In this video, which has been created in partnership with Callaway, we look at the key to handicap cuts for many golfers - consistency. PGA professional Ben Emerson puts a list together of his 10 best consistency drills. This covers everything from keys in the golf swing to better chipping and putting techniques. These drills are simple designed to add structure to your practice so you can start making tangible improvements to your golf game.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 Hello everyone, Ben Emerson here,
00:07 head professional at San Martin's Golf Club
00:10 and Golf Monthly Top 50 coach.
00:12 Today I'm gonna give you some of my top drills.
00:15 I'm gonna give you 10 consistency drills
00:17 to help you tee to green, hit it further,
00:20 hold some more putts, and enjoy your golf more.
00:23 So let's get started.
00:24 (upbeat music)
00:29 So when we're looking at takeaway,
00:30 one of the things that people get wrong
00:32 so early doors in the swing
00:34 is this initial takeaway point,
00:36 that initial first kind of forfeit of travel from the club.
00:40 And unfortunately, it sends the club on the wrong path
00:43 and actually really hurts the entire swing.
00:46 If you've imagined, if you get it wrong
00:48 in the first kind of point,
00:50 you are unfortunately gonna have to make some compensations
00:53 to actually get a good strike on the ball.
00:55 So one of the things that I love to kind of do
00:57 is get this understanding that what the club head
01:00 has got to do in this first initial forfeit
01:04 of kind of travel.
01:05 Now, along the way, people have been told
01:07 that they need to take this feeling
01:09 of almost like a one-piece kind of takeaway
01:12 where everything kind of comes together.
01:14 Unfortunately, the problems we see with that
01:16 is the club gets really on the inside here
01:19 and actually we get this kind of, I've got nowhere to go,
01:21 so I either gotta lift my arms up
01:23 or I'm gonna take it straight over the top
01:25 and get some really weak shots and ball strikes
01:28 because of it.
01:29 What I wanna kind of give you this understanding
01:32 is this club has got to travel the furthest.
01:34 So the initial point is if I had an imaginary kind of line
01:39 or I've got an alignment stick here,
01:40 I like to think of this straight down my tailbone
01:43 as a bit of glass.
01:44 And the idea is the club head is gonna move first
01:47 and it's gonna miss this glass.
01:49 It's not gonna smash in and break the glass.
01:51 We are gonna get a nice wrist hinge,
01:53 we're gonna take it up and over,
01:55 and that's gonna set our takeaway in a nice position.
01:59 Now if you want a good little checkpoint,
02:01 actually if you were to take the club
02:03 to parallel with the ground which is here,
02:05 I wanna just check a couple of things.
02:07 First of all, is my right forearm looking down on my left?
02:10 So not the opposite if you can imagine
02:12 if I've whipped it in, smashed this glass,
02:15 this forearm now, my right forearm is now under
02:18 and the club face is now massively open.
02:20 I wanna actually see, is that right forearm
02:22 looking down on the left
02:24 and is the club head now matching my spine?
02:26 If it's doing this, I know that I'm on a really good,
02:30 I've set myself up on a really good start to the swing
02:33 and I can then just simply go up,
02:35 come down and enjoy some good shots.
02:37 (upbeat music)
02:40 So here's a really nice drill to get,
02:44 to fix your over the top golf swing.
02:47 Unfortunately in the coaching band on the golf course,
02:49 we see the over the top move just so much in golf
02:53 and it produces just some horrendous golf shots.
02:57 What I want you to really understand is how sequencing works.
03:00 So what I mean by sequencing,
03:01 which parts of the body move first
03:04 at the very top of the backswing.
03:06 So as we finish this backswing,
03:08 as my hands get to the very top,
03:11 what the best players in the world all do
03:14 is they actually start the swing with their lower body.
03:17 These are our strongest muscles that we've got
03:19 and they make sure they fire first.
03:22 So the move looks like this,
03:23 you get to the very top,
03:24 you actually get this firing sequence of lower body,
03:28 then upper body, lead arm and then club.
03:31 Unfortunately, when we see the higher handicappers,
03:33 something very different happens
03:35 and the upper body gets so dominant
03:37 and it's the first thing to fire,
03:39 you get it's firing this way, it's coming over the top
03:42 and then you're really trying to correct it
03:44 in the downswing.
