DO's & DON'Ts When Trying To Shallow The Club"

You've likely heard that you want to shallow the club in your downswing...

...but there are right and wrong ways to get it done.

In today's lesson...

...make sure you're not trying to shallow the wrong way (that can feel really powerful)...

...and then discover how shallowing can be as easy as opening a door.

Unfortunately, it's more common to see golfers shallow the wrong way.

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 13:49

Video Transcription:

Shallowing the club. Everyone is trying to do it. I open up my phone, I look on social media. I see all the instructors talking about it, and for good reason. It's really something that we need to do in the golf swing. But unfortunately I see a lot of people doing it in the wrong way. So in this video, I'm gonna go over the dos and the don'ts when it comes to shallowing out the club.

So first let's understand what exactly shallowing out the club is, cuz I do think there is some confusion to that and I think that that is a little bit why some people struggle with it. So what shallowing out the club is, is basically the act of getting this club to work more behind your hands as you're coming down, right?

So that would be shallowing out the. There are some players that may have it a little bit laid off and actually steepen the club as they're coming down. So they actually stand the club up a little bit, but they still have it in a shallow position. Right? So an example of a player like that would be, um, Daniel Berger, I believe He still does this.

He gets up here, kinda has a shorter swing, has it really laid off, and then he kind of pulls down on it a little bit. But that club, when he is coming down is still well inside of his hands. It's still shallow. It's just not shallowing, if that makes sense. But that still helps him to be in a really good position as he is coming down.

Ricky Fowler used to do this, but I actually seen, uh, some of his more recent swings and he's actually not doing that anymore. He's, he's going from, uh, steeper position and he's actually shallowing it as he is coming down the last most recent videos I saw. So he knows the importance of it and has made the change, and hopefully he'll start playing some much better golf, um, here soon.

I'm, I'm rooting for Ricky for. So why is this important? Why is it important to have that happen? Well, it just gives us way more control of the club head. Imagine what the opposite would be, right? If I'm coming down steep like this and I were to rotate, continue to rotate my body, right? So I get my body opening up like we see all the tour players.

Well, then I would just cut across this ball really, really bad. And I, my path, my club path. So the direction of my club eds moving through impact would just be way too much out to end. I'm gonna hit poles, I'm gonna hit pole hooks, I'm gonna hit slices. And honestly, that's even if I make good contact with the ball.

Most people that I see who are coming down steep struggle with making solid contact with the ball, they're hitting it off the toe. Hanging off the heel. They're hanging it thin, they're topping it, they're chunk. I mean, all the misses are in play, you know, if you're, if you're coming down steep. So we just don't have control of the club head when you're doing that.

So think of it this way, if you were, there's a reason why we pull trailers, right? We pull it because the trailer just wants to line up with the direction that we're pulling it, right? And we have control of it when we. When you back up a trailer, it's a lot hot. It's a lot harder, right? It's a lot more difficult.

So if you imagine trying to get on an interstate, going backwards 70 miles an hour with a trailer, you get off just a little bit , and that trailer's gonna come around and whip around on you, right? Because it is just, it's not very stable. And that's kind of the same thing that happens when we're coming down steep, is we just don't have control of it.

We. This club head's kind of getting too much out on the other side of your hands there and you're not bringing it and slinging it through contact like all the best players do. So whether there are some players that steepen it a little but still have it trailing in the hands, but most players are shallowing out as they're coming down.

They're just always keeping it behind the hands as as they're coming down. So that's the real big reason cuz the more I get it behind my. The more I can rotate my body, the more I can get my hands in front of the golf ball I impact. The more I can compress the ball, the more I can have control of this club face.

I don't have to flip the hands to square it up. I can get those hands in front and compress it. Have good ground contact instead of kind of standing up out of it. There's just so many benefits to it, so, Shallowing is the craze right now, but for good reason. It's one of the most important things to do, um, in the golf swing for sure.

So what are the dos and don'ts when it comes to shallowing out the club and what I've seen with a lot of people really trying to do this, so to really simplify it, what we want to think is that we want to shallow out the club from the belt. and we don't wanna shallow out the club from the belt down, right?

