Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Why Your Shaft Lean Isn’t Working | Pros Increase Spine & Amateurs Slide"

Today, Top Speed Golf certified instructor Michael Derr joins me to talk about a student of his, who was getting forward shaft lean at impact…

…but the ball was coming out really low, no matter where the ball was in his stance.

It turns out that while Michael’s student was so focused on the angle of his club’s shaft at impact…

…he was ignoring the angle that REALLY matters when it comes to generating forward shaft lean (revealed around the 9:40 mark).

You won’t want to miss this, because forward shaft lean is crucial for consistency in your golf swing, and we’re going to take a deep dive into the subject!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Michael Derr    

Video Duration: 24:54

Video Transcription:

Clay: Hey, it's great to have you here today, hanging out with Top Speed Golf certified instructor, Michael Durr. We're talking over the last couple of days about shaft lean, and we get tons of questions about this. What's too much shaft lean? Why wouldn't I just use a lower lofted club instead of getting more shaft lean?

You know, there's just a lot of misconceptions out there. We wanted to make a video going over all those. So that you don't have to worry about it anymore. So one of the first things, we were just talking about a student of yours, and you said that he had the same launch angle, whether it was all the way in the front of the stance, so pretty rare here, had the ball way up in the front of the stance, or way back in the back of the stance, and getting the same height shots.

So what was he doing with his shaft lean and his overall body position that you think, you know, less than optimal or good to 

Michael: clear it up? Yeah, so this is one of my online students. The, the deal that was happening was he was really, really obsessed with getting forward shaft lean. So, he pretty much just cared if the shaft was leaned forward at impact.

So, his problem he was having was, he said, essentially, no matter where I put the ball in my stance, I'm hitting the ball the same height. So, what was happening was, he was coming into the ball with forward shaft lean, but he was doing it incorrectly. So, he just didn't have the basic fundamentals down.

They're all going too low, right? Yeah, everything was coming out super 

Clay: low. That's a common question, too. Well, if I get shaft lean, why don't I just hit it low, um, and that doesn't necessarily always have to be the case. We can get into that here in a minute. But, uh, show us what 

Michael: he was doing. So, yeah, so that's kind of one of the other problems is he was getting so far.

So, essentially what he was doing is no matter where the ball was in his stance, he would get ahead of it. He would come down and with forward, he would actually, if you just looked at just the shaft, there would be forward shaft lean. But if you put the ball in front of his stance, he would come in with the same amount of forward shaft lean.

He would just move forward more. So that was the big issue, and everything was coming off pretty much too low and the same, no matter what he 

Clay: did. So he had a good amount of shaft lean, but it was coming off too low, because he was also, where he was shifting in front of the ball, we're getting too far to the left on all these shots.

He's also kind of chopping down into it a little too much. And then now the ball gets... overly low and not really what the 

Michael: pros are doing. Well, it's because he's accomplishing getting the shaft to lean forward, but he's not, he's not, his attack angle is going to be off, there's so many things off because it's just not fundamentally the same as how, how you should be doing it with your body.

Yeah, that's, that's a 

Clay: misconception I see is... A lot of times players will think, well if I get the right amount of shaffling what the pros are doing. And the pros are de lofting the club about 30 percent of the natural loft. So if the 6 iron has 30 degrees of loft, they're taking it down to 20 degrees and all that means is the 30 degrees measured on your 6 iron is when the club is straight up and down.

This club face angle has 30 degrees there. Um, thought I had a little, here I'll grab one of these real quick. So I got a little magnet here that'll show you what that angle is. Oh, that's perfect. That'll be... So... shaft straight up and down. Imagine this is a six iron. This is a 30 degree angle from the ground.

If I do what the pros are doing, I take about 30 percent of that loft off, which means I lean the shaft forward about 10 degrees, and that loft on the clubface goes from 30 to 20. If I'm using a lob wedge, so a 60 degree club, shaft straight up and down, 60 degrees of loft compared to the ground, they're going to lean that forward 15 to 20 degrees.

It's taking about 30 percent of the natural loft off of it. So the loft is when the shaft is straight up and down. It's called dynamic loft or whatever loft when you hit the ball at impact, that's going to be 15, 20 degrees lean forward or about 30 percent of the natural loft. And you see that's a much lower angle.

