Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "The Difference Between Tour Pros and You!"

When it comes to the biggest difference that I see between professional golfers and the weekend warriors at your local country club or public course...

...its that the professionals are transferring more of the club's energy into the golf ball.

So how are they doing it?

Well, the most important thing they're doing is taking a big chunk of the club's natural loft off at impact (by having forward shaft lean)...

...and this gives them more distance out of each club and it actually helps with consistency as well.

Today, you're going to get an awesome drill that has a few unique tactics that you probably haven't seen anywhere before (even if you've seen forward shaft lean drills)...

...including a hack with your trail shoulder that will ensure some forward shaft lean at impact!

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 7:57

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Those dag-gone Tour pros that hit it so good, how do they do that? One of the things that they do really well is when they’re hitting shots -- this is all shots, all the way from a wedge all the way up to a driver, we’ll kind of go over both in this video.

But they are able to open their body, stay down in what most people call covering the golf ball, put pressure on the shaft, and really compress that golf ball with the hands leading in front.

Well, there’s actually a really simple drill that I’m going to share with you here that allows you to stop doing that.

So if you’re the opposite of that, if you feel like you lose your posture, if you end up kind of throwing or flipping the club with the ball, your contact and your ball flight isn’t as strong as you’d like for it to be, I have an awesome drill for you.

Now be sure to watch this drill, because even if you’ve seen something similar to this, I have a couple of key points with this that really make all the difference in the world when you’re doing this drill.

So make sure you do this the right way, and you’re going to have a level of solid contact that you haven’t had in a while.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so let’s jump right in here. What we want to do is we want to go ahead and take our grip, and then I’m going to slide my right hand down to where about half my right hand is on the shaft, half of it is still on the grip.

Then I can kind of have my hands looking like this. It’s just like a normal grip would be, I’m just sliding them apart.

A split-hand grip, a lot of people would call this, but there’s a couple of modifications that we’re going to do.

Now one reason this is really good. If you’re tending to lose your posture, so you’re kind of backing up, you’re doing the opposite of covering the golf ball, or you’re losing your posture, your hips are going toward the golf ball.

A lot of times you’re not opening your body very much, but what happens, you have to flip that club to be able to hit this golf ball.

Now with the split-hand grip like this, you really don’t have the length to actually throw the right hand and still reach the golf ball. The club would be much longer if my hand was in the normal position.

So if I choke up on it like this, I have to make some modifications. So when I take my split-hand grip like this, now as you come through contact instead of raising and throwing the club, you have to stay down in your posture just like the pros are doing, staying in that posture through the shot.

So this a great cheat to give you a feeling of exactly what the pros are feeling as they’re hitting the golf ball.

Now there’s a couple things I want you to focus on when you’re doing this. Number one, I want my body to open up. So I really want to feel like my hips open up.

I’m going to feel like my left arm is kind of cinched across my body like this. If we’re looking from face on, my chest and my arm is cinched across my chest like that. It’s the opening that gets the club to the ball.

I’m going to feel like my belt buckle, again this is a feeling, is pointing toward the target. It’s not going to be, it’s only going to be about 45° open, but that’s the feeling I’m going to have.

I want to go ahead and let my right heel start coming off the ground so that I can actually get in this position. If my heel stays down it gets really tight, you really can’t do that.

So I want to really feel like I’m opening up, left arm across, right heel up, that’s going to be really good.

Now the second piece here and what’s really important, is like a hockey slap shot. Now good hockey players, what they do is they put pressure into the stick.

So again, if I do my split-hand grip and I go ahead and come down here to contact, if my right shoulder’s driving through the shot, then I’m in a great position just like the pros.

I can feel this by taking my split-hand grip, putting my club behind the golf ball, then feeling like my right shoulder drives forward until I put some pressure into that shaft.

So you actually see the shaft bending just like a hockey stick would be bending, and I’m pushing that into the ground. That’s that pressure I want to feel.

The same thing’s happening in the golf swing. I’m putting some pressure into this ball with my right shoulder as it keeps on moving forward, that allows me to take that divot in front of the golf ball and really have my hands in front.

