Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn the number 1 trick for better golf.

This will simplify the process and clear all the clutter from your mind during your swing.

The average amateur golfer tends to make the golf swing a lot more complicated than necessary.

If you worry about having every part of your body in the perfect spot at all times during the swing, it will not lead to good results, typically.

In this drill, I'm going to simplify your swing so you can free your mind to think about the couple things that actually matter.

Stay around for the end as I show you how this drill all ties back to the Top Speed Golf System.

Let's get started....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 12:59

Video Transcription:

Golf’s a weird game. We all struggle, if it was easy, everybody would come right out their very first round, they’d shoot even bar, they’d break par, they’d have the time of their life, and everybody would just be great at golf. But it’s an awkward game.

In this video I’m going to talk about one of the most awkward pieces of this. Once we tap into this, we kind of realize how it’s supposed to be, golf gets a lot easier.

Let’s break this down into two parts. Number one, I’m trying to hit this golf ball that’s in front of me, and I don’t really want to turn away from this.

So everybody naturally, their natural inclination, myself included, is I want to stay facing this golf ball so I can make sure that I hit this golf ball and I hit it really nice and solid.

So last thing I want to do, naturally, is turn away from the golf ball or open up as I’m coming through this golf ball.

What ends up happening as a result of this, and what causes so many problems out there, is now we stay locked on to this golf ball, we don’t want to move away from it, and all of a sudden, we start to hit with just all arms, all arms and hands.

So you’ve probably seen a lot of swings that look something like this, a player sets up to the golf ball, he gets everything nice and lined up, and then he doesn’t turn away from it and it’s all hands and arms, doesn’t go very far, not a lot of power.

You’re really not going to play the kind of golf you want to. Consistency’s not very good, everything’s not very good.

If you think about it, we don’t really do anything else that way. If I was to just grab a couple of these golf balls and start tossing them down the fairway, you notice what I would naturally do is open up.

So my hips, my shoulders, my body, everything would open up more toward the target, and then I would just let that toss.

So I’m actually tossing this direction to the side of my body, but I’m letting everything open up so that now that’s pretty straight as I’m tossing that golf ball.

Now that would be very awkward if I faced forward and threw that golf ball across the side of my body, wouldn’t look very natural, looks forced, I wouldn’t be very good at that.

Same thing if I had a hammer here. Let’s imagine I had a piece of wood here, and I was going to hammer a nail into the side of the wood.

I wouldn’t do this and keep my body square, neither would you. Naturally, you would start to open up a little bit, and you would really get some power hitting that hammer into that piece of wood in front of us.

Same thing with baseball. If I grab the baseball bat here, and I was automatically going to hit a fast ball, I wouldn’t do this and swing with all arms.

Naturally, you would start to open up a little bit, get those hips and shoulders going, and then you’d really be able to drive that ball down into the outfield, maybe even hit a home run.

So golf is very similar to that. So we’ve got to come on through, make sure that we open up with our body, that way we can accelerate through the golf ball and the golf ball just gets in the way.

We’re swinging through it, and letting contact happen. That’s the first part of this. We have to open up.

But there’s a second part. If I open up, let’s think about what is one of the most common things, common problems to have in golf.

Well, most players already start to come a little bit over the top. So we’re making these swings, and already coming over the top. What happens if we open up even more? We come even more over the top.

So the trick is, we have to open up to be consistent, but we have to come from the inside with our hands, arms, and body.

That’s exactly what I’m going to talk about in this video, how to come from the inside, really slot that club, what we call The Move in the downswing, then let your body open up. Things get a whole lot more natural.

So now we know the key is to open up and then still come from the inside and release the club. Let’s break that down into two pieces.

First, let’s talk about the proper way to open up and make sure our body’s in a good position here. What I want you to do to make this really simple, let’s take this club with just our right arm only.

Now what you’ll notice here, if I put my left arm just kind of behind my back, just to get it out of the way, if I was going to hit this golf ball, it would be pretty natural if I went ahead and let my body open up.