So there's lots of things we can do in our swing to get this club to lay down, but we want to do it from the belt up, not from the belt down. We want to use the belt down to rotate our body, right? The shallowing elements are gonna be anti rotational with our lower body. So if you're struggling to get your body to open up, then odds are, and you hit functional straight.

And you're getting the club to shallow out. Odds are you're probably shallowing out the club in some way with your lower body and every, A lot of people have a little bit of this, a little bit of that. There's lots of components to it, but these are the things that we don't wanna do. So number one. Is bump the hip, right?

So if I'm coming down and I bump my hip up, so basically you think of my lead hip getting higher than my trail hip, right? That's gonna drop my right shoulder down and that can absolutely shallow out the club. The problem with that is, If I bump my hip forward, things get kind of jammed up in here and I, I'm gonna have a hard time rotating and I'm also gonna tend to hit chunk shots because my right shoulder drops down.

I'm gonna hit behind the golf ball when I do that. So if I bump forward, you can see how that lays down the shaft. But again, that's bad news. I'm not gonna hit good golf shots. Not to mention that is tough on your back. So if you are struggling with back issues, this could be part of it. Maybe something you wanna look at in your golf.

We want to kind of keep that left hip down and move it around so that way we can rotate our body, but we can only do that if we're shallowing out the club correctly with our upper body, which I will go over here in just a moment. The other thing that I see people do with their upper body, and this is the most common thing that I see with people shallowing out the club, is what's called early extension or extending the hips forward, right?

What we wanna understand about that is if I make this angle between my legs here and my torso, if I make that angle smaller, that is, uh, flexion in my hips, if I make that angle bigger, that's extension. So I want extension of my hips in the swing. I just don't want it right away in the downswing. That will shallow out the club.

But again, the problem with that, if I, if I start my downswing and I go like this, the club does lay down, but then my upper body has to move from the golf ball and now I have to extend my arms and throw the club. And a lot of people, there's a big reason why this is the most common thing is because it just feels so good and powerful to move your body away and throw your arms in front of the body.

It feels really powerful and that's why a lot of people do it. So, We want to get to where we're staying in our posture and we're actually bending the hips or flexing the hips as we're coming down and rotating the body. And we wanna shallow out the club with the upper body. So what exactly shallows out the club with the upper body?

I'm gonna start with the wrists. And again, it's gonna be a little bit, it couldn't be a little bit of everything. It could be a lot more of this. But these are the thing, if you max all these things out, the club would be too shallow, most likely, unless your ranges of motion are pretty. But generally, if you do all of these things for most people, the club's gonna be too shallow if you max all of these things out.

So li it's, it's, it's gonna be like, you know, your favorite recipe. It's a little bit of this, a little bit of that. You gotta kind of find your own recipe for the things that wanna shout, that you shall out the club with. But generally we don't wanna be using the lower body. We don't wanna bump the hips forward.

We don't want to extend the hips forward. That's gonna turn off your lower body and then we have to flip and you just have a hard time hitting, having control of things. So again, let's start with the wrists. So with the wrists, the lead wrist can go into what's called flexion. So you can think of that as bow the wrist, right?

And then the trail wrist goes into extension. , right? So that's, you can think of that as Knuckles back, right? And you see a lot of tour players doing this, right? You know, Dustin Johnson, John Rom, Daniel Burger, who I just talked about, you know, all these, a lot of these players have Colin Moore, Kaba have that, uh, you know, bow wrist position and it's because it helps them to shallow out the club.

So if you see a lot of cupping in your wrist, that is an anti, uh, shallowing out the club move, it's gonna be very, very difficult for a lot of people to recover. Okay, so if you look here, if I do that with my wrist, you can see how that lays down the shaft, right? So that's number one. That's the first piece.

And these are not things that you have to do, it's just just a little, little piece by piece. The next piece is in my forearms, the rotation of my forearms. So if I pin my elbows to my side here and I rotate my hands, right? , that's, that's going on in my forearms that will also shallow out the club At Topi Golf we call this turning the doorknob.

