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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00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappan here from Golf Monthly and welcome to the range here at West Hill Golf
00:04Club and this video in which we're going to take a look at everything you need to know about the
00:09impact position. No doubt about it this is the bit of the golf swing that everyone needs to get right
00:14if they want to play better so we're going to focus exactly on what the right impact position
00:19should look like. Now the tips and advice in this video comes courtesy of Alex Elliott, PGA Pro,
00:23he's also got a YouTube channel so head over to his YouTube channel and find a link in it below
00:27if you're interested in Alex's tips but let's get started now looking at everything you need to know
00:32about the impact position. So we're going to treat this as a little bit of a step-by-step
00:38guide to building the perfect impact position. Now it's fair to say there is no such thing as a
00:43position, impact position, because it's all a flowing movement in the golf swing but it's
00:47still a good idea to have these thoughts in mind because this is what you're looking to try to
00:50recreate. Is that fair Alex? Exactly yeah and I wanted to think about this video as like if you
00:54were updating your profile picture you want to have a snapshot at impact this is what we'd look
00:59for. Okay fine so the first point then in our step-by-step guide is about hips and shoulders
01:03what do people need to know? So let's just have a look at what we've got set up on the floor here
01:07Neil, so I've got my feet line and my shoulder line where I would be nicely addressed yeah and
01:12then I've got another blue alignment stick on the floor here where we'd aim to sort of get our
01:16feeling of our hips to be open. Okay. So I do this in two stages firstly get a golf club across your chest
01:23everything's matching this red to start with. Solid address position. Nice and athletic and
01:28then what we're going to try and feel is we're going to move our hips on the way back and our
01:32hips on the way through just focusing on first off keeping our shoulders level with this red so it's
01:38almost like exaggerating what we want. Okay fine but your hips hopefully you can see that through
01:42the camera the hips are opening up and should be replicating or near enough quite close replicating
01:47the other the blue alignment stick that's on the ground. Exactly then the next stage to this would
01:51just be to make a little bit of a flowing movement back through so at impact what we're looking for
01:57is our hips to be a little bit more open than our shoulders. Yes yeah. So you can see they're nice
02:02and dynamic and if I was to sort of put a lot of force into the ground here you could really see
02:07I would be dynamic and I'd be into this position where my hip line is a little bit more open than
02:12my shoulder line my right shoulder is sort of down towards the ground. Yeah it's a really good
02:16picture to have in your mind because it's a technical key that will add speed and power
02:20and also accuracy to your game if you can get that aspect of the impact position right.
02:26Okay so the next one is about weight transfer really important. Alex what are the sort of
02:32faults and what position should people be in through impact? So let's start off with a simple
02:36fault so if we lead on from that first point if we don't open up our hips we tend to see our weight
02:42be sort of more 50-50 yeah or potentially on that back foot yes back thin shots or a really high
02:49launch with all our irons yes if we think about what we said on that last point where do we want
02:54our hips to be more here well look where my weight's going yeah it's going pretty much into
03:00my lead side here. So at impact then Alex should your right heel be off the ground for right handers
03:08it should be slightly off the ground? Slightly off the ground and I would feel like my weight would
03:11be sort of moving into this instep. And how much if you were putting percentages on it how much
03:16weight would be on the lead foot? I would say let's do a rough guide of 70% so imagine we started
03:22sort of 50-50 back in we would see a lot sort of imagine we had a heat pressure map under us here
03:29we'd see sort of a lot sort of around our heel to the middle of our foot and a little bit sort of
03:33towards the instep and toe of our right. Yeah and one point I'd make here is that your upper body
03:38is still nicely over the ball yes it's something that's really important isn't it? Definitely and
03:43that leads us again like I said before from that first point to the second point of the
03:47hips being more open than the upper half so we've sort of got our middle of our sternum on the
03:51golf ball impact not both significantly ahead. Yeah so you're not 90% weight on the front foot.
03:57This way it's this move. Yeah the weight transfer is such an important part of the golf swing
04:04hopefully that gives you an idea about how it should work. So for the next part we're talking
04:08about wrist position and shaft lean. What do people need to know? So I think there's probably
04:13a bit of a misconception here I think a lot of golfers just want to get the hands ahead and if
04:17you look at this and you know if I put my hands ahead here yeah my face points significantly out
04:23to the right and when we're trying to get our hands ahead we will probably see some shots that
04:27are quite skinny low and shooting off to the right for most golfers. Not what we're after.
