Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "This Practice Routine Will TRANSFORM Your Golf Game"

Does it feel like your pre-round warmup routine isn’t paying off?

Or… do you even have a proper pre-round routine?

A lousy warmup frequently leads to hitting behind the ball or other frustrating mishits.

Thankfully, I’m here today to share my game-changing practice routine…

…and the secret tool I use to help make fast improvements before every round.

And the best part? Research shows that this training can help you improve 3 to 11 times faster than just hitting the same shot repeatedly.

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 18:19

Video Transcription:

It's great to have you here today. I'm going to go over what I do to practice. This is a really advanced practice to get dialed in. And I want to have feedback on every single one of these drills I'm doing with the brick. So I like to use this Strike Spray Powder, or I also use a Dr. Scholl's Odor X Powder.

You can spray it on the club face, you can spray it on the ground. It gives you a frame of reference to know, am I hitting the ball cleanly? So what I'll do is I like to start out by hitting some wedges. And I'll take this spray and I'll just spray a line. What would be, so if I'm going to put my ball in the middle of the brick here to get this wedge shaft leaning forward and get the divots in front, I'm going to spray a line about an inch and a half behind the golf ball to make sure that I'm missing that line coming down, hitting the golf ball first and then taking the divot in front.

So it's make a lot more sense once I show you here, but I'm just going to take this spray. And I sprayed a white line here on the ground. You should be able to see that on the screen, but if you can't, the line is basically like this. where my shaft would be there. And what that tells me is I have about this much margin that I can hit the ground and still hit a good shot if I'm coming down and through and making my divot in front of the golf ball.

So I've got my ball about an inch in front and when I'm warming up here, all I'm working on is hitting this golf ball with shaft lean. So I'm going to get a little bit of a weight shift to my lead side. I'm going to have my hands leading in front. It's way easier if you feel like I shift to the left, then do my downswing.

A lot of times what I'll see the players doing is they try to shift to the left as their downswing's happening. The golf swing's too fast. The whole downswing's a quarter of a second. I really need to get my weight shifting and then swing down. But if I do that and I have my hands in front, if you imagine my fist is the ball, my club's going to be coming down hitting the ball first and then taking the divot after the golf ball.

So I just hit about 10 or 15 shots here. 50 yards, 60 yards, where I just work on weight shift and then check my, my divots as I'm hitting them. There you go. So I hit a nice little, let's say 60 yard shot. That's kind of how I'll warm up. And when I look at the start of my divot, it's right here about an inch and a half in front of the line.

So I know my divot started right where the golf ball started. And I'm using this alignment stick here as a frame of reference for how much to lean the shaft forward. Let me go and grab the rest of the golf balls and I'll keep on progressing through here. Of what I would do to get dialed in. So I like to hit about, again, if this is real practice, when I go out and practice, I'm going to hit about a hundred golf balls or so, obviously I'm not gonna hit all of those here while we're on camera, but I'm going to hit a good 15, 20, maybe even 25 shots with a wedge.

I could go to a pitching wedge, a nine iron. You're not going to have quite as much shaft lean as you get into longer and longer clubs. But I found most people tend to do this and have no shaft lean. So working with any of those shorter clubs, trying to match this angle, you'll be in about the right spot.

You can always take out your phone, look at a swing from face on with a wedge. See if your shaft angle matches the shaft that's in the stick or the alignment stick here. But again, I'm just going to hit 15 20 shots and just make sure all those divots are happening in front of the line. So even there, hit down a little too much, not the most solid shot in the world, but when I look at where my divot started, it was in front of the line.

That shot's going to be close to the hole because I hit the ball first. If I start to fall back on my right side and start to scoop, so if I start to do this, Now, all of a sudden I'm going to hit behind the line. And if I'm not quite as precise, it's going to be a big chunk. So really I'm just looking to get 10, 15 shots in a row where my divots are in front of this, this line on the ground.

And I know I'm going to be pretty good to go and dialed in with my contact.

There we go. So just going a little further with each one. I'm looking at my divots after each one. I'm seeing these all look pretty nice. Again, if I'm hitting behind the line, most of the time what's happening, I'm not shifting my weight until the downswing. Or even falling back in the downswing, my weight gets on my back foot.