So my hips are opening, they’re probably 45° out in front. My shoulder are going ahead and opening up to where they’re almost 45° in front, and you can imagine almost like that tossing motion we did with the golf ball.

I’m just going to go ahead, nice little easy swing back and through, and I’m just going to let that golf ball kind of toss up the fairway there.

That’s what I want you to visualize here in the beginning. Do about four or five, just practice swings with that until you feel comfortable opening up your body, maybe grab a few golf balls and toss them down the fairway.

If you’re in your living room or something like that, just imagine tossing a few golf balls and then try to recreate the same thing in your golf swing. Really, that’s about all a golf swing is.

We’re just opening up and tossing the golf club toward the target.

Now the second piece of that, and why this looks like so much different, and a common question I get from there is, OK Clay, if I’m just opening up and tossing toward the target, then why is it when I see all these pros, when we kind of pause at impact, looks like their shoulders are fairly square?

Their shoulders are kind of facing the target a little bit. I get that the hips are open, but the shoulders don’t look very open. The reason for that is because your left arm is on the golf club.

If I take my setup with just my right arm only, and I go ahead and let everything open up as I was going to toss this club to the target, my rib cage stays fairly open, but my left arm, my left shoulder kind of protracts across my body to be able to hold on to the club.

So if I take that left arm off, let me go ahead and pause here at impact. If I take that left arm off the club, you’ll notice that my ribs and my chest, my shirt buttons are actually facing out here in front.

It’s only, it’s kind of an optical illusion when my left arm gets drug across my body, or is across my body, feels like it’s kind of tight against my pec here, that’s what’s going to make my shoulders look square.

So in reality, the best players in the world, their ribs and their torso is open at impact, it’s just that left arm across the body that makes it look square.

Again, go ahead and make some practice swings, just right arm only, getting that feeling of tossing the club toward the target, and then recreate that same feeling adding the left arm onto the club.

So get comfortable with it at first, once you’re comfortable with it, start to make bigger and bigger swings, with the left hand on their also, but you’re going to have that same sensation you did with tossing the golf ball down the fairway.

All right, so we’re ready for piece number two. Now if you already tend to slice the ball a little bit, or don’t have that nice draw, as you start to open up a little bit more, your tendency is going to be to come a little bit more over the top and swing even farther left.

So here’s the second really big key to this. The golf swing is coming from the inside. If I’m facing this golf ball, you can imagine I’m swinging my club a about a 45° angle out to the right.

This is really what the golf motion is. Again, that’s that tossing action that I was talking about. I’m tossing the golf ball this way.

The only difference is, as we do this in the golf swing, as my body rotates open, now that’s square.

The sensation is I’m tossing to the right, or my club is moving to the right through impact, and it’s my body squaring up or my body opening up that allows that to actually be square.

So a few out to the right just to get the idea, and as that body opens up, now that’s going to be square or from the inside.

Now if I’m thinking about swinging the club this way, so now my body’s toward the golf ball, and I’m swinging the club across my body like this, well what happens when I hope up?

Now everything’s going way to the left, and that’s the most common mistake that I see. Players are swinging across their body versus inside out from the inside.

Now the second piece to this is, once I get that sensation of that club kind of swinging out to the right this way, so do a few with just your hands and arms this way.

If you’re sitting at your desk, if you’re sitting at home right now, stand right up. If you just watch this video and don’t follow along, you’re not really going to get any better.

It will feel good to have some new ideas and some things to practice on, but let’s actually make it stick right now, build a little bit of muscle memory.

Stand up right now, and go ahead and get this club to swing, so my hips are facing the golf ball. I’m going to get this club to swing a little bit out to the right. So I’m really letting that club swing out.

Now you’ll notice as I’m doing this, I’m letting the club face turn on over. I don’t want to do this and hold off the club face and feel like I’m just holding everything open.

I want to go ahead and let that face turn on around, so as you start that downswing this club, and if you look at my wrist, it’s starting to rotate the face closed.

The club’s going from open to closed throughout the hitting area. Happens in every single good golf swing, every great player is letting that face close down as they’re coming through the shot.

Now depending on how much you want the ball to turn over from right to left, I could do a little bit more and really close the face, or I could do a little bit less.

