Drill To Shallow Your Downswing

How to shallow the plane of your swing

Hi, Robin here. I’ve got a great drill for any players who’s struggling shallowing the club in the downswing. You’re finding you’re coming down steep. It’s a horrible fault to have. You hit weak cuts to the right. Take big divots. You hit pulls to the left. You can really count in one hand the amount of elite players or top professionals who are steep in the downswing. The drill is quite simple. I want you to take a six or a seven iron, with your longest tee, and tee the ball up as high as you can. Take your address as normal, but from here, I want you to make a backswing and stop, setting the club into a very steep position. The club shaft is almost vertical. From here, instinctively, you’re going to learn to create some dynamics. Your lower body will lead, and the club will shallow. It will be quite an instinctive thing. You have to shallow the club to hit the ball from this steep position.

With enough repetition, you’ll start to gain the feeling for the dynamics and the shallowing of the club. Repeat it a lot; gain the feel; take that into your normal swing. Now, there’s one thing I’m concerned about. There’s one cheat.  One way I see players cheating to hit the golf ball off this high tee. Instead of shallowing the club and creating some dynamics, they will hang back, and hit the ball from the inside and more up on the golf ball. If you do this, your golf ball will start higher than normal, and start to the right. That’s telling you you’re cheating. So just ensure you’re not cheating, I want to make sure that in your finish position, your chest is rotating over to your left foot. If you’re doing that, I can assure you you’re not cheating. You’re creating dynamics in the correct way. You’re shallowing the club in the correct way. It should look something like this.

If you do it correctly, the ball should start on line with a very normal ball flight. It actually shouldn’t go higher than normal. Give it a try.  As I said, it’s a horrible fault to have, a steep club coming down. I’m sure this drill can give you the feeling for dynamics and shallowing. It won’t happen instantly. You won’t hit one or two of these and then that’s you’re cured. You’re going to have to spend a little time repeating the movement, changing the pattern. Once you get the feel, apply it to your normal swing. A shallower club is going to produce a much better golf shot. A lot more solid, straighter, and with a little more distance, too.