If you struggle with heel strikes or worse yet the shanks, then this drill is for you. Swing too far from in to out? Too far from out to in? This drill is for you. It is, quite simply, the kind of drill that so many golfers should utilize as their staple practice drill whether they are warming up or just getting some solid practice in.

A few points to note:

You can use a club box, a 2x4 (be careful!) or a partially empty plastic water bottle laying on it’s side

Align the box at the target

Tee the ball up approximately 2” inside the box

If you want the ball to get moving you’ve got to get your body moving and this very simple exercise is a little gem that we all should be practicing on a regular basis. I find it be an excellent reminder of the tilts, turns and stretches we need to incorporate into the golf swing. Watch…

A few checkpoint to keep in mind when doing the exercise:

Hold a club across your shoulders by crossing your arms across your chest

Position the handle of the club on the lead/target side of your body

In the backswing get the handle to point at the ball or where the ball would be

Too many golfers that I teach are struggling to compress the golf ball! There is a distinct lack of energy being transferred from the clubhead to the ball. Getting the club face in position in the early part of the downswing is tremendously helpful in increasing compression and the sizzle factor off the face. Here’s how…

When trying this drill look for the following:

Don’t try to hit balls with this - it’s all about getting the correct feel

Hold the club at the bottom of the grip in your lead hand with the clubhead well off the ground

As you get to the top you should see the handle out in front of your forearm

As golfers we typically don’t have very good awareness regarding how we are moving. We know what we should be doing, but we have a hard time executing the intended move. My explanation in the following video addresses one such situation. Watch…

A few notes:

I know this might sound contrary to what you’ve been trying to do for a long time, but consciously try to move forward and up through the strike

Feel that the trail shoulder makes a concerted “push” towards the target throughout the downswing

Something that has worked for my students and I has been to push off the trail foot on the way down into impact

Set Up:

Tee the ball high if you’re looking for max distance, lower if you’re looking for more accuracy.

Tilt your spine away from the target. Set up to hit up!

Drop the trail foot back inside the target line to aid in making a bigger turn.

At the Top:

We can all do perform better when we have good information. A clear understanding and vision of how things really work. In this video I will try to share important keys to help you start to hit the ball with more accuracy via a few simple concepts. Watch…

A few notes to consider:

We hit straight shots by swinging in circles/arcs

The clubhead does not need to travel ‘down the line’ after impact

There is no need for every golfer (RH) to work towards swinging to right field. Chronic slicers might need to do this for a while, but not forever!

We would all like to get the ball up and down from inside 100 yards, but the reality is that for majority of us we are more likely to take four to get down than we are to take two. Most of the top players and coaches I’ve discussed pitching with over the years have shared that they utilize some form of a template to encourage feel and familiarity with all the different shots we encounter from inside 100 yards. Here are a few ideas that I’ve found to work best for the everyday golfer. Watch….

I have three primary wedges that I might use for playing pitch type shots. There’s a strong chance that you have a slightly different wedge make up to the one I have. The idea here is to limit the two most lofted clubs to a comfortable distance less than a full swing. Here are my thoughts with each of my clubs:

58º

A full swing will carry 85 yards with this club but I never will attempt to hit it that far

I will use this club outside of the chipping zone all the way up to 60 yards and no further

A sensible “core distance” to practice with this club is 50 yards

You have got to try this simple, yet highly effective, exercise! Whilst it’s not as easy as it might appear it can be done fairly quickly and at home. This valuable little nugget was shared by my friend and Golf Fanatics expert contributor, Mike Carroll. It will help with mobility, strength and mechanics. Watch….

Mobility

As you work through each swing strive to go back a touch further than you did on the previous swing. I’ve done this for a week now and can feel the difference already.

Strength

As much as we might not be willing to admit it, strength makes a substantial difference in the distance that we hit the golf ball. If you start doing this with a light weight try to move up in weight as the weeks progress. I’m currently using an 8 pound medicine ball.