03:45 So what I want you to try and do
03:47 is a little pause at the top drill,
03:49 where very simply you take the club to the top
03:52 and I want you to try and feel
03:53 like you're gonna stop there
03:54 for just a fraction of a second,
03:56 let gravity take over
03:58 and then you're gonna have time
04:00 to get the lower body firing.
04:02 So it always goes a little bit like this.
04:05 Take it to the top,
04:06 just do a couple of rehearsals where you let it drop
04:09 and then turn the lower body through.
04:11 If I do one more just before I hit,
04:14 nice rehearsal to the top,
04:16 let it drop,
04:17 lower body through
04:19 and then try and hit a shot.
04:20 (upbeat music)
04:23 Give that a go and I really hope that it fixes
04:32 your over the top swing.
04:33 (upbeat music)
04:36 So one of the questions that we get asked quite a lot
04:40 is how do you hit a three wood off a tee?
04:43 Now for me, one of the biggest problems
04:45 that I find with people when they're set up like this
04:48 is unfortunately the tee is far too high to start with
04:51 and they try and mimic what they do with the driver.
04:54 So you end up getting this kind of move
04:56 where you actually get your weight
04:57 too far onto your back foot,
05:00 you try and get a nice big sweeping kind of swing,
05:03 but unfortunately what happens is
05:04 the weight stays on the back foot far too much
05:07 and you end up trying to hit up on it too much
05:11 and your spine angle changes
05:12 and just so many problems happen with this.
05:15 What I want you to try and do
05:16 is actually understand that you don't need
05:18 a teed up high to do this.
05:20 I want you to feel like you're really trying to hit it off
05:22 more of a perfect lie.
05:24 So tee the ball down slightly,
05:26 give yourself a nice perfect lie to start with
05:29 because now I want you to really try and feel
05:32 that we are not trying to hit up onto it
05:35 like we are with a driver.
05:36 There is a nice kind of descending blow
05:39 to the back of the ball
05:41 to get a three wood to go up into the air.
05:43 So if I take a set up here and take a shot,
05:46 I want to make sure that the ball position
05:49 is not like it is with a driver.
05:51 So it's not on our left heel,
05:53 it's two golf balls in,
05:55 and I feel my weight is a lot more 50/50.
05:58 For some people they can really benefit
06:00 having more of the weight on their front foot to start with,
06:02 but far more important than that,
06:04 if you are going to go onto your back foot,
06:07 you have got to get your weight off,
06:09 you've got to get energy going towards the target.
06:12 So I want you to really focus on the finish,
06:14 finish to the pose,
06:16 and actually feel like you're going to hold
06:17 a little bit of balance right at the end.
06:20 So let's have a go.
06:21 Give that a go,
06:33 and I really hope it helps you three woods off the tee.
06:35 (upbeat music)
06:40 So if you're one of those golfers that really struggles
06:43 with releasing the club,
06:44 actually how you strike the ball
06:46 when you're doing these kind of short chip shots,
06:49 I've got a great little drill
06:50 just to give you the understanding
06:52 of how the club passes the body.
06:54 Now what we see,
06:55 we see two types of poor release patterns
06:57 when we're talking about these kind of short shots.
07:00 The first one is we've been told at some point
07:03 that we don't want to use too much wrist.
07:05 So what we tend to do is get very wooden,
07:08 very kind of stiff with our whole upper body and our arms,
07:12 and we actually try and then hold the club off.
07:15 This is what we call a block release.
07:17 The opposite can happen when we get too kind of wristy,
07:20 and actually we get this kind of what we call
07:23 this open sort of early kind of release pattern here,
07:27 where we actually return the club
07:28 at the wrong kind of, the wrong way.
07:31 So the drill looks like this.
07:32 What I want you to do is take your left hand off
07:34 and just place it onto your lead thigh.
07:37 And I just want you to grip the club as you would normally
07:39 with your trail arm,
07:41 and I want you to feel like it's really nice and soft,
07:43 and you're just going to practice making some swings
07:46 where the club comes up,
07:47 going to let it just naturally drop,
07:49 let gravity do its thing,
07:51 and actually just get used to brushing the ground.
07:53 You can see the club is now releasing past my body,
07:57 it's exposing the bounce.
07:58 If I do it on the ball just as a practice,
08:01 it's here, let it drop,
08:03 and let it naturally kind of release.