And now I'm wanting to ground out back in here. I want to have a shift and then a downswing to pull that low point of the swing in front of the golf ball. Those are just nice, easy shots. Nothing fancy there. That one again was a little thin instead of hitting right at the golf ball. I probably hit an inch in front of the golf ball, perfectly acceptable shot.

And what I found from my testing is I can make a divot anywhere at the line, and it's a good shot. It may be a little heavy, but still on the green. Or I can hit all the way an inch in front of the golf ball. So this two to three, four inch zone, I can make contact with the ground and it's going to be an acceptable shot.

So let me hit one more and then I'll show you how to move into longer clubs. There you go. So now I know I'm pretty dialed with my ground contact. Another thing I like to feel there is when I finish, notice how I'm all the way on this front foot. I don't ever want to have a swing where I'm falling back and I'm kind of on my back foot as I finish.

I'm having all my momentum move through the ball. And that pulls the divot in front of the line. That's how I'd warm up to start. Then from there, I'm going to switch to a six iron and I'm going to start doing some shallowing drills, but I'm going to do a little variation here. Let me grab another stick and I'll show you exactly how I do this in a more advanced way than just a basic way of using the brick.

So let me grab a third alignment stick and I want to put it on the outside. You really don't have to have this. It's just showing better spacing here. I'm going to put a third alignment stick, six iron shallowing slot, alignment stick that's toward my target is in the shallowing slot here, and I'm also putting one on the outside of the brick.

I'm just going to pull that back a little bit, and then from here I'm going to put my ball a club head or two club head widths inside of this inside stick. I'm going to grab an eight iron, or a six iron, excuse me. Let me grab a six. And now I'm going to work on shallowing it out and hitting some draws, and then alternating to where I come over the stick and hit some fades.

So here with my six iron, I have the six iron shallowing slot set up. I'm just gonna make sure I swing under this stick, a little more inside out, and I'm gonna hit a nice little draw here. I'm gonna feel like I'm a little more underneath, my elbows tucked, my body's tilted back, and I feel like I'm swinging even extra shallow or extra under there.

And I want to see this ball. start to draw from right to left.

There we go. And I had a nice little five or 10 yard draw with a six iron. So I know I'm coming from the inside. So I'm actually working to exaggerate until I can get that ball to curve from right to left. Now, as soon as I hit one draw, I want to balance that out with a fade. So I'm just going to grab another ball here.

Now I'm going to put it a club, couple club head widths on this side of the outside stick. And I'm actually going to come over. the shallowing stick that's in the brick and work on coming a little more over the top and feeling like that ball is going to fade to the right. Now, you may be asking, why in the heck would I do that?

Why would I purposely try to hit fades and draws? Well, what's going to happen is, let's say that you're overhooking it. Well, when I'm overhooking it, I don't want to get even more from the inside or I'm going to hook it even worse. So When I'm overhooking it, I want to come on this side of the shallowing stick and work on some fades to balance that out.

Now, if that's your problem, as soon as you start swinging over this stick, you'll see pros like Tommy Fleetwood, other pros swinging over, over top of the shallowing stick. The reason they're doing that is because they're already plenty shallow. Their problem is blocks to the right or even hooks. So they need to practice more over the top to balance that out and get a nice neutral path.

But then eventually what's going to happen if I just practice that one side, over time, I'll start to come from barely missing a stick to more and more and more over the stick. And all of a sudden I'll be slicing it. So I've traded my too much draw too many blocks to the right for now, too many pulls and too many slices.

And then you're going to be like, well, now I'm not hitting it good again. I hit it great for a week or two and things were pretty neutral, but now I've worked too much over the top and I have a brand new problem. So I traded hooks for slices. Same thing vice versa. If I'm struggling slicing it and I just practice under the stick, at the first little bit I'm going to be striping it nice and dead straight, but as I keep on feeling like I'm going more and more, eventually I'll start hooking it.