So look at your ball flight, if it’s not getting the draw you want, I’m going to feel like I’m more from the inside and I’m really letting that hand roll on over.

If we took our hand, and we just did this, almost like if you’re on a motorcycle and you turn the gas up, if I had that on a club and did that same thing, that’s that closing action of the club face.

Same thing with the right hand. If I was on a motor cycle and I turned the gas back like this, that’s that same action that’s closing the face.

We also let our hands roll on over as though you had doorknobs, and you’re turning the doorknobs to the right, turn the doorknobs to the left.

So when those are happening, I’m giving you a few feelings to have there, but I’ve got to let that face roll on over as I do that.

Let’s go ahead and do a couple here, let’s exaggerate, and if you’re on the driving range, just take about 10 or 15 golf balls, set up square to it, and I want you to feel like you’re just going to swing way out 45° out to the right.

Now you’re going to want to put this ball a little bit back in your stance to do this drill. Again, this is only a drill to feel this.

This is not exactly what’s going on, because your body will be opening up in the golf swing, but I want to exaggerate here to get started.

Put this ball on your back foot, swing a little bit out to the right, kind of that 45°, and let that face roll on over.

Now from there, you’re going to see that ball starts to really hook, so we could see that ball start to curve away from that bunker even though I’m only hitting it 20 or 30 yards.

Now it’s going to start way out there to the right, and that’s completely fine. So again, swinging 45° this way, really letting that face turn on over and my body’s kind of facing this golf ball as I’m doing that.

Again, you see that ball start to want to curve back this way because of the spin on it. Now once you’re comfortable with that, now we have all the ingredients for a really good shot.

Number one, I’m going to go ahead and let my body open up like we did in the earlier video. Let everything open so that I’ tossing toward the flag.

Number two, I’m going to have that sensation that that club is swinging out to the right and releasing. When I put both of those together, that’s actually going to be a square path, and that ball’s going to be a little bit of a nice draw.

So that’s the real trick there. Golf is a side-on game. You’ve got to open up, and you’ve got to let that club release if you want to be really consistent.

If we do this, the ball just gets in the way, we square up the club face without even really having to think about it, and we can really hit some great shots.

All right guys, so for those of you that are members of the Top Speed Golf website, we’ve got some great things to work on here.

We talked about opening up our body so we feel like we can just toss the club toward the flag. We felt like we closed that club face. Well this seems like new information.

I know this seems a lot different than what we talked about before, but it’s really the same things we’ve been working on the entire time with the Top Speed Golf System.

Let’s take the first one of opening up. Now if I want to do the Straight-Line Release correctly, we talk about how there’s a point about four feet in front of your golf ball that you’re hitting, where you want to release everything toward that.

Naturally, what I would want to do and what we talk about in the Straight-Line Release section, is that I want to open up.

I want my hips, as I get to the Straight-Line Release, my hips, my chest, my arms, my club, everything releasing out to that point, that’s a different way of saying exactly what we worked on here today.

So this video is a great way to give you a new, fresh idea, a new take on this.

But if we really want to engrain it, if you want to get that muscle memory that lasts a lifetime to where you just set up and you hit a golf ball, and you naturally start opening up. You start to release in front.

I want you to work through the Straight-Line Release section. Start from level one, work on the first videos. Work your way up through there and then into the level two and level three.

Once you do those drills, you get those reps in, that muscle memory’s going to be built and you can rely on that for the rest of your life.

Now what about the second thing, talking about kind of coming from the inside and squaring up that club face. That’s exactly what we talk about in The Move section.

In The Move, we talk about how we’re going to shallow out that club and as we come down, we’re going to square that club face up.

We even used the tennis racket drill which is a great drill in The Move section, that can really help you with this.

So again, this is a great video, do these drills, practice these tips today that we talked about earlier in this video, but if we want to ingrain it forever, go to The Move section, work through all those drills, and then muscle memory is just going to take over with all those repetitions.

So best luck you guys, I can’t wait to work with you more. I’ll see you in the Straight-Line Release and the Move section.