Right Arm & Right Wrist in the Golf Swing | with Eric Cogorno & Mike Malaska

All right, Mike. So let's talk about the role of the right arm and right wrist in the swing. We've done a bunch of videos on right wrist, right arm, and I know you've done a bunch of videos on them. And so I think kind of starting right from the setup and then whatever we think is relevant during backswing and downswing, big picture concepts. I'm going to hand the mic over and flip off spots and we'll rock and roll. So what I have here, first of all, Eric, I got this little contraption. So this is a glove where I've stuck a rod through it. And what it is, it shows my wrist. People have a hard time visualizing wrist. So let's talk about body mechanics and forces. So when I throw a baseball, this is how I throw a baseball. So you see this rod, the rod's not, it's staying like this. It's not doing this. Yes. Okay. But see, my wrist is doing this. If I shoot a basketball, it doesn't do this. Nope. If I throw a bowling ball, it doesn't do this. Well, guess what? When I hit a golf ball, it doesn't have to do this. Got it. Now that is a way to play. The problem is when you add a lot of forearm rotation like this, to time all of that forearm rotation to get your forearm to line up with the back of the shaft and your hand in the right position, this killed me as a player. Because when I came to this game, I played golf like this. And they said I had a shut face with a throw release. So they said, well, here's what you got to do. You got to get the toe up and get the toe up. Well, now what's this doing? And plus they weakened my grip, which this will be, that'll be another video. But here's what my right hand is doing. My right hand and my right arm work like this through here. So there it is. There it is. It's not doing any, it's not getting here going like that. Okay. Now when I do that, people go, well, if you're going to do that, then what's going to happen is when you get to the top of your swing, you're going to have a shut face. Well, I go, well, now here's the top of my swing. Where's the face? They go, well, it's good. It's good. Yeah. Well, see, here's what's happened. I go here. Now, as I go to the top of the swing, what happens is my arm rotates in my shoulder socket. See, another big misconception is that you want your forearms to be twisting. No, you don't want your forearms rotating. Right. Minimal forearm rotation is really good. So it goes like this. As I go to the top, my arm externally rotates in my shoulder socket. Now where's the face? But what has my right wrist done? Now it has a little up and down, but it's basically just doing this. That's all I feel my wrist doing. Now when I start down, my arm internally rotates in my shoulder socket. Where's my wrist? And then it goes like that. So it goes, boom, boom, boom, throw. And when you do that, Mike, if you take your setup, if you could do the initial takeaway part one more time. So when you're doing this here, and kind of what I would explain with that, which to me would be the easiest way to do it, this would be a little bit more of a kind of palm down ish, right? Not that forearm rotation this way. And then that makes the face, when you're looking at your takeaway position, which is square, right? Tilted down some amount, not here with the forearm rotation. Yeah, no, no. See, you want the club in this part, you want the face. Let me do it with this bigger club so people can see it. If we had a target line, we'd use your club as a target line. So this is a target line. Let's put it back here. Okay, so my club goes like this. So the club face is at a 90 degree angle to my swing arc. Relative to the target line, it appears that my club face is open. It has opened to the target line, but it's at a 90 degree angle to my swing arc. Now as I go up to the top and my arm externally rotates in my shoulder socket, now the face is square to my left arm, it's not shut. And then when I start down, I go like this, and when it gets right there, where is it again? Well, it's back at a 90 degree angle to my swing arc at waist high. It comes into the ball, it's closing on the target line, but it's staying at a 90 degree angle to my swing arc to right there. If you do that, you can't hit it offline. The ball doesn't curve much. When you get in trouble, or when the timing comes in is when all of a sudden toe up, hold the angle this way instead of this way. You can't lag the club too much if you lag it like this. Because all it would do is hit the ball low. But if you lag the club this way with your palm here, and you're late, I mean you hit it right, left, everywhere. And I think two key checkpoints, because obviously the way that you're going to release the club has to do with where your club face is in space. No question. And so this sort of model in videos, I would say, if the face is tilted down, let's say at first parallel, and you can get it during the downswing pattern back into sort of the same spot. That sets you up to be able to do all of this. No question. And so if a golfer comes in, and I know you and I see a lot of the same stuff, and they have that toe pointed up, whether it's here, up here, early on, especially during the downswing pattern. If they make this, this is why shallowing the club bothers me with a lot of players. Because when they shallow the club, they also, palm faces up and the face gets right here. And they can't release it like that then. Well, good luck catching this one up. Yeah, gotcha. I don't care how good you are with your body, there's going to have to be some of that. And when you start adding that rotation, if you're playing somebody who's doing this through the ball, okay, and they're hitting