Now, when people think of that, they think, well, if I'm going to lean this club 15 or 20 degrees forward, that must mean that I'm chopping down and hitting into the ground. Well, in reality, you're not exactly doing that. When I'm I'm getting in the downswing. My hands are low at the lowest point kind of back here when the club is still well before impact.

And that's 

Michael: going to be about when your hands are in front of your back leg. 

Clay: Yeah. So my hands left hand in front of my right thigh club shaft parallel with the ground still you're going to see this universal with all pros. I call that the power position, but then as I go down further, my body rotates open, my hands almost start to work back up and that levels it out.

A great way to demonstrate that would be, let's get a ton of shaft lean all the way on my back foot here. I can still rotate through there with the club level with the ground. But 

Michael: the key difference there is that go ahead and go back into your shaft lean. So you see here how those hands are going to be moving upwards.

The problem with my student is he was still kind of coming down into 

Clay: the ball. So, when he got so far left, then all of a sudden it's like my body's blocking me. I can't really move. I'm not going to do this to move it up, right? 

Michael: Yeah, some, some players do. They'll get out ahead of it like that and then try to save 

Clay: it.

Like a Brooks Koepka? Or, um, 

uh, 

Michael: Victor Hovland? Hovland, Hovland kind of does that. 

Clay: Show me what he, what his, you were talking about his head position. Right. And what you did with that. Yeah, 

Michael: so, well, I think one of the things that I think I think why players get into this is because they can get a pretty solid feeling hit on the ball.

And then they're just like, Oh, if I just keep doing that, I'll figure out how to hit it straight. But it's, it's actually real volatile because we're not coming into the ball correctly. It's going to just, I mean, there's a lot of different things that can go off because you're still flipping the club.

You're just getting, you're flipping it with, I call it artificial shaft lean. So the, the fix there for just simple terms is you have to have correct body movement. So when I explained to my players. Correct body movement as we talked about in the stable fluid spine course on the website is when we get set up at address, we want our belt buckle slightly in front of the midline.

We want our nose just behind the midline and then on the downswing, we actually want to increase that angle. Now, if we have forward shaft lean with that body angle, then we'll get the hands moving up through impact after forward shaft lean versus just plowing down into 

Clay: it. It's almost like, think about it, if we're talking about the straight line release.

You know, imagine having that ball about five feet in front, down the target line. If I was going to throw this club toward that ball, I would naturally set my, my body. So go ahead and get in a good, good, um, uh, spine angle again. And your downswing, let's say this is the angle I would put my body in to be able to release this club out toward the golf ball.

And my hands would naturally work back up. You're not even gonna have to try to think about doing this when you get in the correct tilt. If I get too far forward, like he was saying, lean in front of it. Yes, I may have shaft lean. Yes, I may hit it solid, but now I'm getting this chopping down real 

Michael: inconsistent.

And that release point will be at the ball. So in the straight line release, we want the club splitting the forearms at about that 40, 45 degree angle out in front. The players that get out in front of it, that is splitting their forearms pretty much right after impact. So that's a huge, huge difference between the 

Clay: two.

And a little side note here, a little side benefit of it, you know, when the hands are in front like that, That much in, in my body's behind, you know, that really kind of shallows out that angle of attack. And what really happens is there's kind of a virtual flat spot if you want to call it that. So you have shaft lane, but as the, the butt end of the club rotates up with the body, the, the bottom of the club kind of levels out.

And now I can hit anywhere, say from my glove, like the logo on my glove, I could hit there, or I could hit a few inches in front of that. The club's coming in nice and level flattens out. And that's why you see the pros have a lot of consistency is basically adding those three, four, five things together.

So they get the shit, the hands in front that stabilizes the face and makes it more consistent. They get their body leaned away, which allows them to get that flat spot. Now they can hit a variety of places on the turf and it's going to be good. And they deal off the club, which is basically makes it a little bit more compressed and better launch.

So. 

Michael: So I think just to kind of get back to the main point of what that player was having. So if you at home are having kind of the same issue and you're saying, Oh, I get ahead of the ball and do this. I think you can kind of be summed up in a few pretty easy checkpoints of what you're wanting to do. So I want to go over those real quick and kind of explain why this, the ball was coming 

Clay: out at the same height.

