Golf Loopy Deck 4 Important Procedures and sequences Flashcards
Intermediate Target
If you want to improve as a golfer, you need to work on integrating both aim and alignment into a good pre-shot routine, which will actually improve your golf swing, they go hand in hand.
Summary
- Start from behind the ball.
- Carefully choose a precise target.
- Pick an intermediate target.
- Visualize the ball flight.
- Be decisive.
- Step into the shot from behind the ball and point the club face precisely at your intermediate target, then align your eyes.
- Finally, align your feet, knees, thighs, hips, arms, and shoulders parallel to the target line.
What Are You Aiming At? Carefully selecting your target should form part of your pre-shot routine for every golf shot. Most amateur golfers don’t have a pre-shot routine, as such, and even if they have, they don’t always follow it. All great golfers have a pre-shot routine that they follow religiously. Routines may seem dull and repetitive, but golf is a lot more fun if you play better shots and shoot lower scores!
To begin with, you should consider your target as the spot where you want the ball to land, or pitch. In choosing a spot to pitch the ball, you will take into consideration where you expect it will bounce and roll to afterwards.
Your pre-shot routine should start from behind the ball, looking towards the target.
Decide what shot you want to play, how you want to flight the ball, and pick a target area. A region where pitching the ball, with a shot that you can reasonably expect to make, will be successful. Never pick a target where a good shot might leave you in trouble.
Now pick a precise spot that, if you hit the ball towards it with your chosen shot, you would expect the ball to pitch in the middle of your target region.
For complete info refer to 107.
Setting up in the fairway and addressing your ball on target.
When practicing addressing the golf ball, you should have a precise target in mind — you’ll never hit the ball on the course aimlessly, so don’t practice aimlessly. that is square to the target line, and not adjust your club face to suit an incorrect alignment.
Now you are ready to address the golf ball:
- With your club in your left hand, start your address by placing your club behind the ball, with the club shaft perpendicular to the target line (vertical when viewed from face on) and the club face perfectly square to the target line.
- Step into the shot with your right foot first. Place your right heel exactly level with the back of the golf ball, perpendicular to the target line
- Place your left foot next to your right, your heels precisely 2 golf balls apart– see Figure 2. This will set the back of the ball exactly 2 golf balls behind your left heel, every time, which is the perfect golf ball position — the relative positions of your left foot and the golf ball are key, your left foot determines the position of the bottom of your swing arc, since you will be over your left side at impact.
- Now step to the right with your right foot, adopting the perfect stance width
How does the energy release work with the golf club?
Yes, the golf club rotates around a fulcrum, your hands. But it’s not, primarily, a lever – you don’t apply much force at all with your hands. Your hands do play an active role in the golf swing, but they are primarily a conduit through which energy is transferred to the golf club.
The golf club is lagged behind your hands, not as a lever, but as an energy storage mechanism. Energy is released up the kinetic chain, through your hands and into the golf club.
When that energy is efficiently released, thrown, into the golf club during the release, this is what causes the golf club to accelerate to tour calibre speeds.
To enable this to happen, your wrists must remain soft, loose, throughout the golf swing, and especially in the release.
Body Release
When most students first come to us, they are trying to heave their bodies around through impact in an effort to swing the golf club faster.
They feel like they are using their shoulders to power their hands.
Not only is this highly inefficient, it is fighting against the natural transfer of energy (in the form of the compound pendulum effect), but it is also dangerous.
Trying to move your body quickly through impact places an enormous strain on your lower back and hips.
And, no matter how strong and flexible you are, no matter how fast you can move, you just can’t move fast enough to generate the same club head speed that you could by simply “letting go”.
Arm Release
Some golf instruction would have you believe that you should pin your left arm to your body and pull the club around with torso rotation.[straight but not pinned left arm on DS]
This is thought to be more consistent, because your left arm is more fixed.
But not only is this highly inefficient and potentially harmful to your body, as described above, but you’re also losing consistency.
Letting your arms accelerate and swing freely, releasing them, is working in harmony with nature (the compound pendulum effect), you’re letting physics take care of the timing, and thus it is much more repeatable.
Figure 3. Arms releasing past body.