So as my right shoulder goes forward, that puts the pressure into there and my hands are in front.

Now if I’m doing this incorrectly, if I’m kind of standing up and throwing at it, my right shoulder stays back and I flip the club like this.

There’s actually no way for me to reach the golf ball way back here like this. My right shoulder’s back and I’m out of my posture if I don’t flip to be able to reach it.

Now if you do this drill, all of a sudden I’m way away from the golf ball now, so this is going to train you how to not only stay in your posture but to get that pressure in the shaft so you can feel like you really compress it.

Here’s what I want you to do to get that feeling. We’re going to go ahead and go down to the shot. Feel that pressure in the ground, actually bend that shaft into the turf a little bit.

Then from there, drive your right shoulder on through it. So I’m putting some pressure into the ground, right shoulder keeps going forward, and then I’m throwing that golf ball down the fairway.

If you’re coming out of your posture, you’re feeling it way back here. We want to get that thing moving forward.

Now, here’s another piece with this that ties in with exactly what we talked about, a really big key with this, is my right elbow.

If I’m losing my posture and I’m throwing the club, my right elbow’s straightening very early. It’s almost like if I grabbed a golf ball, I would be thinking of it if I’m losing my posture as me standing up and throwing everything at the golf ball.

Well in reality, the golf swing, if you look at the pros, is much more of an opening motion and they’re feeling like they’re tossing the golf ball down the fairway like that.

So same feeling here. Get the split-hand grip, put some pressure into it, and look at my right elbow. See how it’s still bent? I’m not letting that extend until after contact.

So let’s do the same thing again. Put pressure into the ground two or three times, right shoulder’s going forward. Notice my right arm is staying bent.

Then I could make a couple swings, feeling my right arm bent, and then I’m going to release that and my right arm’s going to straighten out as I come into the release.

So it’s going to look like this. I’m going to get a couple pressure into the shaft, come back, right arm bent, right arm bent. Then I’m going to go ahead and let it go through the ball instead of at the golf ball.

That really helps me to save up that lag, save up that hit until late, and then I’m letting that fly down the fairway.

So you’ll see here as I hit this iron, you’re going to hear from the sound of it that I really put a lot of pressure into this ball, it really gets a nice, solid contact sound. Let’s give it a whirl.

There we go, hit that one fantastic. Nice, penetrating ball flight, straight as an arrow. When you follow those drills, that’s really going to help you to get into a position that you’re probably not used to if you’re coming out of your posture.

The next piece of this, feeling like I can square the face up. A lot of times when I see players doing this drill, what will end up happening is, they’ll get their hands farther forward, they’ll stay in their posture, but then the face is wide open.

So if you look at my club, as I start to get the body more open and I start to lean the forward, look what that does to the face. That can actually make the face wide open.

So if you tried this in the past and you have failed, you feel like you get a lot of weak shots to the right when you try to get your hands in front, when you try to get your body to open up. You have to pair that up with what I call The Move.

The Move is simply shallowing this club out and then making sure that that face squares up early. So there’s a way that the pros are doing this where they’re bowing their left wrist, they’re really squaring that face down.

Then when they get in that position that we just talked about in this video, everything is lined up. It’s kind of like the one-two punch there.

What I recommend after doing the drills in this video, is going to The Move section. So go to the Top Speed Golf home page, click on the Instruction tab, go to the Top Speed Golf System, and then click The Move from there.

When you go through those drills in The Move, I show you exactly how to square this face up. There’s a video in there, don’t miss it, it’s called the Tennis Racket Drill, where I really work on that face squaring up so that you are able to hit those nice, penetrating, compressed draw shots.

I also talk about how to get this club on plane so that we can get those nice draws, and when we do open up more, we don’t get those weak shots to the right when we change this technique.

That’s going to be a game-changer for you. I can’t wait to show it to you. So finish these drills then head over to The Move section. Work through those drills in The Move.

Once you get done with those, it’s going to be ingrained. You’re not going to have to think about it, it’s just going to happen naturally in your swing. So best of luck, I’ll see you in The Move.