I heard through the grape vine that Tiger Woods is searching for a technique he can use to allow him to play golf without any further damage and compete again. Here’s an idea: focus on a task that gets the results needed, and let the body tell you how to perform the task!
If Tiger were to go to a lumberjack camp and learn how to chop trees down the old fashioned way with a nice, sharp, 6-pound axe, he would walk out of there like Paul Bunyan after a month with a complete skill acquired and no injuries. Use the task in this video to acquire the skill needed to send a ball to a target!
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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Sean Reardon
Oct 24, 2017 at 1:02 am
No one actually brought carrots to the driving range did they? This is so stupid. It took vegetables to say the lead arm is dominant for direction and trail arm is passive and power. As to the bottle of water on the mat. Save the water go to a real driving range. Mats are nonsense. Fat shots skip into the ball making it look like you’re not a lumber jack and are terrible for your clubs and wrists.
TC
Oct 18, 2017 at 3:32 pm
So… hit a wrist shot (hockey) in golf. Got it. lol
Squire
Oct 1, 2017 at 1:44 am
He just used his right hand, and sliced AWAY from his body, left to right, horizontally, to slice that carrot. Yet he is hitting the ball right handed, right to left, in a downward motion, and with right palm facing down wrapped around the grip, and not slicing the turf away with his left hand or arm pulling horizontally across the top of the ground with the clubhead.
Don’t do this move folks. Clearly it doesn’t work, even philosophically speaking. How embarrassing.
Robert Parsons
Sep 30, 2017 at 6:02 pm
I’d like to hire Shawn as a prep cook at one of my restaurants. I hope he can use this technique with potatos too! Who knows what he can cook up with a driver?!?
ButchT
Sep 29, 2017 at 3:21 pm
More effective imagery for those who struggle than “hit down on the ball to compress it.” Tom Watson made a good living peeling carrots.
AD
Sep 29, 2017 at 3:10 am
So completely wrong, it’s mind boggling he’s even allowed to teach.
The objective of the golf club is to compress the ball off the turf onto the lofted face of the club to get it airborne with momentum and speed. It’s the downward-hitting, compressing, de-lofting motion of the forward leaning shaft angle that facilitates this downward hit that rebounds the ball onto the face of the club off the ground that propels the ball. Without the hitting, drive-down power motion bottoming out under where the ball was into the turf, the ball will not launch properly and you will consistently hit thing shots and will be cursing your finger joints and thumbs for believing that you weren’t holding onto the club properly. If you were going to peeling away with just the lead hand and arm pulling, why use the other hand at all then? This ain’t tennis’s one-handed back-hand like Federer. Good luck trying that with just your lead arm. You’ll get nowhere
OB
Sep 29, 2017 at 10:38 am
Shawn has made the video for golfers who learn through imagery, not imitation or confusing scientific verbal mumbo jumbo.
Of course Shawn understands the scientific aspects of the golfswing but neither he nor you would tell that to the adult golfing duffer with the frightened brain of a 12 y.o. and a bagful of ill-fitting golf clubs.
Would you explain the golfswing to a student in all it’s gory scientific details, or would you communicate in a manner that is similar to that of Shawn?
BCM
Sep 29, 2017 at 12:16 pm
Shawn’s methods don’t work for everybody. But neither do yours. I have found that my most successful striking occurs when my trail arm (my right, which also is my dominant arm in every other activity) is very passive. I do agree with your description of contact/compression, etc. But you can find it with a swing dominated by pulling, as I have with my connected, body turn dominated swing. I do maintain more “ball is target” focus than Shawn exhibits here, but successful striking can happen by pulling/swinging as well as by pushing/hitting.
AD
Sep 29, 2017 at 1:18 pm
You don’t slice like that in golf – you do that in baseball batting. Why do you think batters have a hard time converting to golf? If this above method of slicing worked, then all batter would be the greatest ball strikers – and they are not. But ice hockey players are. They understand that the club is at the deck and know how to hammer it off there. Some of the more successful converters out there are former ice hockey players, and not baseball batters. But the slicers are welcome to keep slicing the ball far and away out of bounds if they want :-p
Bugs
Sep 29, 2017 at 1:07 pm
Errrrrr wot’s up, Doc? I tried dis here method, but I just decided to eat the carrots instead
Da Judge
Sep 28, 2017 at 10:37 pm
Great golfing images for those who can’t think for themselves. Carrots, boards, water….. what’s next? Twirling a baton and hammering nails?
Doobie
Sep 28, 2017 at 12:38 pm
Bought a bunch of carrots and all I got with Shawn’s shaving drill is strips of julienned carrot… hitting too fat and shredding the carrot tops.
Wotta waste of carrots. Wotta mess on my clubs. Wotta mess at the driving range!
AZ
Sep 30, 2017 at 7:41 pm
Try a zucchini or cucumber…. combines slicing and water.
8thehardway
Sep 28, 2017 at 10:18 am
Wonderful analogy and addresses my problematic focus on the ball and thinking my swing is over once I make contact. Great tip on watering the mat too. Does ‘peel the carrot’ work for drivers, which is my biggest problem, or is there something better suited to an abbreviated driver swing?
Doobie
Sep 28, 2017 at 12:39 pm
Go get lessons from Shawn and all your driver problems will be cured.
WillyWankel
Sep 28, 2017 at 3:13 pm
For drivers you “mash” the potato….. and for irons “peel” the carrot.
And for the putter you just pop the ball.