"15 Minutes of Body Action Drills Are More
Important Than Hitting 200 Balls"
Tom's Featured Tip: Ball Striking - Wrist Positions
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Ball Striking - Wrist Positions
For simplicity, all advice on actual swings or drills is provided from a right handed perspective.
Two Great Training Aids For Indoor or Outdoor Practice
The Divot Board
This is the most useful ball striking development training aid that I own.
Click here ImpactSnap.com to buy now. Start using the ImpactSnap training aid indoors or outdoors to make you instantly aware of proper hand and wrist action, which is second only to low point awareness for great ball striking.
Ball Striking - Wrist Positions
We all want to launch a well compressed ball at impact, and here's one aspect of ball striking that you need to nail down for that to happen - the position of your left wrist.
At impact, the left wrist position is a critical element to consistent ball striking. As such, the top of the swing, the transition and the delivery of the club are the areas where ball striking with good compression starts.
The wrists have the largest influence in clubface control and clubface presentation to the ball at impact. They are essentially capable of three sets of distinct movements: flexion and extension, supination and pronation, and ulnar and radial deviation.
The areas you should be concerned with in order to get your clubface positioned for powerful compression and repeating strikes are flexion, extension, and supination.
For good impact, the lead wrist should be in some degree of flexion (slightly bowed with the wrist bone raised) and in supination (rotated so that the palm is pointing toward the sky). Everything that comes before this should be done to get your lead wrist into that position.
EXTENSION (TOP) Your wrist is in extension (cupped) mode when you pull your hand toward your forearm. The clubface responds by opening. FLEXION (BOTTOM) Your wrist is in flexion (bowed) mode when you bow it like Dustin Johnson and most elite players. The clubface responds by closing.
Here's a drill that I have my students perform regularly after we've had our Ball Striking lesson to feel a bowed left wrist:
Inverted Praying Hands Drill maintaining wrist angles with weight forward, long arms, left wrist bowed, and good body rotation.
In my Full Swing (1) lesson, I explain to the student that in actual play, we do not want the left wrist bowed to this extreme. However, this left wrist position is usually foreign to beginner (and some intermediate) students, and practicing in the extreme allows us to over-correct a cupped wrist habit, and to back off comfortably to an only slightly bowed or flat left wrist during actual play.
How you and when you get your left wrist to that bowed or flat position prior to impact is a matter of personal preference.
Ben Hogan was more "cupped" at the top of his swing, and he would transition from that position to an extended, or bowed, and supinated left wrist position at impact.
In contrast to Hogan, Collin Morikawa transports a more flexed wrist (bowed) to the top, and as such requires less of a transition of wrist alignments as he swings to impact. He essentially retains the wrist position from the top through impact, as his body rotates and moves toward impact.
All things remaining the same, at the top, a bowed wrist with a neutral grip will result in a closed clubface at impact, and a cupped wrist will produce an open face. Ideally, we want to move in a way that presents a squaring clubface through impact.
At first, presenting a slightly bowed wrist at impact may feel awkward, but awkward feelings hold true for many aspects of the golf swing.
Sufficient repetitions make them feel more natural.
What number is sufficient? I'd say after you get 3,000 repetitions under your belt you're on the path to feeling natural and automacity.
When I say "3,000 reps" to my students, they often feel overwhelmed - until I explain that if they did the Inverted Praying Hands drill continuously for two minutes, they would log about 100 reps. If they did the drill for two minutes per day in a thirty day period, they would have their 3,000 reps done. Once or twice per week is fine after that.
When they understand how doable learning this skill is, and if they are really serious about improving, they put in the work and improve their ball striking dramatically in a relatively short period if time.
Two minutes per day for a month - try it, you'll like it!
Comments: TomTuckerGolf@gmail.com
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Love your practice, own your swing, own your health,
Tom
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Train with a Rypstick to improve your swing speed and gain more distance off the tee. If the versatility of three different swing weights in one club appeals to you, this is your swing speed training aid of choice.
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Use your club or hand to re-set the board after your strike
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Train with the Impact Snap training aid to improve your hand and wrist coordination for a powerful strike. A Golf Digest 2021 Editors Choice Training Aid
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All the best,
Tom Tucker
Teaching Professional, Batavia Country Club
WGTF ' "Top 100 Golf Teacher"
USGTF Class "A" Teaching Professional
IGPA Certified Golf Psychology Coach
Cell: (716) 474-3005
Email: TomTuckerGolf@gmail.com
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