- Welcome back to Naples, Florida.
Adam Bazalgette here, two time PGA Teacher Of The Year
award winner down here.
Long time David Ledbetter associate.
Today's subject, how to stop flipping at impact.
Stay tuned.
(light playful music)
- So how to stop flipping at impact.
Pretty important,
we're gonna show you some things about that today.
And also how to do that, hopefully, without losing speed.
So often people get stiff trying to do it and lose speed.
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And scratchgolfacademy.com is my website.
We have courses in every aspect on the game, including
a lot on this subject and you could find out there how
to get a one-on-one lesson online with me.
So, let's get started.
Okay, before we really get into the flip and how to stop it,
I'll just say this, there can be
some predisposing factors that happen before impact
that would literally cause you to need to flip it.
And it's amazing I say this on the videos,
I've watched it, it really is.
It'll figure out a way to solve problems
and there's a lot of them.
Two potential ones though, certainly,
club face too open approaching contact.
Club face aimed to the right could be a weak grip,
could be you roll the club in your backswing or what not.
But if the club face is open,
either you're gonna hit the ball way right
or you're gonna have to flip it
a little bit at the last minute
and you get used to stuff, you no longer feel it.
And believe me, you're not gonna get rid of the flip
if the face is open.
Another one that's much less common I would say
would be club approaching too far from behind
the golfer and from the inside.
Again, probability to hit it to the right
and almost a certain flip a little bit to try to recover,
if you like.
And hey, there's other things, you could be out of position
at the top and your body is trying to recover
and sort the swing plane out
and so your body motion isn't very good or what not.
But let's assume for this video, as we work on stopping
this flip, that at least you're in a reasonable position,
your club face and your approach to contact
sets you up to be able to not flip.
Let's check it out.
So why is it so important in golf not to have little bit
of flipping of the club there at the bottom?
Well, the two obvious reasons are number one,
it's very hard to apply pressure to something effectively
if the handle's stalling and going backwards.
So you're not gonna hit the ball
as far if you flip the club.
And at least as importantly, number two,
you're just not gonna be that consistent.
There's no way you can hit the ball in the same direction
or squeeze it off the turf the same way
if the club is unstable at the moment of contact.
So, we see with the best players in the world
as they get in there, nice and stable
with the shaft through impact, at least
for a little period there, six or eight inches.
Now a couple of thoughts along these lines,
this club isn't that heavy, this is an eight iron,
but, when you swing it at high speed,
top speed for me might be 83 four miles an hour,
it is effectively much heavier than that.
And believe me once that centrifugal force picks up
and you've got something effectively heavy at high speed,
you gotta get in there and get control of it
if you're gonna stabilize it.
It's not gonna stay stable by itself.
So, several things need to happen.
Number one, your arms will need to squeeze together
a little bit, like that.
If your arms are wide and out here,
you're probably not gonna control the club.
There's been a couple of players in history
that did that a little bit,
but round numbers I wouldn't recommend it.
Secondly, this wrist has to be stable.
You have to bow some loft off that and firm
that left wrist up.
Cupped left wrist is not likely to be very stable.
And finally, of course, you've gotta engage your core
at that speed to support all this stuff at that speed.
So, banging into an impact bag like this
will give you a great feeling for how
to stabilize the golf club and you'll start
to feel all those components come together.
Now, we'll get into those as we go.
Let me just say something though as we're going along here,
a lot of times when someone starts to make a commitment
to this and they work on it, they become so rigid
throughout their swing they lose a lot of swing speed,
and it isn't necessary.
If you've watched some of my videos you'll notice
I've used a towel quite a bit.
And we've talked in our lag videos how the golf club
is responsive to the change of direction,
there's an increase in wrist angle.
And you're not gonna be able to do that if you too rigid.
So the key is this,
you've gotta let the club load a bit,
you've gotta be soft enough to feel that.
But once it starts to pop, you're naturally gonna firm up
and brace for the hit.
And I promise you you can do that,
your mind is smart enough to do that.
You just try hitting an impact bag like that
and you'll see how naturally you start
to firm up a little bit.
I've never really chopped a tree down
but I'll bet if you were chopping a tree stump down
you wouldn't hit the tree stump with sloppy arms
and a bent left wrist.
