Why You Need This: If you’re looking to save strokes, and pain, this video, Stop Chunking! is for you.

How would you like to stop chunking your golf shots?

How do you become a consistent ball striker?

We have the golf swing and your total game broken down to the 5 Real Fundamentals in the Top Speed Golf System.

In this video, I’ll cover chunking, the main cause, and some drills to help bring consistency to your swing.

All while improving key Real Fundamentals!

Start having real control of your game.

Be able to hit any shot in golf!

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Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 11:37

Video Transcription:

OK, the chunk shot. Man, what a frustrating shot.

Especially out here today, maybe the grass is a little bit damp, it’s a little bit muddy here, and I know if I kind of stick this club down behind the golf ball, maybe I hit an inch behind the golf ball, that’s just going to sink down into that mud.

It’s going to be a thud, it’s not going to go any kind of distance at all, and I might even hit it into the water here.

Well, how do we get that consistent contact to where we know we’re going to come down and through every single time.

Because what I see most players doing, they get a couple of those chunks, and now all of a sudden we say OK, I don’t want to do that again, that was bad, let me kind of stand up and hit the ball thin or a little bit thin every single time.

You start to develop a pattern of hitting thin shots that don’t feel solid, they’re not really compressed, you hear some players and you think man, that sounded different than what mine are sounding like. That’s very, very common.

So we’re going to talk about how to not only just get rid of the chunks, but also not fall into the habit of getting a lot of thin shots. How do the correct technique so you can hit them nice and clean.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so for the majority of this comes from an improper use of the lower body. So the legs and the hips, when that isn’t working right, and I’ll be honest with you, when every golfer first starts to play golf, the lower body, the legs, the hips really aren’t going to work correctly.

So whenever we start to learn, we can get into this bad pattern and then we start to make adjustments and compensations from there.

Let me go ahead and give you the overall, what I see a lot when this is happening. If I’m not using my legs very much, so let’s say I set up to this golf ball and my legs are turned off.

I’m not really rotating my body very much. I’ll tend to pick up the club with my hands and arms like we see with a lot of players, and not make very much of a shoulder turn.

That’s what happens when my legs aren’t really working on the way back. Then if my legs aren’t working on that way through, I’m going to use this upper body again to try to hit the golf ball.

To push that club on through, and my follow through is going to be a little bit more bent forward instead of nice, and tall, and high here with the body like we see with the pros.

You’ll notice if I stay bent forward like this, my hips haven’t really rotated around, whereas if I get my rotation all the way on through, now I’m good and tall, and this is pretty much what you’ll see all the pro players doing in their follow through.

So when we don’t use the legs, we get a shot that looks something like this. Here’s the legs turned off again, so we missed some power.

If we do hit one good, like that one happened to be fairly solid on the club face, it doesn’t have a lot of distance. I’m probably 20 yards short of the green or so there.

So whenever that happens, we’re using all those hands and arms, it’s very easy to start to realize we’re going to chunk quite a few.

If my lower body isn’t helping to shallow out my angle of attack, I’m basically just relying on my hands and arms to accurately judge where I’m going to stick this club in the ground, either too heavy or too thin.

So as I start to hit some heavy ones, I say OK, I’m still not going to use my lower body, but how do I keep from chunking this. I might start to raise up out of the shot.

As I back up and I think a lot of you guys can probably relate to this, I’ll start to back up out, my chest moves back here, I get farther away from the ground.

Again, not using the lower body, but now I’m still using my hands and arms, and I’m going to tend to hit a lot of these thing.

That’s going to look something like this, and you’ve probably seen this quite a bit, where I kind of back out and I hit it thin, and now all of a sudden I kind of top one that kind of rolls across the ground there, or maybe I just hit it fractionally thin and it ends up being a decent shot.

So the root cause there is I didn’t use my lower body, that got me using all hands and arms. That was very inconsistent, I had a lot of chunk shots.

I start to realize I’ve got to do something about this, and now I’m going to start to stand up. The real key to this is learning how to use the knees and the legs properly, get those sequenced really good.

I’m going to give you a great step by step drill to make that happen, and then we’re really going to take control of these chunks and thins.

All right, so now let’s go through a progression and learn how to use this body correctly. The first thing is, in the backswing, I want to make sure that I go ahead and rotate my hips on the way back.

If I don’t get very much of a hip turn, again, I’m going to pick it up all hands and arms, and I’m going to bring it down all hands and arms, too.

So I’ve got to make sure that I let those hips rotate. The way I like to think of this is if you kind of imagine getting yourself in a short stop with your legs are bent, your knees are kind of out, is I want to turn this way, my right leg is going to straighten slightly and my life leg is going to come barely in.

That’s going to allow me to rotate my hips quite a bit. Now as I start my downswing, I’m going to go back to that short stop position again.

This would be the top of my backswing, I start out in the short stop type position. I go to the top, my right leg straightens, my left knee comes slightly in there, and that’s going to allow me to rotate to the top.

As I start down, that’s what’s going to be going back to that kind of knee-bent, knees-wide, I’m very athletic, I can pivot on through there, and that’s going to allow me to get loaded up into the ground.

Now as I come on through the shot, what I want to do is my finish, I’m going to let those legs extend and rotate all the way around.

Now the big key here, is I want to feel like my hips and my pelvis come up and around at the same time. I’m going to exaggerate here so you can see this.

This would be my backswing, start of my downswing, and then coming on through. Now it’s really exaggerated, I’m just kind of giving you a visual so you can really see that. There’s the downswing, and then coming on around.

What that allows me to do is to get some momentum as I’m pivoting with my body. Imagine I had one of those big medicine balls, fairly light one, maybe 10-15 pounds, and I’m going to swing that back and through.