You know, say I want to take this drill and do it this afternoon, let's just break down exactly what this 

Michael: should do. I would say it'd be probably less of a drill and more kind of paying attention to the checkpoints. Obviously, all the drills in stable fluid spine course are going to be perfect for this, but it's more about understanding how the impact works.

So, when that guy was getting ahead of the ball, or my player was getting ahead of the ball, he was coming into the ball the same way every time. That's not how impact works as far as ball position because you should be able to place the ball further back and have a lower launch. You should be able to place it further forward and have a higher launch.

So if you hit these checkpoints, you'll be able to do that. So essentially what we want to have with our body is we want to have a spine angle at address, maintain that up to the top. And then increase on the downswing. The main thing here is having the nose behind the midline. And that's what, about three, four inches ish on average from all the tour pros.

Yeah, you're really consistent with that. Behind the midline. 

Clay: nose in front 

Michael: like we're talking about. No, yeah, nobody gets ahead of the ball. And maybe if they're trying to hit some kind of weird shot, but nothing as far as stock shots. Can you explain 

Clay: real quick for y'all, what is the midline for the players?

Michael: So midline. If you split the feet equal distance and you draw a line straight up out of the ground, that's your midline. And you always want to do it off your stance width because it's easy to get a little bit off. So if you just think the equal distance, or split the distance between your feet straight up out of the ground.

Okay. So, midline, vertical midline. So, if you're doing that, if you keep your nose behind and get your belt buckle in front. Now, the shaft lean... Being at impact a line. I love to draw for my students, especially my online students down the shaft or down the arm. If I draw a line down the arm exactly like that, and then we look at the angle of the shaft, you can see there's some space here.

I sometimes I call this a compression angle. Um, so if we keep this face the same, if the ball is further back. That ball, that club is going to be be lofted. If I move it further forward, you can see I have less shaft lean, but I still have this angle between the two. So this ball is going to launch higher, but I'm still going to be able to have that stable impact and then release it out in 

Clay: front.

That's one of the big, you know, kind of transitioning into what we're going to talk about here next. Uh, and we'll jump back into that. One of the questions I always get is, why even try to get this shaft lean? So why should I care? So pros are taking their lob wedge, let's say I'm struggling with shaft lean.

I want to, I want to get my hands almost like this when I'm making my normal swing. That's natural to me. And when I try to get my hands in front, it's a new feeling. You know, it feels a little awkward at first until I get it down. Why not just take a pitching wedge instead of a lob wedge and hit the shot there so that I can deal off the club.

I can hit it lower. And the big point is. I have to have my hands leading the way to have consistency in the face. So, if you had a push cart, I know I've used this analogy a lot, you've probably heard it. If I have a push cart and I'm pushing behind it, I'm constantly having to steer because the center of mass of the object is on this side of where I'm applying force and I'm having to kind of guide it to keep it straight.

If I turn that around and I'm pulling that same cart, So I don't have to do any steering. I can walk in any direction since the center of mass is trailing. It just falls right along with me. Same thing in the golf swing with this trailing behind the hands. It makes it more consistent. Also, it makes it much easier to get that ball first contact and then hit the ground after 

Michael: the ball, which I think is a little more important.

Well, they're both super important. You're going to have more control, but the solid contacts pretty 

Clay: much can't have solid contacts. It's like you can't even play at all. Right. Yeah. Uh, so going back to what we just talked about there. When you did both of those examples, you had the shaft straight up and down on the ball 

Michael: up.

Right. So I'll put one back and one forward. Extreme examples. Yeah. 

Clay: You still had, so in this one, in relationship to your left arm, you still had lag. And if you think about your hands kind of moving this way, the club head is still trailing behind this lead arm a little bit. Right. Rather than show the wrong way of flip.

The flip 

Michael: would be, uh, to get out of posture a little 

Clay: bit to get it. So now the club is almost passing, the club head's passing the arms. That's a different, that's the physics of that are 

Michael: different. So, yeah, that's only, that's the exact opposite of what 

Clay: we want. If you're going to try to hit a high shot this way, extremely inconsistent, lots of chunks and thins, lots of face control 

Michael: issues.