So really, we're trying to just find what I call getting dialed. I don't want to lean too far one way or the other. I want to do drills every single day to balance out my shot shape. So I hit a couple draws, As soon as I attempt to hit some draws, as soon as I draw one, I go to the fade side. So as soon as I hit one successful shot, then I come over to the other side of the stick, and now I'm going to swing over the top and try to hit a little fade with the six iron.

Now here, I'm not going to get quite as much tilt to the right. Remember the more to the right I tilt, the easier it makes it to swing from the inside. The more up and down I am or vertical with my spine, the more it makes it easier to swing over the top. So I'm going to set up just a little more vertical.

And then all I'm going to do is try to purposely start this ball a little left and fade it.

There you go. And I faded that ball just a few yards. I would count that as a successful shot. And then I'm going to move back to my draw side. So I would alternate here, five or 10 successful shots, a draw, a fade, a draw, a fade. And I don't care if it takes me 10 tries to hit one good one. I'm going to stick with it until I hit that good one.

So if I'm struggling to hit the draw side, that's telling me I'm probably my natural tendency is to come too much over the top. If I'm struggling to hit the fade side, my natural tendency is too far underneath. So really just by doing this drill, it balances you out. Now once I've done a few with that, and I feel pretty, pretty dialed in, so I can get, you know, maybe every two or three tries I hit the correct shot.

Then I'm going to go ahead, and I know I'm pretty dialed, I'm going to put this in the square divots angle of attack setting, go ahead and align it to line it to my target again, like that. And now, I'm going to hit some dead straight shots, or attempt to hit some straight shots by just making a square path.

Now again, most people would say, well Clay, why the heck wouldn't I just set up with a square path and just leave it there? Again, it's because your bias tends to be too far from the inside or too far over the top. I need to get rid of that bias by being able to vary those shot shapes. Once I eliminate the bias, then I should be able to hit these square shots much easier.

If I just go to the square shots, but I'm tending to be too far inside, I'm still going to struggle to get it, to get it perfectly square, or I'll naturally try to, I'll naturally start to gravitate toward one side of the other, and it won't be good. So now I'm going to hit with a square divot.

There we go. Hit that almost straight as a string. Good shot. So I might hit another 10 or 15 balls there. Now, once I've done that, I've worked on wedges, got my divot in front. So if you look at, if you look at what are the four most important things in golf, Number one, I have to hit the golf ball first. I have to come down and hit ball first and then turf.

That's what we did with drill. Number one, number two, I have to control my face and path. If I'm swinging too far inside and hooking it, no bueno, not going to be good. If I'm coming over the top and slicing it, no good. So I worked on face and path by hitting fades and draws back and forth, and divots. Once I've done that, I've, I've knocked out three of the most important things in the golf swing.

Now all I have left is where I'm striking it on the face. Now for this, I'll grab my driver and that foot spray powder again, or the, or the strike location powder, whichever one you have. I'll go ahead and spray a little bit on the driver face. And now I'm going to set up with just a single stick toward my target because I've already balanced out my fades and draws.

I'm just going to line a single stick up to my target so I know where I'm pointing. And here, I'm just going to work on my strike location. So if I grab a tee, grab one from over here, I'm going to hit a shot, and I'm going to do the same interleaving practice that I did with my other shots to get the strike location back in the middle.

So, I've sprayed the face, I'm going to wait for the guy in the cart to move, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to hit a shot here, and if I notice my strikes are more toward the toe side of the driver, I'm I'm going to purposely do some variability practice to try to get it toward the heel side. Now, the research shows that when we work on variability practice, we do these fades and draws.

We do these where we purposely hit heel and toe. It shows that you'll speed up your improvement by anywhere from three to 11 times faster than just trying to hit the same shot over and over again. So working on those fades and draws will actually make you hit it straighter than if you're trying to hit straight the whole time.

Working on heel and toe shots will allow you to hit the center of the clubface more accurately than just trying to hit the center every single time. So now let's go ahead and hit a drive and I'll see where my impact is and then I'll show you why this stick is on the ground. So I'm just going to hit one normal shot here.

There we go and I can feel right away I think that was on the toe and sure enough it was. I don't know if we can see this on the camera. Go ahead and focus in on that. We see it's a little bit too much to the toe side. Now what I'm going to do there, let's say I was about a half inch off the toe. On the next drive, I'm going to change my intention and try to be a half inch toward the heel.

