Chisags Tip Of The Day #33

[chisag]

Magic Move and Proper Position

... This is a bit of a piggyback from Tip #32. I am a big believer in the golf swing being an athletic movement and have never been a fan of attempting to achieve any given positions. While positions can be of paramount importance for someone off plane and swinging poorly, attempting to copy positions without guidance can cause endless frustration for many. That said, there is one position all good players have on their backswing and downswing so lets see if I can get you there. 

... Place your ball in the address position with your wedge. Lay down a shaft or the butt end of your driver straight back from the ball. Start your backswing and stop just before your lead arm gets to parallel. At this point the butt end of your shaft should be pointing directly at your ball, not below and especially not above the ball. Those with a late wrist cock can have the butt end pointed at the shaft on the line behind the ball, but with your wedge you really should be cocking your wrists sooner. Now swing to the top of your backswing and again with a wedge, your backswing should be about 3/4 length of a driver swing, and just start your downswing moving your arms just a few inches. The butt end should again be pointing right at your ball. This goes hand in hand with what I covered in Hinge and Re-hinge in my last Tip of the Day. 

... You should experience more of a connected swing with very crisp contact. Some of you will find this takes much less effort than you have been using and you will produce much better contact because your club is on plane for the backswing and downswing. It will certainly let you know if you are coming over the top, which makes wedge play erratic. I probably heard more students say "this is just so much easier than what I was doing with so little effort." Once you get this down for your wedge swing, the same principle applies to your full swing, even with your driver. Not quite as easy as your wedge because with a driver you are swinging as fast as you comfortably can with a longer swing but I often alternate shots on the range with my wedge and my driver when my timing gets a little off. 

... The great thing about this little drill is you can do it in your living room, your yard, at the range or a practice round on the course. Give it a try and let me know if it helped. 

[cksurfdude]

Love this stuff .. thx!!

If I'm reading through this correctly, I think I've done a similar drill ... I had a short piece of an orange driveway marker sticking out of the butt end of an old wedge .. and swinging slowly check to see that the marker is "drawing" a line on top of your target line .. ??

Gonna go back and work on this some more!