it, and you're doing this through the ball, I can promise you who I'm betting on. Right, me too, yeah. Okay. So here's, you know, Dustin Johnson, Kapka, all these guys now are getting the club like this because they're understanding the physics of the club face being at a 90 degree angle to their swing arc. And their right hand now, they don't rotate it, they, for lack of a better term, they throw. Yep. Well, throw is where you have the most speed in your wrist. If I went to throw a ball, and I tried to twist my arm as I threw it, it would slow this down. Yeah. And good luck hitting me when you're doing that. So they're not doing anything that gets in the way of this action. Because, that's where you have, that's where you have the most speed. Gotcha. So if I can create that, I got a lot of speed with no face rotation. And you and I, Mike, I want to hop in there for a second. I think two things I'd like to ask you about, which are right along with the same things, I think as a checkpoint thing, right, you know, something I used to always see before I get to the checkpoint thing, and I didn't know enough at the time, and I used to see it via grip, and it's still true. But, and your story about how you had a stronger grip and went to weak, I went through the same exact thing. I had a stronger grip pattern, and I had a release pattern that was exactly like you mentioned, because I had the face ready to do that. I went into a weaker grip pattern, was taught into. I got toe up, toe up, and then I have a ton of roll. And I see that across the board. Younger players, especially, who've never taught anything, who have stronger grips in particular, and have the face more tilted down via the grip, the release patterns are awesome. Yeah. Right? And so I think when people come, obviously there's always prerequisites to all this stuff. Like you gotta, you know, there's a grip pattern that's in here. Right. But I think as a checkpoint, if someone has never heard this before, wants to have it more passive release style, having the club face tilted down, kind of when it's parallel to the ground. Right. Would be an excellent checkpoint, like you mentioned. And then as I'm starting to work back down, getting it back into that same tilted down. That's exactly right. And starting with that. Yes. To get that. And if I were going to practice that, Mike, and I came in, and we were doing a lesson, let's say, and I had my toe up pattern, which I've had, are you starting off, are you someone like what I would do, you know, I'm kind of like feeling this, coming back, feeling that back down, and starting to hit some little shorties. I'm going to make sure first that your lead arm grip is neutral for your, so your joints line up so you don't have to twist. Gotcha. I'm going to start, if you've got a lot of twist in the face, the first thing I'm going to check is to see if this left hand grip matches how your joints line up, which is another thing a lot of people don't understand in golf. How your joints line up under force, because this arm's role should be to stabilize and square the face. This arm's role should be to pressure the shaft and accelerate the club head. But if all of a sudden your grip's weak in this hand, or your joints, and you pull and your hand goes this way, well now the face is open, so this arm's role now has to be to try to twist to catch it up. That's a beautiful point. Okay, so I would start with, make sure your grip fits you. Okay. And then I would start with, once your grip's right, okay, put your right hand on there. Then I'd have you, I've got to get this off now. So now what I would do is I'd say, okay, here's what we're going to do. You take the club back to right there, and you stop right there. We've got a ball and a tee. Then I'd have you from there, just take your right hand, just hit the ball and release it like that, and just hit a chip shot from that position, from right there. Now just hit it forward. Just do that and feel how your hands work to hit it from there. Yeah. So you start to feel what this feels like. This killed me. Yeah. Because I had this down when I was a kid, because I was a baseball player, and I've got some old pictures of my swing. When I was right there, my right hand was right like that. Yep. When they changed me from there to here. Yeah, good night. And weakened my grip. Okay, I had a lot of angle, but because my hand was here, now I had to turn this and turn this down. And trying to time all that with speed. Decade. Decade of trying to do that. I know. Not good. Just made it harder. Yeah. Are there guys that made that work? There are a few. Yeah. But there are only a few. And when I look at it now from a efficiency perspective, it's not very efficient. Now the ones who make it work usually have big, long, very flowing swings. Yeah. Hogan made it work, and it was freaking dynamic. And it looks so sexy. And it looks so good. Everyone wanted to copy it. But the complexity behind it is off the charts. It's why when he said, they asked him if he'd practiced. Well, other than his car accident, how many days did he take off in his career? He said he never missed a day where he didn't hit at least 500 balls a day. Because if he missed one day, it took him two days to get back where he was. That's a powerful statement. Now, when you think about that, and you think about the people we're teaching. So now I agree that Hogan had a different anticipation of who he was. So I mean, his ball flight, when he said he was off, I'm imagining it wasn't really off. Yeah, right. But the point is, when he got that good, to maintain what he had, he had to hit at least 500 balls a day. See, to me, that's faulty. Yeah. If you get it, you should be able to not practice that much and be pretty good. Ah, gotcha. Yeah, yeah. How long has it been since you rode a bike? Long time. If I brought one out here, you think you could ride it? I think I'd be okay, yeah. Okay. We wouldn't have to put training wheels on. You wouldn't have to start over. No, no. And at about 100 yards, you'd probably be riding it with no hands. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So riding a bike is more complex than swinging a golf club when you look at all the forces. Yeah. But once you get the feel of what it's doing, you'll never forget it. Yeah. That's what a golf swing should be like. I gotcha. A little audio. Yeah, I gotcha. It's all part of the ambience. That's a, that's a, that's a, yeah. And I really think, well, I'm going to wait till we get, I think that'll be on there. I really think people, like if you put someone in an athletic situation where they have the face here and the target's there, and I need to learn, and we didn't even tell them anything about what to do through here, but they were in this position, that's the way they would need to release it to hit a ball straight. It's not like you're asking them to do anything more than this is what it is. Right. Versus, hey, now go and release it. Well, you're going to go this far. Well, that's why, that's the biggest reason people cast. Yeah, yeah. We grip with an open face and they're trying to catch the face up and they think this is going to catch it up. That's what we, I mean, we, we did a couple of videos about the right hand. It got to the point where I'm saying, listen, as a feel wise face here, I like people to start to get the face pointed towards the camera. No question. And then even as I'm starting to work back down. Yes. And, and because from that position there, if I have any kind of eye hand coordination to hit at a target, my relief pattern, all that. If they have weak grips and they open the face, take a hold of it. If they have fairly weak grips and they get the face open, the first move they make down out of the top is they go like that with their wrists. They don't go like this. No. Because there isn't anybody who's any good who has the face right there at that point. No. There's a few that are about right here. The majority of guys now are right here. Yeah, exactly. So your right hand, here's what your right hand. So this is another thing I get people to do. I take their fingers like this. Yeah. I say, here's what my right hand does. It goes up here. Yeah. It comes right to there. Now, if your wrist is relaxed and I hold your fingers and you go, what's going to happen when I let your fingers go, your hand should just go. Yeah, I gotcha. Okay. So just go. That's what my golf swing feels like. So it goes, boom, boom. That's it. Game over. It just goes, that's what it's designed to do. I think anyone who doesn't put two and two together there is kind of missing. Cause you hear different videos about release pattern, et cetera. I know. And I know you see a million of them. It's all relative to where you're coming from. My route from here, we're going to drive to LA. It's going to go a certain way because we're coming from here, right? If I was coming from a different position, my route's going to be different. If the face is in a certain orientation here, there's got to be a release pattern to hit a ball towards a target and hit it solid. There's two basic hand actions. Release is a misleading word because release means to let go of. So hopefully you don't let go of the club. So that's a big problem with our industry. We don't have a definition of terms. So if you say release, some are talking about forms. Some are talking about hands. I mean, it's all over the map. So the hand action, there's two different, there's two hand actions. One, your hands are working more this way. Yeah. And the other, your hands and arms are working more this way. And what would you say is the primary thing that leads to that, that dictates which one? Well, this is more efficient for sure. Yeah. But the industry has been, has been forever. It's been open and close the face. Exactly. So that's what everybody thought it was. Now, I didn't know that when I started. So I had this grip with a face there with a face going here and I hit it and it drew a little bit and I beat everybody. And then as soon as they weaken my grip and got me doing this, I mean, I'd hit some good shots, but occasionally I'd make a swing and hit and I'd look up and the ball's going freaking sideways. And then they'd say, well, just trust it, Mike, just go to your happy place and just let it go. And I'd put the ball and do this. I'm going, well, that's not working for me. Yeah. I'm in my happy place. I made a nice swing and the ball went sideways and I'm trying to make a cut and make a living. I got it. I'm going to have to start manipulating the face. Yeah, exactly. And then as I started to manipulate the face, then I was, I was, my hands were good enough that wherever the club was, I could kind of figure out how to get it back through the ball and get it in front of me. But I couldn't go at high speeds because at high speeds, I lost control of the face. Absolutely. How could you not? Too much twisting. Yeah, exactly. So it becomes, you want to play golf this way, which is doable, or do you want to play this way? I mean, for me, it's no contest through the ball. I'd rather play this way than play like this. That's way too much timing involved in that. It's a speed producer, but you give up control. Beautiful. I think, get the club face in order. Yes. Match the release pattern or hand action to it. I'm going to work on that. And I love it. That was beautiful. Good job, pal. Perfect. Thank you.