08:05 If I then take another normal shot,
08:07 put my hands back on,
08:08 a nice way to just transition from this
08:10 is then just with your lead arm,
08:12 just try and do exactly the same thing,
08:14 but let's just grip this nice and lightly to start with.
08:17 Just do a couple of practice swings,
08:19 let the club drop,
08:21 let it pass, go past your body,
08:23 and then let's just try and do one onto the ball.
08:26 That's a great way to give you the understanding
08:30 of how the club releases past your body,
08:33 stops you thinning it,
08:34 stops you hitting all those terrible shots,
08:36 and start enjoying some good chips.
08:38 (upbeat music)
08:40 So one of the questions that we get asked quite a lot
08:45 is how do you compress an iron?
08:48 Now this is a really interesting one,
08:49 because for me, when I see a lot of players
08:51 working on their swing,
08:53 most of the time they're working on either the back swing
08:56 at different kind of positions,
08:57 or this kind of downswing move.
08:59 The only thing the ball really understands is impact.
09:03 So for me, it's one of the first areas
09:05 that I ever go to with a player,
09:07 of just to give them the real understanding
09:09 of what impact looks like.
09:11 Because unfortunately, we have been told a bit of a lie
09:14 in how we've been told to set up.
09:16 If you think of a normal kind of set up position
09:19 with the ball position in the middle,
09:21 most people have their hips very level,
09:24 and they have their hands pointing straight up.
09:27 But impact doesn't look like that.
09:28 Actually, when we come to impact,
09:30 some of the best players in the world,
09:32 they do something very different.
09:33 Their hips have cleared, their chest is cleared,
09:36 and their hands are just in front of the golf ball.
09:39 Now, if you think about it,
09:41 when we're trying to get the ball to go high,
09:43 for most people when they're starting,
09:45 that's a real, that takes a lot of sort of thought process
09:48 to get that kind of move,
09:49 because it doesn't make much sense
09:52 to try and hit down on something for the ball to go up.
09:55 So what they end up doing is they go onto their back foot,
09:59 and they really try and scoop this ball into the air.
10:02 It gets the opposite effect of this nice compressed look
10:05 that we are looking for.
10:07 Unfortunately, what happens is it's twofold.
10:09 You lose so much distance because of it,
10:12 because the club is now not in this position
10:14 like it's been built for.
10:15 It's either back how it started,
10:17 or it's been de-lofted completely to this.
10:19 So you get a lot of distance,
10:21 strikes can be all over the place.
10:24 So one of the nice drills that I like to do
10:25 is actually do a drill where we actually start at impact
10:28 and work back.
10:30 So what I want you to do
10:30 is take your normal setup position,
10:33 and I want you to push your hands forward.
10:35 I want you to rotate your hips
10:37 just about a couple of feet in front of the ball,
10:39 and do the same thing with your chest.
10:41 I want you to do some really slow kind of awareness swings
10:45 where you just take the club back
10:46 and try and return back to that position.
10:49 Do this rehearsal a couple of times
10:51 and just get so used to feeling what impact looks like.
10:55 So hopefully we put that all together
10:57 and we get some nice compressed shots.
11:00 I really hope that helps.
11:11 So one of the questions that I get asked quite a lot
11:17 is how fast or slow should I swing a golf club
11:21 to get the most out of my swing?
11:24 And this is a really difficult question to answer
11:26 because unfortunately, not everyone swings at the same speed
11:30 so it's very important that I just say,
11:32 I don't just say you need to swing it at five
11:34 if we had a scale of one to 10, 10 being the fastest,
11:37 'cause that would be wrong,
11:38 'cause not everyone plays their best golf at five.
11:42 So what I like to try and do is,
11:43 I've got three balls set up,
11:44 is this is just a nice little drill
11:46 to try and find your own tempo.
11:48 So the idea with is,
11:50 I want you to think of the first ball
11:52 as we're gonna swing this as slow as we can.
11:55 This is what we call awareness speed swing.
11:57 So kind of as slow as I can, the whole way back and through,
12:00 just to give myself a guide of what slow is.
12:04 If I just hit one and I'm thinking,
12:06 this is only gonna go kind of 20 yards,
12:09 just really slow, back and through,
12:13 and I just about carry the water,
12:16 just to give myself a gauge.
12:18 Now I want the second ball to be as fast as I can.
12:20 So this is 10 on the scale.
12:22 So literally like blink and you miss it type swings,
12:24 but I really want you to hit one
12:25 and I need you to feel what the fastest one feels like.
