Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Set Up & Alignment Myths | The Complete Driver Guide"

In today's lesson...

I'll talk about how lining up your shoulders toward your target may not be ideal...

...and could even be causing you to swing over-the-top.

Get this juicy tip along with a few more...

...and let's make your driver a consistent club for you!

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 10:15

Video Transcription:

Let's talk about one of the biggest myths out there with setting up to the golf ball. And a lot of times when players, especially if you're like myself, you're a little bit technical, you want to set up correctly, you think about getting everything square. I want to get my feet, my hips, my shoulders, everything square to my target line.

And I'm going to do that by setting up with my shoulders pretty level. So now everything will be nice and lined up. My weight is 50-50. We're going to get to that in a minute here. But what this actually does, it causes you to line up a little bit open when your shoulders are level so if I'm thinking about setting up with my shoulders level and my spine straight up and down, it's going to typically lend me to weaker shots and probably a little bit more fade biased. What we actually want to do well first is talk about why this is incorrect or what is going to skew our alignment.

If my shoulders are level, since it's my hands, we're on the same spot of the club, maybe that would work because then my shoulders and everything would be square. But where my hand, my right hand is farther down the club. You notice from the down the line to you, when I when I put my hand farther down, all of a sudden it opens my shoulders.

So if I'm going to keep my shoulders level, they're going to be open when I grab my right hand farther down the club. So if you look at your address from down the line and it looks like your right forearm is a little above your left forearm, this could be something that you're doing. We actually want to have a little bit of tilt of the shoulders.

And if you can imagine, they're set up like this. I'm going to go ahead and bump toward the target and get my shoulders tilted back a little bit along with my spine angle. So this is straight up and down. I'm going to bump my spine a little bit away from the target. When I do this, I may feel like my hips close a little bit and I may feel like my shoulders close a little bit, which will compensate for the right hand being lower.

And now when I set up, you can see that my shoulders look pretty square from this angle. And now my forearms are pretty matched up. And this puts me in a great position to wear. Now I can go ahead and swing pretty natural. I'm going to come more from the inside rather than over the top. And I'm going to have a lot more power and easily be able to hit that draw.

Let's go and check it out.

There we go. Very, very straight. Great ball flight. Just a nice little draw. I could hit that one a whole lot better than that. So that's piece number one. If we try to set up at those shoulders level, that could actually be something that we don't want to do. We want to get a little bit of tilt in there.

Now, if you're having trouble doing that, what I want you to do is go ahead and feel like you get a little bit more weight on your right side. And that brings me to the second piece. A lot of times people want to set up with their feet perfectly balanced weight on as much of my right foot as my left foot.

Now, with the majority of players, I see them getting their weight to the right side way too late and then keeping it on the right side way too light so that when they start their downswing, they're not getting back to the left. They're not getting their weight in front. And just like you've seen with the pros and finishing and this nice balance position coming all the way on through, most players I see have a very late weight shift to the right Once it gets to the right, it's there way too long, and then we end up falling back away from the target or having to really feel like you're working hard to get through the

golf ball. It doesn't have to be that hard. Let me go and show you a way that's going to pair up with at first weight, too. So if I set up with my weight, 50-50, my shoulders would be level. I'm going to get a little more weight on my right side. I want to feel like I'm probably 60% on the inside of my right foot.

At address that's going to help me get that tilt that we just talked about. Now, the reason I like to start with my weight on my right is when you're studying what they call pressure plates and ground force reaction. I know it's it sounds like it's a lot of science going on there, but it can be balled down very simple.

When they study the best players in the world, what they find is the weight is most to the right about right here in the swing. So when you're clubs parallel to the ground, so when your left arm is parallel to the ground, that's about as far of a weight shift to the right as you're going to get from there.

It actually begins to shift back to the left as you're completing your back swing. So as my arms and hands are still swinging back, I'm actually already starting to get to my left side. That's what allows you to get to your left side through contact and then swing all the way on through. So the key is some of this kind of counterintuitive.

If I want to get to the to the left easier, I need to actually start with more weight on my right side. So here's what I'm going to feel. I want to feel like I put a little pressure on my right side to start with. Probably 60% right side. There may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I'd rather it be right too early than not early enough.

So I'm going to start with that there. That's going to help me with my tilt that I want to get me from the inside and get a nice draw. And then from there, I'm going to feel like my first move is to press the inside of my right foot into the ground. Imagine there's something under your foot and you're going to press it into the turf.

