Major Golf Lesson

Here are some common drills that you can practice at home without your mind focusing on hitting a ball.

Split Handed Drill

Split Handed Drill: Split your hands apart then swing the arms, hands and club to get the feeling of the proper release of the right wrist (for right-handed players) rolling over the left wrist through impact. Do this enough times and you’ll incorporate this feel when you need it, during your swing on the course.

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall Drill: I can’t over emphasize this enough. Look in a mirror at your set-up, down the line, face on and during your swing. You will see the difference of what you think your doing and what your actually doing.

Rehearsing Impact Drill: Take a mid-iron and find something solid like the corner of a wall and take your set up and press your club head against the wall making sure your club face is square to the direction of the pressure. Be aware of your flat left wrist, left arm against your chest, hips open in respect to your target line and shoulders slightly rotated in the same direction.

Weighted Club Drill

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Remember, my job is to educate you as a golfer to help you move forward. Then it’s up to you the golfer to focus on the difficult characteristics of your swing and repeat certain moves until it feels more natural. It’s important to provide you with a solid foundation of the basics and to motivate you to such an extent that you take on the responsibility to work on your game.  In practical terms, that involves designing drills and exercises. That’s the best thing about drills and exercise, they not only spice up your practice time but they amplify that obscure component of “feel” and so speeds up your improvement.

Many of you are puzzled when I suggest you practice at home without a ball, simply rehearsing your swing and doing drills. So many of my students are under the false impression that constructive practice has to involve pounding thousands of balls. On the contrary, the majority of golfers would improve their game extensively if only they would set aside a few minutes during the week to run through some chosen drills at home. Without the concern of making a “hit at the ball”, it’s easier to focus on the finer points of technique, develop a repeating method and build so-called muscle memory through repetition of good moves.

Part of the skill in learning the game of golf is to understand your own tendencies and weaknesses, and using your practice time wisely. When you are making contact with a ball and working on a new move, try to focus on the execution of the new move at hand and not so much on the result of your shot.

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Thin shots, fat shots, no distance or just plain inefficient contact could be due to a dreaded reverse pivot. If you reverse your body pivot your golf balls flight shouldn’t go up in the air. It will be struck with an ascending approach up into the ball, giving the ball top spin and staying very low to the ground or even worse, nose diving into the ground. The reverse can be caused from a beginning golfer thinking incorrectly that they’ve got to get the club under the ball to help it up. A faulty set up can also encourage a reverse. And the more exaggerated the reverse the worse your miss can be. Even golfers who have been playing for years can display a tendency to creep in the old “reverse tilt”.

Your bodies pivot is crucial to consistency. And if you want to get the most out of your swing you have to know what your body is doing.

Here are some quick tips to make sure you are pivoting correctly. Look in a mirror or on camera to see what your body is doing……..

in the Back Swing:

• Let your head swivel behind the ball a little.
• No swaying of the hips in your rotation back.
• Hips rotating on a fairly level plane.
• Chest and upper body weight over your right thigh.
• Left shoulder over your foot.
• No straightening or buckling of the right knee.

in the Forward Swing:

• Start your forward swing from the ground up.
• Your weight moves over to your left thigh.
• Head is staying behind the lower body.
• Hips, lower torso, upper torso, chest, shoulders and arms are rotating or pulling to the left and in that order.

Making the correct body pivot will promote proper weight shift, encourage acceleration of the club head and induce proper release of the forearms and club. These principles will result in better consistency and longer distance in your shot.

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