Most players will line this up at impact, no matter where the ball is. And that's what that player was doing. 

Clay: But if you keep it where your body's angled back and you get the good way of hitting a high shot or the less, or, you know, the club's almost straight up and down. The physics are much better there.

Go to the back ball now, and we're going to hit a lower one, same thing, club edge is trailing behind, it's just a little bit extra, and we're taking a little bit extra loft 

Michael: off of it. The great thing about this is if you understand this angle, you can understand, hey, if I put this ball in the back, or in the back of my stance, I can have the same impact move if it's in the back or in the front, and you can literally just control your height.

You see tour players hit a higher shot and move it forward, but the players at home that are watching that, they don't understand that 

Clay: dynamic. Yeah, I like that. It's like it takes the same swing, just move it a ball back or ball forward. Yeah. That's usually the way I like to just do it. So for normal trajectory change, you're looking at maybe just a little over a ball forwards or backwards.

Yeah, it 

Michael: doesn't take, I was just showing an extreme example there. Yeah, so you can see it. So it's easy to see. 

Clay: Yeah, exactly. So he's showing you there just for the visual first, but in reality, I would say, Almost about a ball. So this center ball would be standard neutral. I don't know if the cameras line up perfectly to see that if I play a ball back, that's going to be my low shot.

I play a ball for that's going to be my high shot. And that's really all you have to do. Yeah, well, one thing you're telling me, or sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. One thing you said that was really interesting, I thought, and it's just a different way than I've ever phrased it, but I think it's really good.

Uh, talk about it. The bow and the lead wrist, because I've talked about this a lot, how you have to bow the wrist when you get shaft lean. But then how you like to look at the shaft sticking out. Okay, 

Michael: yeah, that's a, this is a question I get all the time from my online students is always, how much do we bow the wrist?

You've probably seen this a lot. This is a move that we couple with shallowing from the top of the swing. This is kind of the king when it comes to squaring up the club face, especially when you first start getting the path and everything good. The problem is, is depending on your grip, is depends on how much you bow the wrist.

So. So I kind of try to keep it real simple with my players so they can obviously understand the dynamics of it, but also be able to execute hitting solid straight shots. So the answer is pretty much simple. We don't look at how much we bow the wrist. You bow the wrist how much you need to based on your grip.

So what that means is no matter if I have a super, super strong grip or a super, super weak grip or anywhere in between, we can look at the extension. Let me grab a stick. Yeah. So this is a drill I do with my, my online students all the time. Where you put a stick and I'm sure you've seen this before, but this is kind of one of my pet peeves in the, in the golf world is you can have a good drill.

And if you do that drill incorrectly or you don't understand it, it doesn't do you any good. But the same drill, when you understand it, something like this, it becomes so much easier on you. So no matter, uh, no matter what grip you have, as you're coming into impact, you want that extension of the club outside your arm.

So you can see right here, I have a very weak grip. If I have a very strong grip, you can see now my, Logo of my club is pointing at the camera. The stick is still outside the arm. And it, and depending, so if you have a stronger grip, just so you know, you're going to bow a little less. If you have like a Colin Morikawa, much more weak grip, you're going to have to bow a lot.

And then you can kind of tweak that. But if you pay attention to the extension of the club and you have that outside your arm coming through impact, you can bow your wrist a little more, a little less, and that'll help square the club 

Clay: up. So to kind of recap, go back into that position again. When you get the proper amount of shaft lean with any club.

This stick is going to be outside of this left arm, it's going to be leaning in front of it. Now, if I have, let's go ahead and face the camera here and show them, in regards to the leading edge, what a weak grip would be. Or more, uh, this would be kind of similar, this has got to be real popular. Uh, Hogan's Five Fundamentals, he had a very weak grip in there.

Tiger Woods has a fairly weak grip. But basically the leading edge of the club is going to match the back logo of the glove. So if I took a, an arrow and shot it out of the logo of the glove, it's facing toward the target and the leading edge here or the, this leading edge of the club or the bottom groove is also facing to the target.

