Golf Drill – Flatten Your Swing Plane

Knee Drill – Helps to shallow your golf swing

Hi, Robin here. Have you been told your golf swing is steep? What we mean by steep is that, perhaps in the backswing, your club shaft is on a very vertical angle with the butt of the club pointing well inside the ball, perhaps towards your toes.  Or when you video your swing, you see your club across the line pointing to the right of the target at the top of the backswing. Or most importantly, in the down swing, again you see this club shaft steep, butt of the club inside the ball. Now, not unless you are very good at making some last minute compensations, you’ll hit a lot of shots out of the toe.  You’ll take big divots, and you will hit weak slice shots to the right. If that’s you, you need to need to learn to shallow out your swing, in particular your downswing.

If you can get your club coming into the ball on a shallower angle so the club shaft is a little flatter here, your contact will become cleaner.  You will hit more shots out of the center of the clubface, and you’re for sure to fix the weak slice to the right. To help you get a feeling for that, I have a drill. It will look a little funny, but it’s to give you the feeling of a more rounded golf swing, a more shallower golf swing. What I want you to do is find a spot on the driving range where you can actually get on your knees. You can maybe use a towel if you like underneath your knees. Simply, from here to start off with, take some practice swings, trying to keep the clubhead as close to the ground as you can.

In doing that, your club will be swinging a lot more around your body on a shallower angle. You’ll start to get a sense for how your arms are moving, how your left and right arm are rotating to allow the club to stay at that right angle. If you were to swing steeply from here, you simply would thump the club into the ground every time. Now, once you get comfortable, you can actually tee the ball up, and go ahead and try to hit some shots. You might find it a little difficult to start with, but really, once you get comfortable clipping the ball off the tee peg, you will now have a feeling for how your arms should be working around your body; how they should be rotating, and then you can apply that to your regular swing. A great little drill for anybody who is getting steep, anybody who needs to get the feeling of shallowing out their golf swing.