A lesson with a Tour Professional

This video is a summary of a 1 hr lesson with a professional player.   During the lesson, we worked on the “Windmill” drill to help the player feel the lower body starting the downswing – with separation and weight transfer.   It is a good lesson to watch for anyone who is struggling with their transition (downswing start).

A good transition can help with many aspects of the swing.

– Increase Club Head Speed.

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– Re-position the club onto the correct plane, increasing accuracy.

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– Fixing Over the Top – Slicing.

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– Increase Separation between lower body and upper body.

– Increase compression on the ball, fixing heavy and thin shots.

– Improved Weight Transfer, fixing Hanging Back.

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– The correct use of the lower body can help fix Early Release, and Scooping.

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Transcript

Anyone who is struggling with the correct transition, changing direction from back swing to down swing, and anybody struggling with their weight shift in their down swing, getting their lower body leading the down swing then I think this is a good session for you.

A good player here. Obviously if I show you her swing you’ll see that during the down swing she finds it very difficult. Her arms, shoulders and hips all work very much together in the transition. There is very little separation. The lower body should be leading the down swing more than this through impact, not getting her left hip over her left foot and too much width hanging back here on the right foot. This will reflect in her follow through where she gets a little bit stuck, and this will cause her wrist to flip over in the follow through. So the key point here is that in the transition she is not getting her weight shifting back to her left foot.

I just want to show you [inaudible] got her arms out because what we’re trying to do here is create some movement in the swing, some transition, some separation lower body to upper body, some weight shift to the left foot in the transition, and this is not done by trying to achieve different positions in the swing. This is done by creating a different movement connected with the rhythm of the swing, too. So this girl’s just got a feeling for this. There’s a few other points to this, but we’re just going to, in this lesson, focus on the down swing.

So you can see she’s getting a little feeling for the rhythm of the back swing, keeping her arms in this position for a little longer as her lower body leads the down swing, separating from upper body, weight getting pushed into her left foot, and then rotating through to the finish. I had this player repeat this drill a few times, got a club in her hand then just tried to simulate this same movement in a practice swing. Same rhythm, same movement then we simply put a ball in and try to repeat this same movement.

New one on the right, old one on the left. Put the same line up from the left ankle. We should be getting the left hit closer to that and the bouncing. We know the old one… Sorry, apologies… I’ll just switch that around.

Old one on the left, new one on the right. Nice, so just after going through the drill a few times, getting a feeling for it, we’re going to see rather than this hanging back in the right foot, everything working together. Now we’ll see more of a separation. Lower body leading. Weight shifting to the left foot. That will reflect on impact. She can release the club better at impact now because she’s got more weight in her left foot rather than having to force her hands to the left to make an impact because she’s got too much weight on her right foot. Then she gets stuck, body stops moving, club head keeps going, gets a little bit flippy. Now she can keep moving through the shot controlling the club face. It was almost like a fake follow through before. It was too much in her right foot and then suddenly with release her body into her follow through. Here its one continual movement in the down swing, making it much better contact with the ball and controlling the club face.

So there wasn’t anything too technical in this lesson. It was a rhythm. It was a movement. If you’re somebody struggling with these aspects of your own swing starting the downswing correctly, getting some separation, getting some weight shift, give this exercise a try. Start by just rotating your upper body, keeping your lower body stable. Then you add a little bit of weight shift in the back swing and down swing, and then rotate your upper body through to the follow through. Simple exercise. Get a feel for it. Make a few practice swings and then repeat that same feeling with shots.