We're not talking about the loft in the club, but just the leading edge of it. So this would be kind of think no 

Michael: matter if there was a laser beam coming straight out of the backhand and out of the club. If you had a perfectly weak grip, they'd both be pointing in the same exact direction. Yeah, 

Clay: and when you do that, like a Colin Morikawa has a very weak grip even more than that.

He may even be turned a little bit more to the left. Go ahead and turn your hand a little more. A little under more. Yeah, a little more under or turned this way. From your perspective, if you're holding the club would be counterclockwise. Now the issue there is if I'm making my downswing. Go ahead and get some lag and start to square up the face.

That wrist is going to have to be really bowed. Well, if you look at 

Michael: his swing, too, his wrist is super, super bowed. 

Clay: Most bowed on tour, right? So, really bowed left wrist to get that face to be square. Now, if he leaned the shaft back... But again, 

Michael: this extension of the club is still outside the arm. 

Clay: Absolutely, yeah.

Now, if you lean the club back, some people would maybe square that face up by trying to flip or scoop. Right. Yeah. Now they squared the face up, uh, but they didn't get the shaft lane. So basically the more shaft lane you want and the weaker the grip you have, you got to do a lot of bowing. Sometimes very difficult on 

Michael: the wrist.

You want to show them the other side too. Super, super strong, 

Clay: super strong now. So let's say we go, uh, uh, Will's Altaurus or, uh, J. B. Holmes was pretty strong. Thank you strong. Thinking of another, uh, Kimmerer who, uh, who the guy is I'm thinking about. Like a Paul Azinger, let's say. So, go up here in front of the camera again.

Oh, yeah. So, leading edge would be square, the same as last time, on the club face, but now the logo of the glove is almost facing, like, up in this 

Michael: direction. So, again, going back to the laser beam coming straight out of the back of the hand, it's pointing, uh, perpendicular, and then weaker would be 

Clay: parallel.

Or, if you're, from your perspective, if you're holding a club, just turn your hand clockwise. The lead hand, we're talking about that one because it's more The right hand has a little more variation in there, but the lead hand definitely, uh, will, will control the clubface a little bit more when it comes to grip.

And when 

Michael: players understand the lead hand, it's, it's a lot, it makes a lot more sense to them. 

Clay: Yeah, I agree. So let's do the, go back down to impact now, show me the good impact position with a strong grip. So now, this wrist is perfectly flat. There's no bow in there at all. The shaft angle is still coming in front of the arm.

The clubface is square. Everything is the same. It's just it's just the the wrist is flat versus bowed because of the hand 

Michael: angle, right? So that's the two extremes you have one There's no bow, but you still have the same angles at impact and then you have one where you have pretty much maximum bow Yeah, and you still have the same angles at impact.

Yeah, and then the cool thing about understanding I always like teaching in extremes. Anyways, if you understand the two extremes you can say well The more my hand is pointing towards the target, the more I have to bow, the less, the less I have to bow. It's kind of an easy way to think 

Clay: about it. I like that.

Um, I would say the right one for you is play around with different grips. Let's go really weak, uh, or more to the left and then let's gradually get it stronger and stronger and see which one helps you hit it the straightest would be what I would recommend as being like the easiest way to get into it.

Michael: We can show them real quick if you want. We can, like, uh, this is a drill I do with all my online students at a certain point. Uh, that kind of comes back to what we first started about, just to kind of backtrack a little bit. If they have good spine angle mechanics, then we work on this. Just like we talked about before, it doesn't really work if your body movement's off.

So, um, but anyway, so I'll hit a couple little short ones here. So this is the normal progression I'll see is when they start. So we'll keep the stick more outside the arm. Just hit these little shots through impact, and you'll see the shot kind of shoot way off to the right. I don't know if that's going to pick it off.

I'll wake 

Clay: up the radar. We've been talking so much. Our radar is asleep. See if we can get 

Michael: that back on. Should be good. So I'm going to hit this right on purpose, but normally when a player is used to flipping the club at impact to square it up, when they get the hands in front, that club face kind of opens up.

So when they first start keeping the stick outside, the ball still shoot a little bit out to the right. I might not 

Clay: be hitting it hard enough, hard enough. Yeah. For the radar pickup, but basically he's just saying, if this is the straight line and the radar screen, So if you're looking from this angle, if he hit that dead straight, it hit the center line.