12:29 So if I was to set up,
12:31 and let's try and crack one down there.
12:33 That was far too fast for me.
12:38 But now all of a sudden, I can actually,
12:40 I felt what slow is and I felt what fast is.
12:43 Now I wanna try and find something
12:46 that I can settle with that feels natural, right?
12:48 So I'm gonna try,
12:50 I actually quite like to have a fastest sort of swing.
12:53 So I'm aiming for the sort of six and seven mark.
12:56 And let's see if I can just find one
12:58 with a nice kind of tempo,
12:59 back and through.
13:04 And that surprisingly was quite a nice shot.
13:05 But the way I've did that was I experienced
13:08 both ends of the spectrum really slow, really fast.
13:11 And I settled for something that I can do
13:14 on time and time again on the golf course.
13:16 Take that to the driving range,
13:18 really experienced both ends and trap the middle
13:21 and enjoy some good shots.
13:23 (upbeat music)
13:25 So one of the drills that I love to do on the putting green,
13:29 just to make sure that my club face
13:31 is returning to the ball square,
13:34 is I like to use just on my Chrome Soft here,
13:36 I've got, I've actually got these three lines,
13:38 the triple track lines.
13:39 And I'm gonna use these as kind of a drill.
13:42 And very simply, what I'm gonna do
13:43 is I'm just gonna aim at a target.
13:46 And I'm gonna point those lines literally
13:48 directly at this target.
13:50 Now, when I take my putt,
13:52 and actually I'm gonna do this
13:53 when I'm gonna hit quite a few putts doing this.
13:55 If I start closing the club face down,
13:57 what we're gonna see is those lines
13:59 are gonna start wobbling
14:00 and the ball's gonna go off to the left.
14:02 If I do the opposite and the club face is returning open,
14:05 again, those lines are just gonna start
14:07 wobbling off to the right.
14:09 So what I wanna do is just, I've got a club of balls,
14:11 I'm just gonna hit a few towards the target.
14:13 And I just wanna see, can I get these lines
14:15 to just go end over end towards the hole?
14:18 So let me just have a little go,
14:21 strike one just to the target.
14:23 So I missed it on the right,
14:26 and I could really see the lines wobbling off
14:28 to the right when I did that.
14:30 So I know the club face didn't close down well enough,
14:34 it was open through.
14:35 So I'm gonna do that again,
14:37 line it straight up to a target,
14:39 set up behind, and I'm just gonna try now
14:42 and close the club face down slightly,
14:44 just so I can really see those lines going end over end.
14:48 It's a really good way
14:49 of using the triple track technology to help your putting.
14:52 So what we're looking for here is finding neutral posture.
15:01 Now one of the things that we see
15:02 with very good ball strikers
15:04 is they have this really nice flat back
15:07 that we call neutral posture,
15:09 where we get this nice hip hinge and a nice flat back.
15:13 Now one of the things that we see
15:14 with the higher handicappers
15:15 is there's two types of postures,
15:17 categories that we can kind of fall into.
15:19 One is what we call C posture,
15:21 which is kind of a lazy sort of position
15:23 where the shoulders kind of drop down
15:25 and we get this flat sort of C shape with our back.
15:28 The other one is S,
15:29 where actually the shoulders get pushed back quite a lot
15:32 and we get this really big arc in our back, right?
15:35 These two problems can really help
15:37 and unfortunately hurt your striking abilities.
15:40 But if we actually understand what they feel like,
15:43 we can actually do something
15:44 where we can find the middle ground
15:45 and we can trap that middle feeling
15:47 that we call neutral posture.
15:49 So what I want you to try and do is with a club,
15:51 literally put it on your shoulder line like this
15:54 and I want you to go into this S shape.
15:56 I want you to actually hinge your hips
15:58 and actually push your shoulders back
15:59 and really experience this S kind of position.
16:03 I then want you to go from here,
16:04 I want you to go to C.
16:06 So flatten your back, round your shoulders
16:08 and then very simply,
16:09 I just want you to find the middle ground.
16:11 I want you to find neutral.
16:13 Now you can see I've got this really nice flat back
16:15 and I'm able to rotate around my body so much smoother.
16:19 If you're still struggling with that,
16:20 another drill that I love
16:22 is literally with your seven iron, with a club,
16:24 just stand nice and tall
16:26 and I want you to just put it just below your belt line
16:29 and I want you to have this feeling
16:30 of actually just pushing the club back.
