Hi Robin here.
If you're watching this video perhaps you're a player who's struggling with early releasing
the club in the down swing.
You video your swing.
Perhaps you've had lessons.
You can see this angle between the left arm and the club shaft actually decreases in the
transition, a casting movement of the club head, and normally what we see with this is
by the time you get to impact, the club head will have reached the ball before your hands.
The club shaft will be leaning back.
You'll be adding loft to the club, difficult to compress the ball and hit the ball solid
and consistently.
You normally get a high, weak ball flight losing distance.
With the better players when you watch them swing, you'll see the opposite.
You'll see in the transition that the angle between the left arm and club shaft actually
increases.
We'll talk about a lot increasing the lag angle.
By the time they get to impact, the hands have reached the ball slightly in front of
the club head, the club shaft is leaning slightly forward, loft of the club is slightly reduced,
and this leads to a more solid contact and a more penetrating ball flight and a little
more distance.
I talked about in another video that this increasing the lag angle to stop the early
release and the scooping at impact is very much a function of the correct lower body
movement in the down swing.
When the lower body leads the down swing, it puts a little bit of pressure in the left
foot, rotation from the left hip because that's leading, and the club head's getting left
behind slightly.
It's this that increases that lag angle.
I talked about that on another video, but some people ask for some drills to help them
get a feeling for increasing the lag angle, and that's what I want to show you today.
OK.
The drill's name is called Drag to the Lag.
Seeing that the player obviously is early releasing but a player who's got too much
tension in their hands, a very common fault I see when players are early releasing or
scooping at impact.
They've got so much tension in their hands that simply they cannot let this angle between
their left arm and their club shaft increase.
We do this drill, Drag to Lag.
What I want you to do is actually as the name of the drill says, drag the club head away
from the ball so your hands are leading the club head.
To do this, you have to have a soft grip with very little tension in your hands.
And then as you change direction with your lower body, the wrists will re-cock repositioning
the club adding that angle to the wrists, and then simply go through and hit the shot.
So we drag the club away, then we lag the club, then we strike the ball.
This will give you the feeling of the energy transferring through your body from the transition,
your hands remaining tension free allowing the lagging of the club to take place.
Another good point is you'll probably feel some pressure being put on the inside of your
index finger as the club's lagging, and that's a good feedback point that you're doing it
correctly.
Drag through to lag.
So if I was to end the shot, it would look like this.
I'm just going to do it with short swings.
And once you repeat that exercise a few times, you should get a feeling for how the transition
should feel where your lower body's leading the transition, this angle between your left
arm and club shaft is increasing.
You're putting a little bit of pressure on your index finger as I've said, and then you
can move through the shot which will eliminate that scooping at impact.
I wouldn't want you to do too much of this.
Clearly, we don't want you dragging the club head away from the ball and making that a
habit so do it enough just so you can get a feeling of this key part, the transition,
lower body leading, club head getting left behind, increasing the lag angle.
Once you've got a feeling for it, go ahead and add it into your fool swings feeling the
same transition from back swing to down swing.