A New Use for an Old Drill (Video)

Martin Hall originally did this Extra Credit video to teach how Nick Faldo hit a draw that would hold its flight against a stiff wind on the links. I'm going to use it to help those of you struggling to control your clubface.



At around the 1:20 mark Martin demonstrates the drill. He uses his trailing hand to hold his lead elbow against the side of his chest at impact and during the finish. I've written about this "flying lead elbow" problem before. If your lead elbow moves away from your body at impact, you can get a chicken wing move... and that's bad for clubface control. It's why a number of you can't draw the ball.

Obviously, Martin's drill will help you develop a draw if you don't have one now.

But it may be less obvious why this 'chicken wing' can also interfere with any effort to hit a fade, especially if you've seen Jordan Spieth using just such a move to create a fade. Those of you paying attention may have also noticed, however, that Spieth has a tendency to hit out-of-control banana balls as well... and that also comes from that chicken wing maneuver.

Here's why: When your lead elbow starts moving away from your side, it doesn't always move the same amount. That's a problem, people. For example, if it moves toward the ball a bit more than usual, you'll get more of an in-to-out swing than you expect... and if you're hitting a fade, you'll end up with a push-fade that can head out-of-bounds. It can also cause you to leave the clubface more open than you planned, which can create the same result.

By the same token, if your lead elbow doesn't move out as much, you might get too much forearm rotation and VOILA! instant duck-hook. If you were expecting your little fade, you get the classic double-cross. Neither of these is good for your score.

If, however, you keep your lead elbow close to your side all the way through your downswing, you create a more consistent rotation that happens in the big muscles of your lead shoulder. Unlike the smaller muscles in your wrist and forearm, you get far less variation with your shoulder movement, and that minimizes the range of variation in your clubface position.

Martin's drill can help you, regardless of whether you struggle with a hook or a slice. Give it a try and you'll see what I mean.

Travis Fulton on the Knockdown Wedge (Video)

Here's a tip from instructor and GC regular Travis Fulton on how to hit knockdown wedges. I always like to see new ideas on how to play common shots, but Travis mentions something you may not have heard before.



This idea of not turning your hips fully as you hit the ball goes against everything you normally hear about the golf swing these days, and there's a reason for that.

Most modern instructors have traditionally taught that you want an exaggerated hip drive and less arm action. (That's Hogan's idea.) Belief in that idea, as I have noted in many posts -- over the last few months especially -- has begun to change. To finish your swing without fully releasing your lower body, which is what Travis is teaching here, requires you to use your arms more. You have to swing your arms past your lower body -- and this is actually a natural movement for most people. You just relax your arms and hips a bit, and let your shoulders turn past your hips.

The fact is that most of you do this frequently in your daily life, whether it's sweeping with a broom or simply moving an item from one spot on the table to another. You can learn to do it with a golf club as well; it's mainly a mental thing for most players. You've trained yourself to do it the other way.

As a general rule, you don't want to restrain your hips on your followthrough. But if you reach the point where your arms and shoulders are pulling your hips through to your finish, rather than driving your hips to pull your arms through, you'll probably have fewer back problems going forward.

Chris O'Connell on Playing in the Wind

I don't know about the rest of you, but we've had quite a bit of wind around here lately. So I dug up this Morning Drive segment on wind play featuring instructor Chris O'Connell, who teaches Matt Kuchar (among others).



The neat thing about this is that O'Connell lists a number of ways you can bring your ball flight down -- that is, lower your trajectory. For example, you can:

• Flatten your swing plane.
• Shorten your backswing and followthrough. (You can also use a longer club with this method, to make up for lost distance.)
• Use less wrist cock (less hand action, aka swing more like Steve Stricker).

When he demonstrates a low shot at the end of the video, note that he combines those last two -- making a shorter swing with less wrist action. That appears to be his preferred method.

One interesting tip he mentions came from Lee Trevino, who told Matt to go to the top of his backswing, take his trailing hand off while keeping his lead wrist cocked, and see if he could touch the clubhead with his trailing hand. If he could, he had too much wrist cock for playing in the wind.

O'Connell also notes that you can move the ball back a bit in your stance and keep your hands a bit forward at impact, BUT he cautions not to depend on those setup things. Rather, you want to use the swing methods because they give you more control over trajectory.

Michael Breed on HItting into the Wind

I've posted material on hitting knockdown shots before, but this tip from Michael Breed has some info you don't normally get. He covered this during The Golf Fix on Monday night, and they posted a short version at golfchannel.com:



Let me pick out the extra info Michael has here (and some things he mentioned on the regular show):

• Michael specifically says you should pick out a club that is either (a) two clubs longer or (b) 20 yards longer than you would normally use. However, he's demonstrating this on the 7th hole at Pebble Beach, a DOWNHILL shot. Note that he says you can go three clubs longer; on the show he actually said the three-club guideline might be better for a downhill shot to further minimize the time the ball spends in the air. That's an important piece of information to have!
• Note also that not getting enough lower body action or shoulder turn can cause this shot to slice badly. You need to keep your lower body relaxed so it can move normally and help you square up the club face. This is important even on approach shots that you aren't playing into the wind. If you just maintain the connection between your upper arms and your chest (which I've talked about a lot on this blog) you'll make the proper moves automatically.
• He also mentions using an abbreviated backswing and followthrough to keep the ball down, and this is important when hitting any kind of knockdown shot. On the show he specifically mentioned keeping your hands at shoulder level or below. You can see this in the video as well.

Bear in mind that many of the short game shots you normally hit, even in good weather, are hit with these same techniques. Many short game shots are just knockdown shots. Master this technique and you'll improve your short game as well as your wind game.

Martin Hall on Playing in the Wind

Wednesday's School of Golf show on GC was about the problems you face when playing links golf. This video is the "extra credit" video they do for GC's website. It deals specifically with playing in various types of wind and has a lot of good tips which are useful for anybody playing in windy conditions. This video is just over 5 minutes long, but it's loaded with good info.



A couple of simple tips from Nick Faldo that Hall mentioned on the regular show concerned lowering your ball trajectory. One was simply taking a longer club -- much longer, like 3 or 4 clubs more -- and swinging much more easily to take spin off the ball and keep it from rising in the air so much (less backspin).

Hall also mentioned some setup tips which sounded quite a bit like Jonas Blixt's setup from Tuesday's post.

And -- I thought this one was pretty neat -- one way to lower your ball flight is to alter your shoulder angle. We're usually taught to keep the lead shoulder a bit higher than the trailing shoulder and thus tilt your spine slightly away from the target. In the wind, Faldo would sometimes try to get his shoulders more level in the wind, which caused his spine to be slightly more vertical and therefore moved his weight slightly more toward his lead side. (Another way to get the "Blixt Effect.")

I had hoped to find a link to the actual show -- GC does that with some of their programs -- but couldn't find one. Here is the link to the page where this video is found; the page also has some other video clips GC thinks might be helpful. One of those clips is about the book Hall mentioned at the end of his show, by the legendary Henry Cotton:



The tip about hitting the bag is one that Carl Rabito used with me. After he taught me the correct way to coil my upper body, he had me hit a bag with half-swings for quite a while. (Like 15 minutes or so, nonstop! But it worked.) It taught me how to square my hands properly once he fixed my turn.

Perhaps they'll post the full episode later... but in the meantime, these clips should give you some help with the wind.