You'd firm up and you'd smack it a little bit.
So it is possible, with a little bit of practice,
to incorporate this softness,
this adding of risk cock, but then firm up
with the core, arms and wrist as you hit it.
And if you can do that you've really got
a magic combination.
Let's talk a little bit more about the core,
let's change angles.
So sticking with the impact bag,
here it's a great thing because it's nice and soft,
it doesn't hurt you and yet you can really thump into it
and it holds your position, so you get to feel it.
And the thing we wanna pay attention to here,
for just a minute, is the fact that address and impact,
although there are some similarities,
there is some significant differences as well.
You look at a great player at address,
and you look at impact with a short to mid iron,
you'll see very similar body angles
but at impact you'll see much more engagement,
much more of their back here as they hit it
and that's what they're doing to support
and help stabilize impact.
Now, if you're at home right now and you very possibly
are watching this video,
you likely don't have an impact bag.
But grab a club, use a door jamb or something,
just so you can get the club head
against something stable and solid.
Put it there, take an address position,
and then simply use your core to squeeze and put pressure
against that object 'til you feel the shaft bending
and your arms firming up.
No swing, you don't wanna put a dent in your wall,
and just practice that and then you'll start
to see how engaged you need to be
to really apply pressure properly to the ball.
Let's have a very quick look at a couple of great players
and sort of look at the difference,
the obvious differences between address and impact.
It doesn't get any better than that.
Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus.
There's Tiger at address,
Tiger at impact,
again, address,
impact.
Let's look at Mr. Jack there at address,
and at impact.
And you can just see how address, impact,
how their positions change somewhat
to support the type of shot they're trying to hit.
There's a man who needs also no introduction, Jordan Spieth.
There's address
and there's impact.
Look at the difference in his lower body,
although the body angles are the same or very similar,
there's impact.
Much more of a dynamic position and one that allows him
to put pressure on the ball.
Okay, so now that you've got the theory down,
once you've practiced this, impact bags are great
if you happen to have one of those,
all it is is a thick bag stuffed with old towels,
so you could almost make one yourself.
I get mine from Golf Around The World,
a great teaching aid website.
Once you've practiced a little bit
and you the theory down,
here's the best drill I know for it.
Use a short iron, I've got an eight iron,
and we're gonna do some little shots where we do
what we call a hit and hold, we let the club load
and then we punch, as though there was like a tree branch
or something blocking any follow through.
Let's do it on a small-scale first.
(ball smacking)
A nice firm short follow through there.
And in order for me to stop the club that quickly
and that firmly, I've gotta feel those three elements
of a firming of the arms and supporting of the core,
it's gotta really from here.
And a nice flattening and firming of that left wrist.
Let's try it again.
Start with a small-scale,
you might find initially, hey, the club's bouncing around
on you, just make it even smaller
until you get reasonably good at it.
(ball smacking)
And really solid hit there.
And I can feel how stable the arms feel there as I do that.
Once you've done that, just gradually make it a little bit
bigger and bigger shot 'til you get good at it.
I was at Bay Hill and I think it was 1981 maybe,
Tom Watson was absolutely in his prime
and I was following him on a Thursday.
He hit a ball, in fact this impact bag is about perfect,
up against a pine tree like that.
Thin pine tree trunk, no lower branches,
but for him to hit the shot, he was gonna hit
the pine tree trunk with this golf shaft
this far after impact, I'm telling you.
His hands were, it was in between his hands
and the club head.
He took this club back at about 160,
normal backswing and smashed this ball and barely touched
the tree trunk, knocked it on the green.
It was impressive, I was standing just a few feet away.
So, the best players, they can time it so they can make
a reasonably good
(ball smacking)
size backswing and still stop
that thing nice and short and solid down there.
When you can do that, you know you're starting
to get the feel for how not to flip it.
Well hope you find that helpful,
hope it gives some clues as to how to stop flipping
at impact there.
Scratchgolfacademy.com is my website.
You can find out there how we could do
a one-on-one lesson online on the Internet.
Have full courses in every aspect of the game
and of course, if you like this channel,
would love to have you subscribe,
we'll get you all the free content
and more coming in the future we hope.
Thanks again for your time.
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