Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "The Key Move In the Golf Swing That Never Gets Talked About"

There's a move in your downswing with your right shoulder that is crucial for getting into a good impact position...

...but most aren't making it.

In fact, you're probably making one of the two most common mistakes I see being made...

...that put your right shoulder in a spot that makes consistent and solid contact nearly impossible.

In today's video, you'll discover what this move is (that you're probably not making)...

...and you'll get a drill to show you how to start making this move.

You'll be amazed at how much easier it is to make solid contact with this simple move!

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:44

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Now one thing that doesn’t get nearly enough attention, in my opinion, in the golf swing is what the right shoulder does.

If you don’t get this right, which almost everybody doesn’t, then everything in your swing doesn’t really matter. Let me explain what I mean by this.

Now if I start my downswing, and my right shoulder kicks out this way, more toward the golf ball, that’s that kind of steep over the top, that’s what everybody starts out with.

We slice across it, you know, that’s that weak shot. Everybody knows that we don’t want to do that, that’s the over the top move.

But what most people do to solve this over-the-top move is, they think, well, I really don’t like doing that, let me just do the exact opposite and I’ll drop everything underneath.

Well, that right shoulder instead of tracking down on plane, kicks underneath, left shoulder hikes up, and now all of a sudden, we’ve taken that steep over the top, we’ve kept this steep angle, but we’ve dropped everything underneath.

Well that’s steep starting the downswing, and then stuck under late in the swing. That gives you those blocks way to the right, that gives you those snap hooks way to the left.

If you do either one of those, which I’d say probably 90 percent of people are doing one of those two incorrect right shoulder movements, golf’s going to get really hard.

Now finally, I’m going to show you what’s going wrong with these. I’m also going to show you the right way to have the shoulder track down correctly where I can get shallow and on plane, deliver my club squarely through this golf ball, and play some great golf like the pros do.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so let’s jump in with this right shoulder over the top first. This is the most common one for high handicap golfers. I’m going to set up here and go to the top of my back swing.

Now from here, when I’m basically all right side dominant, this shoulder wants to kick this way, come out toward the golf ball too much. I open up, and now that puts me slicing it and pulling it over to the left, it’s going to slice back in.

Well, the reason for this is we haven’t learned how to use the club face properly. Most players have the face too open when they first start out, because if I drag this handle toward the target, my face gets wide open, it goes to the right.

So to solve that, we start coming over the top, that gets the ball to start more to the left, and when it fades back in, it’s a pretty playable shot.

It’s in the fairway, even though we’ve lost probably 50 yards of distance that we could be doing there. That’s the most common one.

The most commons solution to this, as I just mentioned, is not really changing any of the relationship of my club my hands, my arms, my shoulders.

I’ve still got that move where I’m starting down steep, but then I say, OK, I’ve got to get everything going more this way and releasing.

What will happen is players drop everything this way, the right shoulder gets lower, now all of a sudden everything is more to the inside but I’m still steep.

So when you start down, that club’s steep, it then shallows under late, and I get that block to the right.

Now here’s the real solution, here’s the one we’re supposed to be going toward. When I set up to this golf ball, I want to imagine this like a plane of glass coming from my shoulders.

Ben Hogan was probably one of the first ones to make this really popular in his book, but if you imagine there’s kind of a whole cut through my neck and shoulders, this big plane of glass coming down to my golf ball.

I want to imagine that as I rotate my shoulders back and through, they stay on that plane of glass. If I break the plane of glass and kind of tilt it this way, that’s that over the top.

If I break the plane of glass and go this way, that’s that underneath stuck position. I really have to get to where those are rotating back and through fairly consistently. Doesn’t have to be perfect.

Here’s what I want you to do to get a feel for that. Go ahead and put your arms out to your side, just like this, and I want you to turn back and through.

When you turn to the top of the swing, have your left hand pointing to the golf ball. As you turn to the bottom of the swing, have your right hand pointing to the golf ball.

You’ll see when I do that, I have to get a little bit of side bend in the downswing, to keep my shoulders tilted this way.