I struggle with this one too! Making a bigger backswing. So many ‘seasoned’ golfers that I have the privilege of working with struggle to make a big enough backswing and it really hinders their ability to hit the ball both far enough and well enough. Watch…

A few keys to help you to start getting more out of your body and your backswing:

Work towards turning your hips as far back as you can

Free up your feet by allowing the lead heel to lift off the ground

Allow the trail leg to straighten significantly

The ability to control both the face angle and loft at impact is paramount to playing better golf! This element in the golf swing really plays a major role in my teaching philosophy. Here’s a simple, yet illustrative, video that shows what can go wrong and how it needs to work…

So much of what we do in our golf swings is dictated by the face angle in the early part of the downswing. An open face means a stalled pivot and handle to go along with too much loft and an inconsistent strike. On the other hand an overly closed face will encourage too much lateral drive in the downswing and cause the hands to ultimately be too far forward and de-loft the face too much. This image illustrates the two extremes…

If you can make, even subtle, upgrades during this all important part of the golf swing you’re going to see a marked improvement in both your ball-striking and flight. Give it a go!

My experience as a coach has been that when a golfer sets out to improve one part of their game and they fully commit to making the upgrade over time, they almost always reach their objective. Watch…

This is the perfect opportunity to sit down and evaluate what went well for you as a golfer in 2020 and where you’d like to make gains. Write it down, come up with a plan and then commit fully to the process.

My goal this year is to increase my ability to move as an athlete. That incorporates flexibility, strength and agility. My goal is to be able to get to 170mph ball speed while playing a round of golf and I’m currently at 166.8mph when on the range. There’s a long road to go yet, but I have a plan that involves both the physical elements and the practical side.

What are you going to achieve on the golf course in 2021?

Let’s do it together!

In this article I’m going to share three helpful exercises to help you smooth out the tempo of your golf swing. Let’s get the oil of the golf swing flowing through your engine! Watch….

I work with golfers on an almost everyday basis to help them complete the backswing and ultimately improve the rhythm and flow in their golf swings. These three drills will help:

Three Ball Drill

Tee up three golf balls and do this drill with a 9 or 8 iron

Keep in mind that the rhythm does not have to be slow here

Are you tired of putting everything you have into your game, only to see the ball literally limp off the club face after each swing? There’s just no return on the energy you’re putting in. Today I’m going to show you how to get the sizzle back into your ball striking. Watch this video first…

I often ask my students which club imparts the most energy into the ball relative to club speed. The answer? Putter. Why? It has the least loft at impact and delivers the least oblique strike to the ball. Learn to reduce the loft coming into impact in order to start compressing the ball off the club face.

Get the club face in place early in the downswing. This is done by bowing/flexing the lead wrist which in turn will de-loft and strengthen the club face by the time impact occurs.

Try the Preset Club Face Drill. Using a 7 iron, take the club back so that the shaft is parallel to the ground making sure the lead wrist and leading edge are tilted down towards the ground slightly. Wind the arms back 1 foot and rotate through, working to maintain the face and wrist angles. The ball flight should be low and penetrating with a slight draw.

Make sure that the low point of the swing arc is forward of where impact occurs. This can be rehearsed by making two practice swings between each shot you hit on the range where the sole of the club bottoms out well in front of where it was resting on the ground. The handle and weight must be forward at impact in order for this to occur.

We’ve all been there - a constant battle between fats and thins, blocks and sweeping hooks! This malady is something I experience all too often on my lesson tee and I have an idea that I know will help many of you. Once you work your way through this article your approach to ball striking, your concept of how it should work, will never be the same again. Take a look…

I have come to believe that the primary culprit in tipping the upper body back is the quest to work the clubhead back to the inside or shallow the club on the downswing. I’ve written that “It’s All About Impact”, but you can only arrive at an appropriate impact when certain elements are in place going back and on the way down. The better the clubhead is positioned in the early downswing the less likely golfers are to tip their shoulders and spine away from the target too early.

Here’s a face on shot of Tiger Woods from the PGA Championship in San Francisco. I like this example as the bottom of his sleeves seem to correlate to shoulder tilt in these frames.

Tiger Woods

Frame 1: Far too many golfers have significantly more shoulder tilt than this at address. The lead shoulder should always be higher, but only marginally.