So I'm actually going to vary my intention there until it moves it toward the center. So the way I would do that, if I'm hitting too much on the toe, is I'm going to set this drive up to where this stick is a little bit in my way. So if I come down and I hit the toe again, I'm almost going to whack into this stick.

If I put this stick there, naturally I'm not going to want to hit it. And I'm going to swing a little bit more out. So if you imagine my hands are normally right here on the swing, as I make my downswing, my hands are going to move a little more out to miss, miss that sticker out this way, and I'm gonna hit a little more on the heel.

So just by setting that stick up there, your brain naturally says, well, I don't want to whack into that stick. And I'm going to gravitate toward hitting it a little bit more on the heel side. So let's go ahead and try this out and see if I can get it a little more toward the center. Ooh, that felt good.

That was about as good as I can hit one there. And we'll see now the first impact was toward the toe. I got the stick in the way so I wouldn't hit the toe again and it naturally got it out toward the center. Now, if I was doing it too much on the heel, let's say that I was getting two, three, four drives and they were all on the heel side of the driver.

I just flip it around the other way. So now I'm going to set the driver up here to where it feels like if I hit it on the heel, I would actually whack into that stick and it's naturally going to make me want to hit it more on the toe. So I just go back and forth, purposely hit heel shots and toe shots.

So that I can feel the difference in those. And then when I'm done, I'm going to, when I feel pretty dialed with that, I'm going to come back to a normal ball position again. And I know for me right now, I'm biasing toward the toe. I'm going to have to feel like I get a little more heel shot, but I should be pretty dialed in here.

Let's go ahead and see if I can hit a nice solid one again.

And a little bit on the heel side. I overdid the heel strike. You can see it's fairly toward the face. So here where I'm not really going through and doing the drills, it's telling me I'm still not dialed yet. I would need to go back and forth inside of the stick, outside of the stick, hitting heel and toe shots to really bring that strike location to the middle.

But if I do that about 10 or 15 shots, I notice that I'll get an awareness of where the face is and I'll start to hit them more and more solid as I'm going on. That's how I'd actually practice. That's what the research shows will help you to improve your practice the most. And it covers all big four pieces of impact.

Drew the line on the ground to get my divots in front. I went ahead and varied face and path by hitting fades and draws. And then I worked on strike location or where I'm hitting on the face by moving inside the stick and outside the stick. Now on the first day, what you'll notice is you're probably pretty far off on a couple of those drills.

So maybe it's almost impossible to hit a draw. Well, you start doing it a few more days, and with that stick in the way where you have to shallow it out, all of a sudden it gets easier to hit a draw. Doesn't mean that you're going to perfect it on the first day. It means you're going to get better. Maybe you'll notice that your divots are a little far behind the line.

Well, as I work on that line drill two or three days, not in a row, but two or three practice sessions in a row, that could be over a week or two weeks or three weeks or whatever that is, I'll notice I'll get a little bit better. And then as I keep on repeating those drills, I'll notice it gets easier and easier as you go along at all.

The research in the world shows that that's the way, the fastest way to improve your game is to have measurable feedback, use variability practice to, to alternate the intention of what you're doing, and you're going to get a whole heck of a lot better. And the brick really helps to set up some of these drills.

All right. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Now, you saw with all these drills, it's a lot easier with the brick. If you have the shaft angle there, you know you're leaning it forward. It's going to be easier to get the, the, the contact or the divot in front of that line. If you have the shallowing stick there, it's easy to have that frame of reference to know, am I swinging from the inside to get a draw?

Am I swinging over it to get a fade? Even with this, for the strike location, it makes it easier. So, you can do all these drills without the brick. The brick just makes it a whole lot easier and a whole lot faster. Now, hopefully we have some in stock. We've been selling them out. Pretty doggone fast, but somewhere down below this video, there'll be a link to where you can get your very own brick.

I think we have some in stock right now. Best of luck. I can't wait to hear how it went as you practice with the brick and hear about your success. I'll see you soon. Let's go and get started.