I’ve got to load up these legs, get them ready and loaded into the ground, that way when I drive on through, I can help that to pivot that bag around.

What I wouldn’t do is just kind of lock my legs in there, keep them bent, and do this. I wouldn’t be using my lower body. I have to get that momentum and that pivot from my lower body happening.

Once I can do that, now my hips will rotate all the way on around here to the finish, my right heel comes all the way up off the ground. If you’re kind of limited in your hip, I have a great test for you on this.

Put your left foot up, directly in front of your body, and try to rotate in your left ankle this way. That would be what’s called internal rotation of the hip.

If can’t do this move, then that means that my hips can’t rotate on around while keeping my foot forward.

If you have a tough time lifting up your leg and doing this, rotating that foot inward, then you’re going to need to flare that left foot out like that so that you can rotate on through in your golf swing.

So I’m using those legs and getting athletic, I’m bending and kind of going around my body. Do a good 15-20 reps of that just kind of swinging your arms back and through.

Again, as you start the downswing, knees wide, bend them into the ground. As you come on through to the finish, everything facing the target, your belt buckle toward the target.

My right foot is pivoted around, my chest is nice and high here, everything’s facing it just like you’d see with the PGA Tour player.

Now grab another 15-20 swings, and start to get the momentum of that club. I’m going back, starting my downswing, and then coming the way on around.

Again, I just want to build this up, let my legs bend a little bit to start the downswing, and then rotate all the way on around through. Good 15-20 reps, really get the feeling of that sensation.

Now with my body pivoting me around, again, I have some momentum of this club. I feel like I can just let this club swing back and through, and I’m going to be able to fairly consistently tie them up where this is going to hit the ground.

I could even take it with just one arm, my left arm here, and I can let my body, and momentum of my body do the pivot, and you’ll see how I’m hitting this grass fairly consistently every single swing.

I didn’t have one that was way back here and way up there, that’s because the momentum was created with my body, and my arms were just kind of swinging with that momentum instead of my body being locked in concrete and my arms trying to do all the work and kind of thrash at it.

So now, let’s put this to the test. We’ve done 15 to 20 practice swings, just with the lower body. We’ve done our 15 to 20 adding the lower body and the arm swing.

Now let’s go ahead and hit a couple shots and see if we can control that low point, and then I have a great drill for you to fine tune it after this.

All right, so there we saw had the divot in front, nice clean contact, let’s go ahead and start to fine tune this now.

I have this alignment stick down on the ground. One thing that I really like to do is line that up with where you’re going to start the golf ball.

So here I’m just kind of letting that point to where the golf ball is, and then I’m going to see in relationship to that, where my divot ends up happening.

Here, I can see if I hit this golf ball, my divot’s way back here, I start to realize OK, it’s a couple inches back.

If I put this stick kind of pointing right at the golf ball, what I should see here, is an ability to consistently have that divot in front but also to have that divot fairly shallow.

Notice how it’s wet, it’s muddy, but these divots aren’t really deep. There’s still roots of the turf are kind of popping up out of this.

Again, what’s happening there is what we call Impact Glide. The reason is, is my hips are kind of loading into the ground. As they come up and in, that allows this club to come fairly shallow with the ground.

So you imagine if my club’s low to the ground, as my hips rotate up and in, that’s kind of keeping that gliding across the turf.

If I was to have my hips level and have them move that through with my hand, I would be hitting down into the ground.

It’s the fact that my hips are moving up as my club is releasing that kind of allows this club to move down and then glide very level with the turf there.

So take another alignment stick out again, work on that same drill. Feel the knees separate and then come on through to the good, full finish, and I’m going to pay attention to where my divot happens and I’m going to adjust on each shot for say 10 shots.

If I’m a little far back, really try to get that farther forward. If I can even get too far forward, my divot starts up here, I need to bring it back a little bit.

So I’m just getting some feedback so I know if I’m doing this correctly or not. There we go, right toward the flag. Nice shot, but just a little bit thin here.

Again, I would just work on going ahead and allowing myself to hit a little bit more down. Don’t be afraid if you’re slightly off to adjust on these. Those little small adjustments will allow you to get a feel for where the ground is.

If you put this stick there, I think you’ll be surprised with how much more awareness you have and how after about 10 or 15 shots you’re going to get some control over where that divot is happening.

Now I find players a lot of times say, well this is an advanced drill. I want to fix my swing and then get to doing this drill.

You don’t want to do that. This drill is going to help you to fix your swing. It’s going to help you to improve your technique, and help you to get the feedback that you need so that you can control your low point and control your divots.

Best of luck.

Now we talked a lot about how to use that lower body and use that ground to get the nice shallow angle of attack, so you don’t have to constantly go between thinning and chunking.

It’s going to really just kind of even out how you’re coming into the level of the surface. Now for those of you that are members of the website, what I recommend that you do is go to the Stable Fluid Spine section.

One of the things that will really help with what we talked about here today, is getting into the proper spine angle, and maintaining that spine angle throughout the swing so that everything’s way more consistent.

If my spin is moving around, I’m kind falling left and falling back to the right, that’s changing my low point. Even if I use my legs correctly, I’m not going to really have the consistency that I’d love to have.

So go back to level 1 of the Stable Fluid Spine, start working through those drills.

Add that to what we did here today, that’s going to get you that long-lasting consistency that you can hang your hat on, that you know every day you can show up, you can do these drills, and you can control where your divot goes. That’s going to give you a lot of long-lasting results.

Best of luck, and I’ll see you in the Stable Fluid Spine.