04:32No probably worse than what you're trying to get in the first place. Yeah. So I've got nothing
04:37flashy here just a piece of wood. Really we've got to understand is how do we get the hands ahead
04:41but keep the club face pointing to target square. Right got it. So I dress that piece of wood and I
04:47want you just to not put any hands on this golf club to begin with and just realize what direction
04:51this club's got to work in. It's not out this way it works very much like this. Yeah. Okay so if we
04:58just put our glove hand on how would we keep that leading edge nice and square to that piece of
05:03wood well it wouldn't work like this we'd have to have an element of this motion. Got it okay. Okay
05:10so we just felt this a few reps then we went and placed our right hand on a few reps and now you
05:18can really see with this bendy shaft on my golf club how much force I can put through this rather
05:24than no force. Lots of force. Yeah and if you can get that position where your hands are slightly
05:32ahead of the ball and you're squaring the face that's the dream combo isn't it that's when you
05:37hit those shots that sound amazing that have got easy power involved. Exactly and that strike goes
05:43from sort of I guess around the bottom to right in the middle right in the middle so we become a
05:47lot more efficient. Okay Alex can you take the wood away. Yeah. And can you hit a shot for us you're
05:52going to hit a shot with that club isn't that a throw me right in the deep end here I will try.
05:56You don't have to you can hit one with you. No no we'll go with that I just want to say one more thing on this
05:59I think this is really important so if we sort of bring the first two points into this and we use
06:04this as sort of like our blueprint almost of everything that we're looking for up to this point
06:09well let's go in order hips open now where's my weight hands ahead yeah so if we wanted to make
06:16some little half back in and through this is a great way of bringing everything back to square.
06:23Feeling that you're looking for okay go on I've been wanting you to hit one with this club.
06:26So nice and smooth trying to really feel it.
06:34Beautiful.
06:43Very good hopefully you get a feel there for exactly where your hands should be through
06:47impact where your wrists need to be to get that shaft lean for a pure contact.
06:52So for the last part of this video we're going to combine the last two points because there is a
06:56difference between how you approach impact with your irons and how you approach it with your
07:00driver isn't it Alex let's start with the irons. Yeah and let's have a concept with an iron we're
07:05looking to get our bottom of the arc happening just past the golf ball okay yes hitting down on the ball
07:10yeah so you get that nice ball first a little bit of turf just slightly after what are you
07:16thinking to help you do that? So I think we can think about this in two ways really one understanding
07:21the concept so really realizing that my club's going to travel from high to low through the ball
07:26okay but what I try and feel is that my chest and sternum are more on top of the golf ball you
07:32mentioned this in sort of that that second part of the video here rather than with a driver where
07:38we'll talk about in a second I want to be a little bit more behind. Okay hit one for us so we can see
07:43what it looks like. So I would really just create a few practice swings and I would encourage a lot
07:46of golfers to do this just inside the ball halfway back halfway through really trying to feel as
07:51though from the golf ball forwards I'm making that little bit of a bruising divot yeah and into the
07:57ball a little waggle just in Thomas-esque and then we can hit it away. Beautiful and you can see there
08:07the divot has come just after where the ball was positioned exactly what Alex is looking for
08:13but that's no good with driver well I say it's no good I'm sure it would be okay but you would
08:16be getting the most from your driver if you approached it in exactly the same way would you?
08:20No and with driver we're looking for maximum distance aren't we we're looking to hit this
08:24golf ball as far as we can so I think the simplest way to do this Neil is change our setup a little
08:30bit okay so we move our ball position a little bit further forward later in our arc more ascending
08:39rather than descending yes so ball position inside that left heel and I like to simply do this so
08:47it's a simple routine driver shaft sort of matching my zip tilt so it points sort of towards my left
08:53toe down and in now I'm in a position where okay if I returned back here my bottom of the arc would
09:00be organized upwards and before the ball before the ball rather than with an iron and more sort
09:05of level shoulders yeah that shoulder tilt hopefully you can see it on the camera there is
09:11is is very clear to see and it might only be a small technical point but it's really important
09:16isn't it for this? Massive we set up to hit the shot how we want to for example you wouldn't set
09:21up to a flop shot like you would a chip and run so we've got to make sure we're doing the right
09:24things with driver that's an all a totally different video from Alex right go on hit one for us again
09:29hopefully we can get it on slow-mo you can see exactly what Alex looks like through the ball
09:36so
09:47and it's high launch it's low spin it seems like it's in the air for absolutely ages because Alex
09:53has just changed that impact position just fractionally but not doing anything particularly
09:58technical really the golf swing itself is the same isn't it and that's how we make golf simple we
10:03can't be thinking about too many things in the golf course use your setup change set up to suit
10:07the shot you're about to hit and swing away so there you have it that's our look at everything
10:13you need to know about the perfect impact position and hopefully some ideas there about how it
10:17differs just slightly between the irons and the driver as well if you do have any questions please
10:22do post them below we'll get back to as many of you as we can but that's it for now from West Hill
10:26thanks for watching we'll see you next time