When you release the golf club properly, your hands will slow down to the same rotational speed as your body, as your arms release their energy into the golf club through impact, at exactly the right place, naturally.
The golf club must be allowed to accelerate freely through impact, and rotating your arms is a key component of enabling that.
During the release, this arm rotation is performed with your forearms – supination of the left wrist and pronation of the right – and your left elbow should be pointing directly at the target – if you were to stop and bend your left arm, your hand would move directly away from the target with your palm facing the sky. //Club Face Release Any attempt to flip the club face, to slam it shut late in the downswing, is doomed to failure – you just cannot do this consistently, no matter how “quick” your hands are.
The movement is much like hammering a nail, with very soft wrists, plus some wrist rotation.
Some beginners are taught that they should swing from “thumbs-up” on their right, down and through to “thumbs-up” on their left.
This is very misleading. [DON’T DO THUMBS UP, BOW LEFT WRIST]It causes you to extend (cup) your left wrist too early and destroys your ball striking.//Your left wrist must be adducted (down-cocked) well into the follow-through, your left thumb pointing down and away from you, not up, until much later.
Your right wrist must remain extended (cupped) throughout the downswing and through impact. This feels odd to most amateurs, even counter-intuitive, but it is a key ingredient in generating club head speed, as well as in great ball striking.
Adding Speed//Just by moving correctly, with no additional muscular effort to supplement the free release of the golf club, //The primary mechanism for this is using your right arm (your “speed arm”) correctly, extending it at the right time to throw energy out into the golf club.//The second mechanism is ground reaction force (GRF). By thrusting into the ground with your left leg through impact, pulling against the golf club, you can add acceleration and help the club to “snap” through impact – you’re creating a “slingshot” effect.//That’s one of the reasons why you should never “hit at” the golf ball. Instead, you should always “swing through” the ball – the golf ball just happens to be in the path of a good swing. A good mental trick here is to imagine that the ball is a soap bubble.//In the perfect release, the golf club is released into impact primarily through the adduction (down-cocking) of your wrists, together with some rotation of the forearms – supination of the left wrist and pronation of the right.
The release immediately after impact is all about supination of the left forearm – letting your arm extend out towards the target as the club races past impact and begins to decelerate.//It is crucial that your left wrist remains adducted (down-cocked) as the club swings through into the follow-through, since this ensures the stability of the club face through impact.
SUMMARY LEFT ARM IN DOWNSWING
You should now feel how golf club lag, a crucial factor in generating club head speed, is created by moving your body correctly, and not with your hands.
If you were to pull up and around with your shoulders too early (“spinning out” of the shot), as most amateur golfers do, all of that lag, and speed, would be thrown away before impact. Spinning hard feels very powerful, which is why most amateur golfers do it, but it’s not. Not only does it cause you to throw away lag (“casting” the club), and all the club head speed through impact that it could have created,
Spinning out is also a common cause of slicing the ball, and of “chunking” shots – hitting them “fat”, striking the ground before the ball. It makes pure ball striking almost impossible.
Finally, spinning hard can also cause better golfers to release the club too late, all that effort never reaches the golf ball, it’s just wasted energy. The harder they swing, the more they spin, and the shorter the shot!
BRAINSCAPE SUMMARY: Downswing: Full Body Release and Extension Through Impact
When you see an image of a golfer with great extension after impact, you just instantly know they are good at this game, really good!
Most amateur golfers see extension as just keeping their arms straight after impact. It’s a by-product of a good downswing. Simple, right?
Extending properly through impact is a key component of the proper release of the golf club.
Stage 5: The Perfect Golf Club Release
This time, you should keep both hands on the golf club throughout, but you should feel how your right hand is only very loosely connected to the club at the moment of impact, it has “thrown the club” out at the ground.
Your right hand stays on the grip for stability, and to aid in safely decelerating the club in the follow-through, but, to all intents and purposes, it’s only along for the ride through impact.
Positional CHECKPOINTS for TAKEAWAY
These are not destinations, but they are checkpoints the TA goes through.
Starting off with the most common TA faults that will kill your swing before you hit a single ball.