The ball's flying off to the right and hitting over here somewhere. So big block. So 

Michael: this is a good little drill you can do to start feeling being square through impact. Cause now, okay, that's shooting off a little bit to the right. I'm going to bow just a little bit more. And then, I can see that ball starting off a little bit more to the left, so I bowed too much.

I closed the face going through impact. So, that would be kind of the extremes. One super open, one super, uh, closed. And then, at some point in there... You can say, okay, I bowed that one too much and then maybe get one a little bit. Oh, that one I left kind of wide open, but, uh, yeah, 

Clay: back and forth until you find, so there's two ways to go about it there.

You can either, you can either bow or flatten the wrist to control the direction, or you can change your grip. So you test out both of them. So now that you've got the stick off there, it's easier to feel, right? So that time he tried to bow the wrist a little bit more to straighten it out and it straightened it out.

If that feels really good to you and you think, Oh, I can play great consistent golf doing that, then keep your normal grip or more of a neutral or a weaker grip and just get a little more bowing. That's what Dustin Johnson and a lot of those guys do. Yeah. Um, if you don't like the bowing as much and it feels awkward, then you can accomplish the same thing by just strengthening the grip, right?

Well, that's 

Michael: what I love about both of those. Cause now. The players at home, they can tweak it as much as they want. They can say, okay, I like my grip, but I can't close the face. So maybe I need to strengthen my grip a little bit and it's a little easier to close the face. Or they say, maybe I'd like to feel a little bit more bow.

So maybe I'll weaken my grip or anywhere in between. Or let me keep my grip exactly the same and then feel how much I need to bow to square it up. Yeah. It pretty much gives you, I don't know, all, all kinds of control over how you want to hold the club. Because, I mean, we've seen with all the tour pros that.

There's super strong grips or super weak grips and they all yeah, the the consistent factor is how they're going through impact Yeah, 

Clay: so if you're more like Hogan, mm hmm wanting to bow it You know more Kyle wanting to bow it Maybe that feels better to you or if you're more of the stronger grip like a Sergio Garcia You don't have to bow it as much All right, so I hope you really enjoyed this video.

Thanks Michael, for helping me out with it. And right now, Michael has a few spots open for his swing review program. Mm-Hmm. . So Michael can become your coach. You take a video of your swing, you send it with him. You send it to him. You guys put together a goal. What do you wanna achieve? Do you want to drop your handicap?

Do you wanna, uh, hit it 20 yards farther? Do you wanna win your club championship? Do you wanna win your flight of a tournament? Whatever it is you guys put together, something that you want to accomplish. Then Michael will help you get there about laying out a custom plan for exactly what you should be working on.

And then you videotape your swing. You send it to Michael and you guys chip away at that plan. You guys will be working on your stable fluid spine and your spine angle, getting that perfect, getting your shaft lean, perfect, really starting to hit some great shots. And the great thing about Michael that I like is.

Anytime I've seen you coach somebody, there's always a goal, like an end outcome. Oh yeah. So it's not like, hey, let's just give you some random tips, maybe it'll help you hit a little bit better. It's like, okay, here's where your swing is now. I know you can have a phenomenal swing. That's over here. I know what we need to do to get there.

And then let's put together a plan that's going to go step by step to get us from where we're at now to where we want to be. And it doesn't matter if that's just drop a few strokes or hit a little bit farther. Maybe that plan isn't. Anything extremely complicated or maybe that plan is to, to reach some really lofty goals.

That's the great thing about a plan. You can adjust it to be, you know, meet what you want. It usually does. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you get 20 yards farther in a few weeks, you're like, all right, what's the next thing? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so right now there is only a handful of spots open to work with Michael.

They usually sell it pretty fast and he often doesn't open them, but once a month, once every month and a half, something like that. So be sure you don't miss out. If you click the button below this page on the bottom of this page to sign up for a swing reviews, and it's already sold out, apologize about that and make sure you join his waiting list.

That way, when he does open up spots in the future, you'll be the first one to be notified. So best of luck. Uh, can't wait to hear about your great success with Michael and thanks for joining me on the video, Michael. Yeah, man.