Why You Need This: In this video, "Online Golf Instruction | How to Compress a Golf Ball"...

You're going to find out how to use the hips and the body to really compress your shots!

You'll see how the typical instruction to "get stacked" on your left side...

...can prevent you from playing your best golf.

Specifically, if you worry too much about being stacked and not enough about rotating properly...

...you'll likely cast the club, swing too much with your arms, and have a weak release.

So, if you are interested in any of these...

• more solid shots
• increased lag and distance
• powerful release for effortless speed

...then you've gotta watch this video right now!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:01

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, Clay Ballard with Top Speed Golf, and today we’re going to be taking a look at a web member Matt’s golf swing.

going to give you guys some great feedback on how you can improve your swing, and we’re really going to focus in on the hips and the body, and how to compress a golf ball and to be able to really get that solid contact in the stroke.

It’s all about the backswing, even though a lot of people focus on the backswing, we’ll talk a lot about the downswing today, and what you guys can work on, again, to get that really nice, solid, compressed golf shot.

To start out, looking really good in the backswing. We see the posture’s pretty nice, no rounded shoulders here. Pretty nice and balance from heel to toe. As Matt’s doing his takeaway here, nice takeaway, pretty good amount of shoulder turn.

The club is tracking back on plane, so if we were to look at a swing plan from address, if we were to draw a line from the hosel of the club up to the elbow, he’s staying pretty well on plane all the way up to the top of the swing.

We pause at the top of the swing, nice positon here. I like how the hands are nice and high, the butt end of the club at the top of the swing is a couple niches over his head, so he’s getting a nice, high hand position, which is really good for power.

As I mentioned, the club is nicely on plane, the posture’s really god. Now what happens in the downswing that I think he could do, that he could work on to really improve, is how the lower body works and how the hips and the arms work together.

So we’ll see here as he starts down, as he gets a little bit lower in the downswing, we can see that the hips kind of stop on him, and they’re not clearing out of the way which leaves very little room for him to release the club.

If we take a look at this position, if we draw a line from the club shaft here, we can see it’s gotten very flat, and then the hips are stopping as he’s coming through contact.

If I stop again at contact, we can see here that the hips are pretty square to the ball when these hips should be rotated open about 45°. Now when we look from face on, we’re going to talk about how he can actually get those hips to open up.

So it’s not just trying to rotate the hips farther, it’s actually the alignment of the hips with your body, and that’s what we go over in the compression line in our scratch golf system.

We talk about how we can get those hips to open up a little bit more, how we can get in that proper alignment to get them to release, and then how that’s going to affect your straight line release to get the club to go.

If we look at just the backswing, everything’s looking really nice, and then about halfway down the hips and lower body are giving you a little bit of trouble, and the club is kind of having to reroute, and the hands and arms are having to do a lot of the work.

So you probably feel like your lower body is fairly tight in the downswing, and then the hands and arms are doing most of the work in the second half of the swing. We’ve got to get that more synchronized where we’re not only using the body, but we’re using the hands and arms with that.

You can think of the hips and the lower body as creating momentum, and then the hands and arms add to that momentum. Right now, the hips and lower body aren’t creating very much momentum at all, and the hands and arms are having to do most of the work.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at face on, and I’ll really get a little more specific with what we can work on here.

All right, so now as we’re looking from face on, there’s a lot of good things that are happening in the backswing as I mentioned from down the line.

As you’re going to the top, again before he even started the swing, the setup, the posture looks very nice. I wouldn’t make a lot of changes there. Grip also looks very nice.

Good powerful turn as you’re going to the top, not a lot of extra movement. You can see you’ve got a nice shoulder turn, that’s one of the things that we focus in on the power turn section in the scratch golf system.

The club is nice and loaded up, the hips and the shoulders have turned about the right amount there. You could probably get a little bit extra, but that would be a little bit nitpicky there.

Fantastic backswing, I can tell you’ve put in tons of work and tons of time getting it to where it is, which is going to allow you to be a lot more consistent as you start to build some of the downswing pieces in there, so great work on that.

The main thing we’re talking about here with the downswing, is your shift to the left.

So if we pause you about halfway down here -- let’s go a little farther -- if we were to draw a vertical line up from the left ankle and just straight up and down, you would see the left ankle, the let hip, and the left shoulder, are almost perfectly stacked on each other.

Now with the driver, when we look at really good players, look at good, powerful golf swings, you’ll see that line should be angled away from the target a little bit.

If we took that line and we angled t away from the target, roughly 6 or 8°, then we should see the left ankle, the left hip, and the left shoulder all stacked up on that line. This green line here is exactly where the hip, and the ankle should be.

When we slide in front of that line what tends to happen, is that the hips can’t rotate anymore, and the body can’t rotate anymore, and our hips and our body tend to lock up a little bit. When that happens, and our hips and our body lock up, now the arms have to take over.

In the compression line series, in the scratch golf systems, that’s what we really focus in on, is getting that line from the left ankle, the left hip, and left shoulder stacked slightly away from the target so your hips can rotate.

If you go to the compression line section, section number 1 video number 2, we talk about the hips and the shoulders alignment, and how to work on getting the hips to rotate to where you’re at contact, the hips are about45 degrees open.

That allows your body to build momentum. You can see your hips are pretty square to the ball as you’re making contact here. That’s the first thing I would work on.

Now as I mentioned, if the hips and the body don’t rotate enough in the downswing, then that’s going to cause the arms to try to take over and compensate for that.

So you can see as you’re coming down, you’re losing a little bit of lag here, so the angle between the forearms and the club is already getting lost a little bit. That’s because the arms are becoming overreactive as a result of what the hips are doing.

A very simple change in the hips is going to affect what the arms, the club, and your lag does. So a great way to pair this up, once we get that compression line in a better position that we worked on in video 1.2.

You can actually go to the lag section, video 1.2 there also, section 1, video 2, we walk about how to get the club, an easy drill I call stick behind the ball.

So I’m going to do a drill with the club, getting it to point behind the ball late into the swing so we’re conserving this energy of lag, and then from there, we’re going to go into actually again, video 1.2 in the release point, which says that the first time that your club should split your forearms.

So here just right after contact, about a foot after contact, you can see that your club shaft would be splitting these firearms. Now what that means is, I’s a carryover from losing a little bit of lag.

You’re casting the club slightly in the downswing, and then releasing the club early as you’re hitting the ball. So this club is splitting your forearms here, when it should be splitting your forearms for the first time as we’re farther out in front.

You can see now, the club is already fully released and going and starting to hinge back up, it’s in line with the right forearm. This is the point where it should very first be splitting the forearms, and that’s what’s going to allow you to get really, really good compression on the golf ball.

When you add those three things together, and work on those in the downswing, that’s what’s really going to take your ball striking to the next level.

So number one, we’re going to work on video 1.2, the compression line and the downswing. That’s going to help us to get our body rotating a little bit more to create momentum, so our hands and arms can add to that momentum instead of feeling like our hands and arms are doing everything on their own.

The 1.2 in the lag system is going to get us a little bit more lag with the hands and arms to build on that, and then 1.2 in the straight line release system is going to talk about how we can release the club properly.

That’s when you’re going to see the humongous results when you start releasing hat club properly, you’re going to have more forward shaft lean, you’re going to have a better release of the club, and you’re going to have a lot more energy coming into that ball because that club’s going to be lagging behind and then really whipping through contact.

So work on those three videos, for those of you that are members of the website out there. Great videos for you guys to work on. Practice hard on your game, and I’ll see you guy soon.