- Early wrist cock
- Swing arms independently
- Bending the right arm
- No right arm external rotation. Right arm elbow should fold up and pointing straight to the ground, not angled behind you or in front of you.
- No separation
- Closed clubface
- Open clubface
- Club head inside the hands
- Club too far outside (behind you)
- Hands too far inside
- Hands too far outside
- Lifting right shoulder
- Lifting left shoulder
ORRECT TA CHECKPOINTS
- Golfer has stayed in posture
- Shoulders remained back and down
- Shoulders have turned 45 degrees and his hands have stayed in front of his sternum
- Hips have hardly moved
- Weight has shifted with 80% on inside right ankle.
- As shoulders turned, they also flexed to lift the hands, his wrist hinged upward.
- Both arms staying straight
- Hands are level with trouser pockets, and level with his toes.
- Club head slightly outside his hands and clubface has rotated so it still is “Toed In”
- TA was one piece.
End of takeaway is a position, not a destination. Movements continue into the back swing.
Top of Back swing checkpoint positions
From drill 305 Backswing: Arm positions at the top of golf swing.
WRISTS: Wrist must remain soft and relaxed. Top of backswing, left wrist flat; right wrist cupped. Both wrist will be almost fullly cocked but still relaxed and tension free.
Right arm: Will bend at elbow about 100 degrees, no more than that.
Right elbow: Level with right shoulder and lifted up only as far as the bottom of your sternum.
Left arm: Straight and natural
Shoulders: Both shoulders should remain down. Feels like you are keeping them down away from your ears.
Pelvis: Turned about 45 degrees and get fully loaded into your right glutes.
Weight: Shifted to inside of right heel as you maintain flex in right knee and keep your hips level. Right elbow not folded past 100 degrees.
At this point; top of BS, shoulders turned 90 degrees and hips turned 45 degrees or less.
The right elbow should be hidden behind your left arm when viewed from front in a mirror. [observer may have to squat down a bit to look up to see this]. You can only achieve this by keeping your shoulder down.
Left knee should be pointing forward, ahead of the ball. This helps keep your hips stable. [also left knee pointing forward is preparing for your squat into the left glutes. This knee prep prevents injury to your left knee.]
When to start the Transition
When Do I Start the Transition?
it’s much slower than the downswing, then the timing of the transition (and thus the downswing) takes care of itself.
You must not actively unwind your body and fire your arms until the transition movement, the left hip pull and squat, is complete.
Remain completely passive until the vast majority of your weight is over your left ankle and your left hip has stabilized.
It’s All About Power!
Many amateur golfers struggle with the concept of “being patient at the top” and “letting your hands drop”, which are advised in most golf instruction.
They take a lesson, they try it, and they hit the ball more solidly, great!
But after a few good shots they start to turn on the power with their arms again.
Well, that’s not what professional golfers do. The pros generate more club head speed and hit the ball further because they know how to tap into two of the most important sources of power in the golf swing – increased separation and ground reaction force (GRF) – sources that are completely neglected by the vast majority of amateur golfers.
Professional golfers utilize these key power sources with the transition.//By shifting left as they are still swinging back, they use inertia to significantly increase the separation between their pelvis and shoulders (the “X-factor”), enabling the large muscles in their core to generate much more power.//By driving their weight down through their left heel they generate ground reaction force (GRF).//By stabilizing their left hip they create a stable base on which to rotate, enabling all that power to efficiently flow up the kinetic chain, ultimately transforming it into club head speed through impact.
If you fire your upper body before you have shifted left, you’re done for! You won’t have time to create your stable base, to get into a position where you can effectively drive into the ground, or to create that powerful separation in time to use it before impact.//So it’s not really about “being patient” – it’s more about letting your arms remain passive as you focus on pulling to the left with your hip.
Just think “drive into the ground with my left heel, stabilize my hips, and then unwind” and golfing nirvana will be yours!
Body and Arm Release
On the release, you are letting the arms get back into the timing of your body. Your hands SLOW DOWN to the rotational speed of your body. Like throwing a baseball, you coordinate and harmonize all body parts in a natural way that feels good and has the best results.
No matter how strong and flexible you are, no matter how fast you can move, you just can’t move {rotate} fast enough to generate the same club head speed that you could by simply “letting go”.
