WATCH: How to Release the Club Correctly Using Your Body
In this video, I share with you how to release the club correctly using your body. Learn how to move your body and arms correctly so you can play your most consistent golf.
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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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ChipN'Run
Nov 6, 2017 at 7:58 pm
Alastair,
Just watched your YT on Proper Body Release. I have trouble spraying the ball on approach shot. I get pretty solid hits, but sometimes my draw turns into a pull, or hangs out a little right on a push.
Your description of proper body release captures much of what the 5SK people talk about in diagonal sweet spot. Anyway, I had two questions:
1. You had talked about letting the neck rotate properly. Nicklaus used to talk about “cocking the chin” before takeaway, supposedly to allow for more shoulder turn. Would the chin cock help with proper neck rotation? Or, what does chin cock really do as far as the resulting swing?
2. When I am hitting tee shots well, I get this sense of slinging the arms through right at impact. I’m letting the hips lead/clear out on the downswing, but I’m wondering if the slinging can lead to spraying problems. As long as the hips and torso lead, should the slinging be OK. (With slinging, I definitely hit THROUGH the ball rather than TO the ball on my poorer contact days.
I enjoyed your YT segment. You have a clear speaking voice, and you shot outdoors but were able to prevent the irritating wind noise that hisses in background of so many of these videos. solid knowledge, and top quality production!
Hawkeye77
Nov 5, 2017 at 9:15 am
No, no, no.
TexasSnowman
Nov 4, 2017 at 10:44 pm
yep, Alastair you nailed it on this one. 99% of us do not or cannot release properly and 98% of us do not understand what the proper release sequence is as you describe here. Stalling bodies, flipping wrists are everywhere, even some pretty good players do it.
etc.
Nov 4, 2017 at 4:40 pm
99% of all 50 million ‘golfers’ worldwide are unable to rotate their hips, torso and shoulders in a sequential manner; they rotate everything in unison and only slap or shovel the golf ball.
They have a rigid kinetic chain and cannot generate adequate speed and therefore cannot properly release the arms, hands and club into impact.
What they do is try to consciously square up the clubface and fail miserably. They are physically inadequate and will remain so because they refuse to condition and train their bodies.
The golf club OEMs exploit this inadequacy by promising performance for the pathetic, and they buy it in their desperation.