The Move Every Great Golfer Has – Do YOU Have It

If this is you in a downswing, you are not giving yourself the best chance to be a great player. We want the golf club on the arm depth to be much closer to your backside let's say or to your trail hip. Let's talk about it and tell you why it's important. So lots of golfers above the handicap of six or seven would have the arm depth on the way down too close to the golf ball. What happens from there is you have to manipulate and compensate to be able to make good contact and the more talented golfers out there will do that but it's the most common position we would see. The hands as they work down and the arms they work out work out in front of the feet towards the ball line too much. The best players, the best ball strikers, these hands will be just inside the toe line as we swing down. So the difference between getting your arm depth here and here is really what we're talking about today and we need to try and feel that we can get the arm depth deeper more behind you to allow then your body to rotate on the ball and present that loft to the ball correctly to give you great golf shots. So why does this happen? Why does the arm depth go out? Mostly it happens when we start down because we're trying to get to that golf ball and it's in front of us that's the quickest and shortest route back to the golf ball. So we start down with too much torso rotation and not enough lower lateral movement. Sometimes it can be caused by the backswing not turning enough in the backswing and again that transports these arms into a deeper position to allow us then to have the relationship with the lower half being ahead of the torso on the way down. So sometimes the backswing could cause it and sometimes it's the downswing triggering. So what we need to do in an ideal world is try and make sure we give ourselves a great turn on the way back and then we feel in the downswing that we feel that the hands work towards our kind of ankle and we feel that we don't try and rotate on the way down we try and feel that we bump on the way down. So we get the top of the backswing and it's a bump. It's a bump while trying to keep our back to target. Now once we've got that bump started initiated then it's all about turning onto that golf ball and releasing and throwing that club to the target for sure. So there is definitely rotation and when we look at any great player as they start down their body is turning ever so slightly but the key thing I think I want to describe from this is about the rate of rotation versus the rate of lateral movement. If you look at Scotty Scheffler as he swings down he moves his pelvis about seven to eight inches laterally and the upper body then will follow. If the upper body was dominating in the head he would not hit the shots from the hips he wouldn't be the world number one and major championship winner that he is. Most golfers have said because the golf ball's there I'm here I'm thinking how do I get that golf ball as quick as I can and that there well I've made a good contact but I had no power in it per se and the ball went left so if the face was open that ball would fade back and you could say okay it's nice fade. What we want as I said already is to feel that we can create a backswing work down towards our trail foot be patient the only thing that won't be patient as we work down is trying to feel we go lateral the more we go lateral with that kind of bump the more that initiates then a slight right bend and the arms then start to fall into this space. If I'm turning with the hip and turning with the torso I then haven't got space for the arms to work down so what we want to try and feel we do and I'm going to give you a drill in a second we feel we get the arms down and we feel that the body moves lateral and we feel like we don't rotate until we get much nearer to the club power of the ground there will be rotation you won't be able to stop it but we're trying to reduce the rate of rotation without losing speed by making sure the arms are going fast and we're still reacting to that as opposed to rotating too heavily before that. What I want you to do is take an alignment rod and put it through your belt loops and have it sticking out the trail side here so in the backswing make this point somewhere near the golf ball you won't get to the golf ball try and get it you know at least between the left toe lead toe and the golf ball to make sure you've got a nice bit of rotation that creates a space in these arms to work down here and your goal almost is to try and feel like the arms get close to hitting this rod without this rod rotating ideally the arm should be just in front of that rod like this before the rod rotates now there will be a bit of re-centering so you'll see that rod will move but if I move that rod too early you see how the club will want to hit my arms will want to really crash into it so it's trying to keep the rod towards the golf ball move it sideways create that space for the arms to come down that is certainly the practice swing feel and certainly what I want you to feel when you try and hit a golf ball so if I try and hit a golf ball trying to feel I'm going to do that now so I'm trying to make a big turn create the space and fill the space with the arms and then rotate towards the golf ball this will give us some feedback and you'll give you some visuals to know where you are in space and time that 3d space and time to see how your timing and managing that rotation versus arm dropping on the way down but it's vital we get the arm depth to give you the opportunity to present the loft and present the path in the correct direction to hit straight golf shots or draw golf shots straight golf shots as well so have a go at this drill but also have a listen to the concept of your ideas and make sure you're not being too eager to get back to that golf ball before you kind of complete the batting and let the arms get into that space