(golf club whacks) – You've probably heard
the term always be closing, if you've ever been in sales, but it also applies to
the golf swing as well. So basically, let's go over what exactly opens and closes the club
face in the golf swing. There's essentially three things. Number one is the release of the club. So if I'm coming down here
and I early release the club, meaning I'm kind of flipping
at it as I'm coming through, you can see that that
closes the club face. If I release the club later, or I have my hands more in front and I release the club more out in front, at impact, my face is gonna be more open. So that's number one that
opens and closes the face, and early release closes the club face, a later release opens the club face.
The second thing that
controls the club face angle is the rotation of the shaft, right? So that's gonna come from
mostly our wrist angles, right? So if I do this throttling
move with my wrists, you can see how that closes the club face. If I go, kind of reverse throttling move, you can see how that opens the club face. So with my lead wrist,
what's happening is, is I'm flexing my lead wrist. This is called wrist flexion. Some people might call it
bowing of that lead wrist. And with my trail wrist,
I'm extending it back. Some people might call that cupping, and that closes the club face. If I do the opposite, if
I cut this lead wrist, that's what's called wrist extension, that's going to open the club
face as I'm coming through. And then if I kind of
flatten out my trail wrist, you can see that that's also
going to open the club face. So closing it down and opening, up by virtue of rotating the shaft. The last piece is the
lie angle of the club.
So if you look here, if
I have this club flat, the sole of the club
flat to the turf here, and I raise the handle, you can see how that
opens up the club face. If I lower the handle, you can see how that closes the club face. Now I will say this usually isn't a one, isn't one you really need to worry about. It's more about those first two, because if those first two are good, a lot of times that lie angle
is gonna take care of itself. Usually it's pretty difficult
to release the club properly and then have the lie angle really high. It's usually just doesn't work together. So usually that one is
not going to be happening. So what tour players are doing is they're releasing
this club later, right? So they're opening the face
by virtue of the release as they're coming into contact.
So that means that they
need to be always be closing with the rotation of the shaft. Now, there are some really
easy ways to do that. Now I'm gonna show you
how to do right here. So number one is with your grip. I prefer a stronger grip for most people, because it just makes it a lot easier. This is all gonna make
sense here in a second, but that's usually gonna
make it a lot easier for a lot of people. So you imagine, if I take this club, let's say I have a weak grip. So if I have a weak grip, that means that my thumbs are basically kind of in line with the
PING logo on this grip.
So that'd be more of like a weak grip, and the face is straight
up and down there. So now, if I take this
shaft and I loosen my grip and I turn that logo, let's
say, I turn it about 45 degrees, now you can see that face is closed, I re-grip the club, well, look, I've already
rotated the shaft, and I don't have to do anything. I don't have to do anything in
my swing to make that happen. That face is just rotated down, and that just makes things a lot easier. I think a lot of people go
away from the weak grip, or go away, excuse me,
from the stronger grip, because it's just more
comfortable at address to have a weaker grip, and I agree. If you just have your arms
kind of hanging straight down, it's just way more comfortable
to have your thumbs just kind of like this
and hanging straight down. But address isn't really
the most important thing in the golf swing. The most important thing in
the golf swing is impact. We need to be able to get ourselves into a good impact position, and it's a heck of a lot
easier to get yourself in a good impact position
where the hands are in front, with shaft lean, when
we have a stronger grip.
So I'd strongly recommend
that you have a stronger grip. Here's an very easy way to
help you get a stronger grip. Just set up the way
that you normally would, loosen your grip, and then turn the handle about 45 degrees in your
hand, 30, 45 degrees, somewhere in there, then re-grip the club, then square back the face. Now, when you do that,
what you're gonna find is you're probably gonna be
a little bit more comfortable with having your hands a little
bit more in front at impact. And that is 100% fine. If you're comfortable with
having the hands more like this, it's not a very comfortable thing for me, but if that's more comfortable for you, that's also 100% fine as well. There's lots of tour players
there like that as well. But a lot of tour players,
Dustin Johnson included, will have a strong grip and
then we'll have their hands a little bit more in front at impact compared to somebody else
who might have a weak grip.
But let's say, "Hey, I
don't want that strong grip. I don't wanna do that," that's 100% fine. If you do, then we have
to be doing other things in the swing to close the club face, and we have to do that
with our wrist angles. So like I said, there
are tour players as well that have weak grips: Viktor
Hovland, Collin Morikawa. These are a couple guys
that have weak grips. And when you have a weak grip, which you have to do is
you have to be bowing the lead wrist and extending
back the trail wrist throughout the swing in
order to accommodate that. If you look at those guys'
swings, if you go on YouTube and look at those guys
swing, you're going to see that they have a lot of
bowing in their wrist. When you look at Collin
Morikawa, at impact, he looks like this, and he has to, otherwise he won't be able
to get that tour-level shaft lean and compression on the ball and square the face with
getting the release out in front if they don't have those wrist
angles with that weak grip.