Right? So you think of that's the kind of turning the doorknob motion. So if I'm here and I turn the doorknob, if I'm a right-handed golfer, I'm turning the doorknob to the right. If I'm left-handed, I'll try, I'll do my best here, . If I'm left-handed, I'm turning the doorknob, uh, to the left. So that's, that's the next piece.

is with that, right? So turning the doorknob, the actual terms for that are pronation and suppination. You don't need to know that. Just remember turning the doorknob right. Next we have our, uh, shoulder joints, right? So this is where we can get the elbow to point in a certain direction. So with our trail arm, we're going to be doing what's called external rotation in my shoulder.

That is, you can think of that as losing an arm wrestling. That will shallow out the club. And then with my lead arm, there will be some element of turning that elbow out, which you can think of that as, you know, winning an arm wrestling contest in my, in my shoulder joint here. So you can see if I, if I essentially take my elbows from here and then I point my elbows out toward the golf ball, you can see how that shallows out the club.

So that's what you kind of wanna see. You wanna feel like you're driving and leading with the elbows. That's a great feel to help you to shallow out the. . So that's what we're doing up to the shoulders. And then the next piece is our spine. So with our spine, we want to have some right bend in our spine.

So if you think of my hip staying level and my spine kind of curves like this, I'm gonna get my right, my trail shoulder lower than my left shoulder. That's that right lateral bend that's happening. I believe I'm using the right term there. Forgive me if I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not a doctor or anything.

I'm pretty sure that's called right lateral bend. That will also shallow out the club. So if I'm here and then I add some right lateral bend, you can see how that also shallows out the club. Now, if we pair these things up with proper lower body movements, like we see the tour players doing, cuz we need that right lateral bend to keep from coming over the top, right?

So if I rotate, let's say I'm doing everything right. Oh, I'm maxing out all those things. So I'm flexing on Boeing. I've got this working in there. I've got maximum forearm rotation. But then I don't do the right lateral bend and I keep my left hip to move down around. I'm still gonna come over the top, so I need to have some of that.

You can see how that gets the club to stay behind. That allows me to rotate my body as, as I'm coming through now with some players I have seen, they can get away with not doing this. But the most athletic players that you see out there, Dustin Johnson, like all the best players, I see that right lateral bend as they're coming down.

So that's all there is too. It's simple as that. That's all it takes to, to shallow. I know it seems like a lot of things, but I think it's important to understand how you're shallowing out the club. So I, I challenge you to go out to the range, set up your video camera, see what you're, See what the movements are that you are making in the swing that are allowing you to shout out the clubs.

Cuz most players, I shouldn't say most players, a lot of good players are shadowing out the club, but they're doing it in the wrong way, not in the most efficient way. And that can be functional. But in order to take yourself to the next step, we gotta be doing it in the right way. And that's by using the upper body to shallow out the club and not the lower body.

Go out to the range, set up your camera, see if you can point out what's going on there and if, and if you can't. If it's tough, I know it's not the easiest thing to do. It took me a long time myself to be able to kind of pick these things out among students. That's why I do what I do. So I maybe recommend working with an instructor if you're having trouble kind of picking these things out.

Now, I love making these videos because I know it can help a lot of golf. But my favorite thing to do is to work with golfers one-on-one in my unlimited swing review program. This is because we can come up with a plan to really accelerate your progress. There are always gonna be nuances and specific things to you that you need to do in order to really take your game to the next level.

And I know if I can get my eyes on your swing, we can pick out those things and really come up with a plan to help you. Now these days it couldn't be any easier to work with an instructor one-on-one. We actually use an app that's 100% free. All you have to do is download it, send videos to me through the app.

Then we're gonna communicate through the app and come up with a plan. Now I have some good news because I just opened up some spots for my unlimited swing view program. Somewhere below this video, you're gonna see a link. Where you can click and go to sign up for my swing reviews. Now, I'm gonna be honest with you, I typically sell out very quickly on my unlimited swing reviews because I don't open up spots that often.

So make sure you go there now and grab a spot now. If you don't see a spot, no worries. Just grab a spot on my waiting list so that way we can email you in the future whenever I open up spots. Again, I hope to work with you soon. Play well.