This drill will teach you one of the most powerful moves in a great golf swing – how to use the ground for power and stability.
A lot is written in golf instruction about how the golf swing should work from the ground up, but very few golfers are taught exactly how to do this.
By working on this drill, most amateur golfers will, perhaps for the very first time, start to understand this “ground up” concept, how to use the ground for seemingly effortless power, and what a great golf swing actually feels like.
This is the third in a series of drills that breaks down and isolates the movements in the proper release of the golf club.
This drill builds on the movements you have been working on in Golf Swing Drill 504a – Downswing: The Left Hand Release Movement and Golf Swing Drill 504b – Downswing: The Left Hand Golf Club Release.
If you haven’t yet become proficient with the movements in Golf Swing Drill 504a and Golf Swing Drill 504b, it is very important that you spend some time working on them before attempting this drill.
It’s natural to want to progress through the drills as quickly as possible, but if you haven’t first started to ingrain the basic movement patterns, then your impatience will hinder the improvements to your golf swing.
For more information on how this learning process works, see How to Learn a Great Golf Swing.
As always, apologies to the lefties out there, but for simplicity this article will describe movements for the right-handed golfer.
For a better understanding of what this drill is trying to achieve, and why these movements work, please see Golf Swing 504 – Downswing: How to Release the Golf Club and Ground reaction force (GRF).
Keep Your Head Still?
Many of you may be concerned that this drill advocates some vertical movement, squatting into your left glutes and then pushing against the ground.
Time and again, you’ve heard instructors tell you how important is is to keep your head still in the golf swing – you’ve heard Tiger and others severely criticised, by numerous pundits, for dropping their heads.
You need to maintain your spine angle for consistent ball striking, obviously, so surely this movement can’t be right?
And even those instructors who recognise the virtue of ground reaction force (GRF) rarely teach it, it’s seen as an advanced move, too difficult to learn, and fraught with danger if you get it wrong.
Well yes, this move is extremely difficult to learn on the driving range, swinging at full speed, almost impossible for most golfers, in fact.
But, as you’ll soon see, using the Swing like a Champion system, with it’s chunking and isolation, progressive drills and deliberate practice, it’s really not difficult at all.
And, far from being a bad move, learning to use the ground properly has many important benefits…
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…as your wrist rotates.
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Next up: we’ll start including the right hand, effortlessly generating tremendous club head speed, with Golf Swing Drill 504d – Downswing: Start Using the Right Hand for Speed in the Release.
