In this video, Neil Tappin is joined by PGA Pro Alex Elliott to discuss how to improve your impact position for longer straighter shots.
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00:00 Hello everyone, Neil Tappan here from Golf Monthly and welcome to the range here at West
00:04 Hill Golf Club and this video in which we're going to take a look at everything you need
00:08 to know about the impact position. No doubt about it, this is the bit of the golf swing
00:12 that everyone needs to get right if they want to play better. So we're going to focus exactly
00:17 on what the right impact position should look like. Now, the tips and advice in this video
00:21 comes courtesy of Alex Elliott, PGA Pro. He's also got a YouTube channel, so head over to
00:25 his YouTube channel and find a link in it below if you're interested in Alex's tips.
00:29 But let's get started now looking at everything you need to know about the impact position.
00:33 So we're going to treat this as a little bit of a step by step guide to building the perfect
00:39 impact position. Now it's fair to say there is no such thing as a position, impact position,
00:44 because it's all a flowing movement in golf swing. But it's still a good idea to have
00:48 these thoughts in mind because this is what you're looking to try to recreate. Is that
00:51 fair Alex? Exactly, yeah. And I wanted to think about this video as like if you were
00:55 updating your profile picture, you want to have a snapshot of impact, this is what we'd
00:58 look for. Okay, fine. So the first point then in our step by step guide is about hips and
01:03 shoulders. What do people need to know? So let's just have a look at what we've got set
01:06 up on the floor here, Neil. So I've got my feet line and my shoulder line where I would
01:10 be nicely addressed. And then I've got another blue alignment stick on the floor here where
01:15 we'd aim to sort of get our feeling of our hips to be open. So I do this in two stages.
01:20 Firstly, get a golf club across your chest. Everything's matching this red to start with.
01:26 Underdressed position. Nice and athletic. And then what we're going to try and feel
01:29 is we're going to move our hips on the way back and our hips on the way through. Just
01:33 focusing on first off, keeping our shoulders level with this red. So it's almost like exaggerating
01:40 what we want. Okay, fine. But your hips, hopefully you can see that through the camera, the hips
01:43 are opening up and should be replicating or near enough, quite close, replicating the
01:47 other, the blue alignment stick that's on the ground. Exactly. Then the next stage to
01:51 this would just be to make a little bit of a flowing movement back through. So at impact,
01:56 what we're looking for is our hips to be a little bit more open than our shoulders. Yes.
02:01 Yeah. So you can see that nice and dynamic. And if I was to sort of put a lot of force
02:05 into the ground here, you could really see I'll be dynamic and I'd be into this position
02:09 where my hip line is a little bit more open than my shoulder line. My right shoulder is
02:13 sort of down towards the ground. Yeah, it's a really good picture to have in your mind
02:17 because it's a technical key that will add speed and power and also accuracy to your
02:22 game if you can get that aspect of the impact position right. Okay, so the next one is about
02:28 weight transfer. Really important. Alex, what are the sort of faults and what position should
02:33 people be in through impact? So let's start off with a simple fault. So if we lead on
02:38 from that first point, if we don't open up our hips, we tend to see our weight be sort
02:43 of more 50/50 or potentially on that back foot. Yes. That thin shots or a really high
02:49 launch with all our irons. Yes. If we think about what we said on that last point, where
02:54 do we want our hips to be? More here, or look where my weight's going. Yeah, it's going
02:59 pretty much into my lead side here. So at impact then Alex, should your right heel be
03:06 off the ground for right handers? It should be slightly off the ground. Slightly off the
03:09 ground and I would feel like my weight would be sort of moving into this instep. And how
03:13 much, if you were putting percentages on it, how much weight would be on the lead foot?
03:17 I would say let's do a rough guide of 70%. So imagine we started sort of 50/50 back in.
03:27 We would see a lot sort of, imagine we had a heat pressure map under us here, we'd see
03:29 a sort of a lot sort of around our heel to the middle of our foot and a little bit sort
03:33 of towards the instep and toe of our right. Yeah. And one point I'd make here is that
03:38 your upper body is still nicely over the ball. Yes. It's something that's really important,
03:42 isn't it? Definitely. And that leads us again, like I said before, from that first point
03:45 to the second point of the hips being more open than the upper half. So we sort of got
03:50 our middle of our sternum on the golf ball impact, not both significantly ahead. Yeah.
03:54 So you're not 90% weight on the front foot. No, it's not this way. It's this move. Yeah.
04:02 Weight transfer is such an important part of the golf swing. Hopefully that gives you
04:04 an idea about how it should work. So for the next part, we're talking about wrist position
04:10 and shaft lean. What do people need to know? So I think there's probably a bit of a misconception
04:15 here. I think a lot of golfers just want to get their hands ahead. And if you look at
04:18 this and you know, if I put my hands ahead here, yeah, but face points significantly
04:22 out to the right. And when we're trying to get our hands ahead, we will probably see
04:26 some shots that are quite skinny, low and shooting off to the right for most golfers.
04:31 Not what we're after. Probably worse than what you're trying to get in the first place.
04:35 Yeah. So I've got nothing flashy here, just a piece of wood. Really we've got to understand
04:40 is how do we get the hands ahead, but keep the club face pointing to target square. Right.