Thank you to all of you who have reached out to let me know how much you’ve gained from the insights I’ve been sharing with my students lately. It truly does make me happy to know how many people can benefit from someone else’s golf lesson. With that in mind, here’s another!

I recently got together with Scott who I started teaching 18 months ago. As a relative beginner when we first met, Scott has really worked hard and made tremendous strides - firing an all time best score of 82 recently. At the onset of our most recent lesson I could see that he had continued to make progress.

In an effort to keep my information simple, accurate and actionable I summarized the talking points for our time together into:

Alignment was too far right which led to misses that finished well right of target

2. Driver was crashing into the ground which led to pop-ups off the tee

I recently gave an old friend a lesson. Having not taught him for a few years I had an inkling as to what to expect, but things came together so well I thought the information might be beneficial to more than just one student.

This is why looking at still frames of an athletic motion can be deceiving. There are six different images/videos here that we will go through in a specific order. To get the most out of this post please make sure you go through this it slowly. Be sure you comprehend each image before moving to the next…

(The original/before is always on the right in all of the images/videos)

Image 1:

Notice how these two images appear to be somewhat similar. I think many of us would give them both a thumbs up! They might be somewhat similar, but the outcomes are very different due to the unseen forces being applied to the club. Do not be deceived!

If watch any golf on TV you’ll notice that there certainly doesn’t seem to be one backswing that is universal to all Tour players. Their backswings range from long to short, laid off to across the line and fast to slow. The million dollar question is which one will work best for you and your game. Watch this video to start to understand your options…

Length of Backswing

Don’t be overly anxious to shorten your backswing. If the arms are collapsing or the hands are letting go then by all means work towards making the necessary upgrades.

Longer backswings should almost have an across the line look, while shorter backswings simply must have the clubhead more behind them with a laid off look.

Amount of Time

TrackMan defines attack angle as the direction the club head is moving (up or down) at impact. How much the club head is traveling up or down is reported in degrees… 2º up or 6º down. You’re no doubt reading this in an effort to improve your golf and the purpose of this article and video is to share my experience pertaining to attack angle and how you can use this knowledge to upgrade the trajectory, shape and strike of your shots. Watch…

We need to be on the same page with a few important points in order for a better understanding to take place…

Club Delivery

a narrow downswing will typically encourage a steeper, more downward angle of attack

a wider downswing will typically promote a shallower, less downward angle of attack

I’m sure we’ve all at some point or another received the all-time classic chipping advice - get the ball back, weight forward and trap the ball! You won’t hear anything like that in this lesson, but you will perhaps hear and see something you haven’t caught on to before.

Two of the best wedgers in recent memory have been Jose-Maria Olazabal and Brett Rumford. I’m sure you’ve heard of Ryder Cup star and Masters winner Olazabal, but you may not have heard of Rumford. The journeyman pro from Western Australia has won six times on the European Tour and has recently been battling wrist injury. Take it from me when I tell you he is as good, if not better than, anyone you’ve ever seen.

While their form in the video above is not identical (whose is?) there are two important movements they both incorporate. In the backswing they both shift the pressure forward, onto the front foot and in the downswing they both elevate or stand up through the strike.

Notice in the image below how Jose-Maria has moved ahead of the red line as he reaches the end of the backswing. My current opinion is that this stimulates motion (pressure shift) and encourages the chest to rotate through impact.

In the following image you can clearly see how Brett has elevated from the end of his backswing into the strike relative to the red line. This is perhaps the biggest mistake I see golfers make when wedging. They attempt to “stay down” and thus limit rotation and change the radius of their strike. This can have a mortifying effect on strike quality. And we all know that strike is king when it comes to the shortgame!

If you’re fed up with wasting strokes on the greens then this challenge is for you. Try this putting drill the next time you’re out practicing on the putting green. It will challenge and engage you to the fullest…

One tee, three balls, a putter and a plan! While you might never get to a point where you hole all 18 putts, you will start to develop your skill with the putter in hand. Prepare to be engaged! All the research shows that when we are engaged we learn, and when we learn, we improve. I believe that if we wish to become better at completing a task (hit the ball into the hole) then the more ways we can complete the task, the better we become. Have some fun with this one and see if you can beat your personal best score each time you accept the challenge.