I have to get a little bit of side bend going to the left in the backswing, to keep my shoulders tilted that way. But I just stick my hands out, I just go hand to hand. It’s pretty natural.

I find when people start trying to get this side bend one way or another, it gets pretty confusing. Just stick your arms out, point them to the golf ball, hold the position for three to five seconds going through.

Hold the position three to five seconds going back, and that’s going to train the proper tilt of the shoulders. You’re going to get pretty comfortable with that.

Once you get that feeling, do the same thing with this golf ball, or golf club, and I’m just going to feel like I get into a position coming back and coming through.

I like to pause here when my club is parallel with the ground in the follow through to get that kind of shoulders tilted down feeling as I’m coming through there.

Same thing, I pause at the top of the backswing to feel my shoulders tilted down as I’m doing that. So let’s go ahead and hit one, and you’ll see how much more consistent it is, but there’s still one piece missing to this that I need to go over.

There we go, first swing of the day. Hit it pretty solid. Felt like everything’s nice and consistent there. But there’s one thing that’s missing, which is the hands.

Now if you’re used to having this club come down steep, either over the top or underneath and getting inside shoulder, getting underneath late so it starts down steep and gets underneath, that’s when I need to get this club shallowing out in the transition.

Now that I have the correct shoulder angles, what I want you to feel is as you start your downswing, I want to feel like my elbows are kind of coming out.

So my left elbow instead of being pointed down, my shoulders stay down but my elbows, my left arm and my right arm tucking in, start to shallow that club out.

Then as I come through, now my shoulders are on plane and my club is on plane. That’s what kind of ties it all together.

If the shoulders don’t go right first, if I don’t get those shoulders on plane first, really doesn’t matter what I do with my arms.

Because if I’m doing this with my shoulders, there’s not much I can do to put this club out here somewhere kind of floating around in space to get that working down in the same angle.

If I get my shoulders out here, there’s not much I can do to shallow it out. My shoulders are just too far gone in either of those scenarios.

So get the shoulders working first, then start to work on those elbows turning more under. This elbow out, this elbow in, and that’s what’s going to allow you to get that club finally on a really great plane in the golf swing.

Let’s go ahead and hit one more here. There we go, nice and solid. Again, once you get that down, you don’t really have to hit tons and tons of balls, it’s going to be fairly consistent to get those results.

Now there’s one final piece to this. Remember we talked about if those shoulders don’t get on the proper plane, nothing else really makes much of a difference.

If it gets stuck under like this, there’s nothing I can do with my hands and arms to save it. If it gets over the top like this, there’s nothing I can do to reroute the club enough to not be steep and over the top.

That’s the first piece. The second two pieces there, or the second piece, is shallowing it out. Then finally, the last piece to tie all this in together, is to square up the properly. That’s one that most players have never learned to do.

We’ve been taught to square up the face by casting, flipping the club, and that gets the club face more closed. But in reality what we need to do to square up that face, is use the wrist angles properly to square that club up without having to lose that shaft angle.

That’s what I’m going to show you in The Move section. This is what’s going to tie it all in together. Go to the Instruction tab, Top Speed Golf System, then go down to The Move.

Once you’re in there, I’m going to walk you through a series of drills that kind of puts a bow on all of this. The final piece there is using these wrists properly.

So we’re going to get the shoulders, the club plane, and the wrist angles all tied up and once you get all that, once you get those three pieces, it’s not really that hard.

It only takes a handful of drills to really get the feeling of what that is. You’re going to start compressing the heck out of the golf ball. I recommend that you overdo it.

Once you get in that section, really try to come from the inside, over trap that golf ball. Take tons of loft of this club, really pinch it into the ground.

You’re going to be able to have much more clean strikes, much more penetrating shots, really solid on the face shots, once you go through those.

So just follow those handful of drills, and you’ll be so surprised how much easier the game gets. So if you’ve been struggling with that steeper swing, you’ve been struggling to really compress the golf ball, hit it nice and solid and crisp, that’s the perfect place to start.

I’ll go ahead and see you in The Move section soon, let’s get started right now.