MN: Pin left bicep to chest on TA, but do natural width, keeping arms pushed distant from body on DS.
Arms releasing past body.
When you release the golf club properly, your hands will slow down to the same rotational speed as your body, as your arms release their energy into the golf club through impact, at exactly the right place, naturally.
Because of this, your left arm won’t fly away from your body, but there is definitely a sense of your arms swinging independently, and they should certainly not be deliberately stuck to your body.
This feeling of arm release comes from your upper body slowing down, it’s energy releasing into your arms, enabling your hands to “catch up” and get back in line with your sternum as your right arm extends through impact
[MN: It is the same principle as throwing a baseball. When you throw a baseball you don’t jerk your body up to the speed of your snapping wrist. You time your release to feel the natural connection body, arm and wrist. Your wrist snaps much faster than your body and arm.
Key components of Backswing
Your new golf swing will probably feel short, you’ve made a full shoulder turn without pushing your arms across your chest, so the club won’t reach parallel. This is correct. The power of the swing comes from your full shoulder turn and stretching the muscles in your core in the transition, and activating your glutes in the downswing, not from the distance the club travels.
Key components of Downswing
The downswing is powered predominantly by pulling with the left side, this time with the core muscles in the hip and trunk as the left leg (glute) drives into the ground.),
It is useful to think of the golf club as a whip rather than a bat. You’re trying to generate maximum club head speed through impact by “cracking the whip” at the right time.
You should feel as if your body is moving in the opposite direction to the golf club at all times. During the downswing you’re pulling the left side away from the club.
By pulling with the left side of our core {PELVIS turning into DS} and planting our left heel, you are able to maintain your spine angle for accurate and powerful ball striking. Pushing with the right side causes your hips to come in towards the ball and makes you stand up out of the shot.
- Remember, you are pulling with your left side, not pushing with your right.
- If you fire your upper body too early you will be throwing away most of your club head speed. {Complete my transition on Plane}
- Your right arm (primarily the triceps) fires into impact much like it would if you were skimming a stone on a pond.
- Your grip pressure should feel light and consistent throughout the swing, with no tension in your wrists.
- The left hand is responsible for controlling the club face.
- At impact, your right shoulder should remain connected and back, it almost pauses as the club releases (“snaps”) through impact.
- At impact, 85% of your weight is over the left ankle, and your head is still behind the ball.
- Your left ankle, left knee, center of your left hip, and center of your left shoulder, are all aligned vertically at impact.
Key components of Follow Through
- You continue to rotate into the follow-through, still pulling with the left side of your core.
- Your head stays down and back.
- You don’t “keep your head still”, you will allow it to be pulled around at the top of the follow-through. You do, however, need to keep your head down, and your eyes on where the ball was, after impact and well into the follow-through.
- Because you continue to pull with your left side and have all of your weight over your left ankle, you are able to maintain your spine angle long into the follow-through.
- Your finish will be well balanced over your left ankle, only the tip of your right shoe will be touching the ground for balance, indicating a full and correct weight shift.
How to practice off driving range mats.
Strike the ball before the ground.
The vast majority of golfers strike the ground before the ball, resulting in poor strikes that lose distance and consistency. All great ball strikers take a divot after, on the target side of, the ball.
For a low-single digit handicapper, the divot starts at the ball. Scratch golfer, 1″ after the ball. And a world class ball striker takes a shallow divot that starts some 2-3″ after the ball and is at its deepest 5-6″ after the ball.
The problem with range mats is that they can hide a poor strike. You can hit the mat some 5-6″ before the ball and still make good contact with the ball! If you made the same swing out on the course it would be an ugly duff!
place a piece of broken tee in the forward position 5 inches in front of ball towards target.–
Make swings focussing on the same sensation of shifting your weight towards the target. Imagine that the ball is where the broken tee is, and make sure that you hit the tee off the mat.
You’ll be amazed at how crisp and solid your ball striking is.
Address the golf ball correctly, but before you make your swing try to soften your focus on the ball, imagine that it is a soap bubble that you will collect as you swing through the low point in front of your lead foot.
Work on this drill with your irons in every range session when you play off mats.