16:32 So if I stand from this angle,
16:34 it's nice and tall, club's out here
16:36 and I'm just gonna push with my hands back.
16:38 So bum goes out, back stays straight,
16:41 I'm just gonna let my hands dangle down
16:43 and I'm just gonna flex my legs.
16:45 Now I'm in a nice solid position
16:48 to rotate around myself
16:49 and hopefully hit some good shots.
16:51 So let's give it a go.
16:52 (upbeat music)
17:06 So if you're one of those golfers
17:10 that really struggles to make a good strike,
17:12 one of the things that could be happening
17:13 is you're decelerating the club throughout the downswing.
17:17 Now one of the things that I see
17:18 a lot of sort of high handicappers do,
17:21 they take the club so far back for such a short shot,
17:25 the brain is very good
17:26 at kind of making its own kind of calibration
17:29 and it kind of just goes,
17:30 well if I make a normal swing and I flush it,
17:32 I'm just gonna nut it over the back.
17:34 So what they do is they naturally start to slow down.
17:38 Unfortunately, what then happens is the club
17:40 is then decelerating to the point of when it strikes.
17:44 What really good chippers do is the complete opposite.
17:46 The club is actually accelerating past the ball
17:49 to the fastest point of the swing
17:52 is just past the golf ball.
17:54 So one of the really nice drills that I like to practice,
17:56 I've just got six balls here at the green
17:57 and all I'm gonna try and do
17:59 is take a nicer kind of shorter backswing back.
18:02 I'm gonna feel like I'm accelerating through
18:04 and I'm gonna do a slightly longer finish.
18:07 So it's not gonna be too far back,
18:09 nice and short, longer finish through.
18:12 The whole idea with this is the club
18:14 is accelerating towards the target.
18:17 Now one of the problems that some people do
18:18 when they try this for the first time
18:20 is actually they go really too short
18:22 and they sort of stab at it.
18:24 I still want you to keep your nice tempo,
18:26 your nice rhythm, let that club fall,
18:29 but always make sure you're accelerating
18:31 through to the target.
18:37 So when we're looking at stance width,
18:39 it's really important to understand
18:40 what we're trying to achieve with this.
18:42 For me, it's this whole understanding
18:44 that I'm trying to produce two things.
18:46 I'm trying to produce a nice stable base
18:48 and I'm trying to produce a body movement
18:50 that helps me turn away from the target and turn towards.
18:54 Now there is a fine line between having
18:57 too stable of a base, too wide of a stance,
18:59 it's gonna affect my turn.
19:02 So for me, the ideal sort of position, right,
19:05 if I had a driver in my hand like I've got here,
19:07 I wanna make sure that, this is the fastest club,
19:10 this is the club that I'm trying to produce
19:12 the most power with, so I need a really nice,
19:14 stable base, a stable platform.
19:17 So how I'm gonna start this is I always start
19:20 with my left foot first and if I'm gonna set up
19:23 with this ball inside this left heel,
19:26 I'm gonna then feel like I'm shoulder width apart,
19:29 there's a nice kind of baseline,
19:31 and I'm then gonna take one step back
19:34 to give me a nice, big, stable base
19:37 for me to produce a nice, powerful hit with.
19:40 Now when I take another club, like a seven iron,
19:43 I don't need as much balance,
19:44 I'm not trying to hit it as hard,
19:46 so all of a sudden, this stable base can come in,
19:49 I can actually produce, just, if I was shoulder width apart,
19:52 let's just go slightly wider, just to give myself
19:55 that nice, strong stability, 'cause I still wanna make sure
19:58 I can hold balance.
20:00 Now when I get like a wedge in my hand like this,
20:02 all of a sudden, we're talking about finesse,
20:05 we're not talking about power,
20:07 so I don't need that stable base.
20:09 I just need to produce something
20:10 that can keep me in balance, give myself a lot of control,
20:14 and allow my body to rotate backwards and forwards
20:18 and enjoy the shot that we're trying to produce.
20:20 So there we have it, guys,
20:21 I really hope you enjoyed that video,
20:23 I really hope it helps you with your consistency
20:26 out on the golf course.
20:27 If it's something that you liked,
20:28 please give this video a like,
20:30 and we look forward to seeing you on the next video.
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