If the ground was a little bit soggy, you're really going to be able to push it in there and almost dent the ground a little bit. That's my first move. Then from there, as soon as I press into the ground, I want to think about getting left and then swinging down. So I'm starting right off press just like this press.

And then I go left, swing down to my good fall finish. So you'll notice with myself, I even have a trigger. My left toe will start to come off the ground a little bit. I don't even realize I do that now, but that helps me to kind of press into that that right side to start. So let's go and try another one here again, feeling like I'm already starting on my right side, getting my weight left.

Then I make my downswing Here we go. Nice rhythm back in through. Had no problem getting through that golf ball hitting a pretty good shot. Now, finally here, I want to talk about something that I wish I'd done a long time ago. I was always taught to really keep a lot of flex in this right leg and to kind of restrict my hips as I'm making my back swing so my hips don't move very much.

My right leg stays flexed at address and stays flex the entire back swing. Now, if you really want to hit with some easy power what you want to do is go ahead and feel like when you get that pressure into the right foot like we just talked about, go ahead and let the right leg straighten up a little bit.

That's different. Than a sway. This is a sway where I'm letting my hips move. This is me letting my right leg straighten a little bit. What ends up happening is as I press into the ground and let my right leg straighten, look how that gets my hip going way back. I can really get a lot of hip turn when I do that.

If I keep this knee flexed as I put pressure into it, I'm getting almost no hip turn at all. So as you start to transfer your weight to the right early, go ahead and let that knee straighten out a little bit. Get those hips turning the more of those hipster and the more easy power that you're going to have.

So notice how on this swing my right leg straightens a little bit on the back swing to allow me to get a bigger hip turn and just get a whole lot of easy power from it.

There we go, nice and straight. Another good job there. So when I restrict this leg, I can't get that turn. My hips won't rotate. When I don't rotate my hips, my shoulders and my arms or rotate. If you feel really stiff, that can be something that's causing you a lot of problems. Now, actually, I don't want us to stop here.

Now, what we really talked about here, especially at the end with keeping that knee, is stay off fluid spine and powerturn The first two tips talking about getting your weight shift a little bit more to the right. Tilting the spine a little bit more. How that gets you more square, able to deliver the club from the inside.

That's a stable fluid spine. And I'd say that's the number one what I call the number one key to consistency in the golf swing. If I can get my spine tilted slightly away from the target, turn back on that angle, come down on that angle. Golf, this gets a whole heck of a lot easier. My head's not moving around all over the place.

My ability to deliver my club to the same spot through impact gets dramatically increased in my Consistency's going to go through the charts. So head over to the stable fluid spine section. Start working through level one. You don't have to go through the whole course. Just commit to doing one video this week from level one of the stable fluid spine.

And I promise you you're going to start to get more consistent. The second piece, there was a power piece. That's what we call the power turn. Getting this need unlock allows those hips to rotate more from their shoulders, rotate more in our club, and actually goes farther back. That is a huge determinant in increasing your distance and your power.

Now, there's two ways you can get that. I just went over one single piece of that here today. That's nowhere near as much power and distance as you can gain without even really feeling like you're swinging that hard. And it's a whole lot more fun when you're hitting it far, I can guarantee you that. So there's two ways you can do this.

If you really want to get the most distance as quickly as possible, head over to what we call the 20 minute distance fix. Now it's a three week program. You practice an hour a week and on average, the best drives from our pilot group, on average, they were getting 35 yards farther on their best drives. So if you want distance, I've never seen a program that works better for this.

We've got all the data to back it up. I can't wait to help you start crushing your drives. That's exactly what I'd recommend doing. Video number one from the 20 minute distance fix will get you about 40% of your gain. So you're going to be hitting it 15 yards farther just from one 20 minute train session. Also with this, with your technique related piece to that, the power turn, like we talked about, getting those hips and shoulders a turn more is what allows you to hit it farther and get that good power without having to feel like you're swinging hard.

That's the power turn section from the top speed golf system again. Don't feel like you have to do the whole program. Just go to level number one, finish one power turn video and I guarantee you you're going to start ingraining a better swing. So in a nutshell, if you want to improve your mechanics, you don't have a thousand things to worry about.

Let's go to a straight line release. Let's do one video there. Let's go to the power turn. Let's do one video there. Now, if you really want to get the most distance as quickly as possible, head over the 20 minute distance fix, you don't have to do the whole program. Again, just do that very first video and you're going to be hitting it 15 yards farther.

So I can't wait to see you in the system. I can't wait to see you in the 20 minute distance fix. Let's go and get started right now.