04:44 Got it. So I dressed that piece of wood and I want you just to not put any hands on this
04:48 golf club to begin with and just realize what direction this club's got to work in. It's
04:53 not out this way. It works very much like this. Yeah. Okay. So if we just put our glove
04:59 hand on, how would we keep that leading edge nice and square to that piece of wood? Well,
05:04 it wouldn't work like this. We'd have to have an element of this motion. Got it. Okay. Okay.
05:11 So we just felt this a few reps. Then we went and placed our right hand on few reps and
05:18 now you can really see with this bendy shaft on my golf club, how much force I can put
05:22 through this rather than no force. Lots of force. Yeah. And if you can get that position
05:31 where your hands are slightly ahead of the ball and you're squaring the face, that's
05:36 the dream combo, isn't it? That's when you hit those shots that sound amazing, that have
05:40 got easy power involved. Exactly. And that strike goes from sort of, I guess, around
05:44 the bottom to right in the middle. Right in the middle. So we've become a lot more efficient.
05:48 Okay. Alex, can you take the wood away? Yeah. And can you hit a shot for us? Are you going
05:52 to hit a shot with that club? Throw me right in the deep end here. I will try. You don't
05:57 have to. You can hit one with your hand. No, no, we'll go with that. I just want to say
05:59 one more thing on this. I think this is really important. So if we sort of bring the first
06:02 two points into this and we use this as sort of like our blueprint almost of everything
06:07 that we're looking for up to this point. Well, let's go in order. Hips open. Now where's
06:12 my weight? Hands ahead. Yeah. So if we wanted to make some little half back in and through,
06:20 this is a great way of bringing everything back to square. That feeling that you're looking
06:24 for. Okay, go on. I've been wanting you to hit one with this club. So nice and smooth.
06:29 Trying to really feel it. Beautiful. Very good. Hopefully you get a feel there for exactly
06:45 where your hands should be through impact, where your wrists need to be to get that shaft
06:49 lean for a pure contact. So for the last part of this video, we're going to combine the
06:54 last two points because there is a difference between how you approach impact with your
06:58 irons and how you approach it with your driver. Isn't it Alex? Let's start with the irons.
07:02 Yeah. And let's have a concept with an iron. We're looking to get our bottom of the arc
07:07 happening just past the goal. Okay. Yes. Down on the ball. Yeah. So you get that nice ball
07:12 first, a little bit of turf just slightly after. What are you thinking to help you do
07:17 that? So I think we can think about this in two ways, really. One, understanding the concept.
07:22 So really realizing that my club's going to travel from high to low through the ball.
07:26 Okay. But what I try and feel is that my chest and sternum are more on top of the golf ball.
07:32 You mentioned this in sort of that second part of the video here, rather than with a
07:37 driver, we'll talk about in a second. I want to be a little bit more behind. Okay. Hit
07:42 one for us so we can see what it looks like. So I would really just create a few practice
07:45 swings and I would encourage a lot of golfers to do this just inside the ball, halfway back,
07:50 halfway through, really trying to feel as though from the golf ball forwards, I'm making
07:54 that little bit of a bruising divot. Yeah. And into the ball, a little waggle, just in
08:00 Thomas-esque, and then we can hit it away. Beautiful. And you can see there, the divot
08:07 has come just after where the ball was positioned, exactly what Alex is looking for, but that's
08:13 no good with driver. Whilst it's no good, I'm sure it would be okay, but you wouldn't
08:16 be getting the most from your driver if you approached it in exactly the same way, would
08:20 you? No. And with driver, we're looking for maximum distance, aren't we? We're looking
08:23 to zip this golf ball as far as we can. So I think the simplest way to do this, Neil,
08:29 is change our setup a little bit. Okay. So we move our ball position a little bit further
08:36 forward, hit later in our arc, more ascending rather than descending. Yes. So ball position
08:43 inside that left heel. And I like to simply do this, so it's a simple routine, driver
08:49 shaft sort of matching my zip, tilt so it points sort of towards my left toe, down and
08:55 in. Now I'm in a position where, okay, if I returned back here, my bottom of the arc
09:00 would be organised upwards and before the ball, rather than with an iron, more sort
09:05 of level shoulders, more this way. Yes, that shoulder tilt, hopefully you can see it on
09:10 the camera there, is very clear to see. And it might only be a small technical point,
09:16 but it's really important, isn't it, for this? Massive. We set up to hit the shot how we
09:19 want to. For example, you wouldn't set up to a flop shot like you would a chip and run.
09:23 So we've got to make sure we're doing the right things with driver. That's a totally
09:26 different video, Alex. Right, go on, hit one for us. Again, hopefully we can get it on
09:31 slow-mo. You can see exactly what Alex looks like through the ball. And it's high launch,
09:48 it's low spin, it seems like it's in the air for absolutely ages because Alex has just
09:54 changed that impact position just fractionally, but not doing anything particularly technical.
09:58 Really, the golf swing itself is the same, isn't it? And that's how we make golf simple.
10:03 We can't be thinking about too many things in the golf course. Use your set-up, change
10:06 set-up to suit the shot you're about to hit, then swing away. So there you have it. That's
10:12 our look at everything you need to know about the perfect impact position and hopefully
10:16 some ideas there about how it differs just slightly between the irons and the driver
10:20 as well. If you do have any questions, please do post them below. We'll get back to as many
10:24 of you as we can. But that's it for now from West Hill. Thanks for watching. We'll see
10:28 you next time.
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