So that's why I recommend
strengthening that grip. So just set up, loosen the
grip, close the club face, re-grip the club, then
square back up the face. So that's number one. Now in the beginning stages,
if you're new to this closing the face by rotating the shaft, and you've been closing the face by virtue of early releasing the
club for a long time, I want you to do both. I want you to see what works best for you. Let's do both to the extreme,
and let's see what works. So let's get a really strong grip by doing what I just talked about. And then let's also, let's feel that face closing throughout the swing.
So as I mentioned, that
closing of the club face is gonna come from bowing the lead wrist and extending back the trail wrist. So I want you to feel that throughout several points in the swing. So I want you to get that strong grip, and I want you to get that club
face pointing to the ground, about right here, about
halfway back in the back swing.
So you can see here,
my lead wrist is bowed and my trail wrist is extended back. Then I want you to go up to the top and feel that same thing. I want you to feel the
emblem of your glove pointing up to the sky
and the palm of your hand pointing up to the sky. You can see there, I've got
some good bowing in my wrist. You can see that club base is very closed. And then I want you to come down here, and I want you to feel
again like that club face is pointing down toward the ground. We're closing that emblem of the glove pointing down toward the ground. We're bowing that lead wrist, extending back that trail wrist. Then we're gonna come to impact, lots of shaft lean, square club face. Then we're gonna come
around into the full finish. Do lots of reps. You can do this in the
house, in the office. Do lots of reps, really
getting comfortable, bringing that club back really
closed with a strong grip.
And that's just gonna promote
everything you want at impact. Now that you're able to do
this in a practice swing, we're able to get this club face, we're able to get this strong grip, this club face really
closed in the back swing. In the down swing, we need to
be able to put this in action. And what I want you to do now
is do the tennis racket drill combined with this. So the tennis racket
drill is an awesome drill to help you to start
shallowing out the club.
And what you do with
the tennis racket drill, what I want you to do is place this stick, an alignment stick, in
front of your golf ball along with your target line. So this is just something
I made, block of wood, drilled a hole in it, put an
alignment stick through it, and with the noodle here. If you got some ground to stick it in, this works out just fine. But what we wanna do is
we wanna get this ball to start to the right of this stick. If we do, then we know that, if we're getting the club face closed and we get that ball to start
to the right of the stick, that means that we're
getting the hands in front. Now, in order to be able to do that, this is a great drill to get you started. But in order to be able to do that, we have to be shallowing out the club. We've gotta get this club working from the inside as I'm starting down.
If I'm coming down steep and over the top and I close the face,
there's no way I'm gonna get this ball to start to
the right of that stick. I have to get this club shallowing out. And the best drill to do that
is the tennis racket drill. So if you haven't seen
our tennis racket drill, I highly recommend you
click on the iCard here that's gonna appear up on your screen.
If you don't see the iCard, no worries. Click the link below in the
video, but click on the iCard, and that's gonna give you
the link to the whole drill. If you wanna see a preview of the drill, I'm gonna play a preview of
it here just in a second. But if you wanna see the whole drill and pair it up with what we're doing here, you're gonna start hitting
the most compressed shots of your life. You're gonna have that
pro-like impact position that everyone really wants, right? Everyone wants that position
at impact that Collin Morikawa and Dustin Johnson are in,
and that can be accomplished if we get that club shallowing out, we get that club face closing
and we get the hands in front. So like I said, click that
link in the description, or click the iCard above. That'll take you to the
tennis racket drill, and combine that with this. Play well, and I'll talk to you soon. – Good player problems. We're gonna talk about
shallowing that club shaft out as we're starting down, as
we're doing this rotating of the face that we worked
on in the last video.
As we start this down swing, what you'll see with basically
all of the the top players, is instead of coming kind over
the top and letting the hands come out away from their body,
letting the club come out away from their body, again,
coming down steep into the ball and then having to open up,
kind of filet open the face and add loft to it, the
flattening of the shaft should happen as soon as we start down. So as we start this down swing, what we want to have happening here, you can imagine that if I draw a line from the hosel of my club,
up through my right elbow, that's my swing plane
line, my elbow plane.
As I go to the top of the swing, I'm gonna be slightly above that. And then as I start down, I want my hands to start to shallow out. I want the club to shallow out
inside of this elbow plane. And at the same time,
I'm gonna be rotating….