Early Extension Drill

Posted on by jasonsutton

Noodle Drill

Here is a great drill that will help you if you tend to lose your spine angle in your downswing. This is when your hips thrust forward in your downswing and your upper body moves away from the ground.  This is a preview of my upcoming article in Golf Illustrated (Jan/Feb issue) on posting and rotating. This is a key move in the downswing that all the players on tour make where they rotate their hips and push back as their upper body maintains it’s angle throughout.  This is why some players appear to squat or go down (Tiger for example).  The Noodle drill is easy to set up: Use a broken shaft and a pool noodle. Place against your rear end as you set up to the ball.  Start with half swings until you can hit the ball solid without coming off the noodle. Then grow it up to a full motion and enjoy hitting the ball solid. I will definitely do a show on this in the future but I wanted to give you a taste of what I feel is a often overlooked part of the swing. Let me know how it goes if you try this drill

Guru

4 thoughts on “Early Extension Drill”

  1. Great drill, but only works if the player is flexible enough to maintain their posture. If the player has physical limitations, they will never be able to maintain posture, even using a great drill like this one.

    Like

    Reply

  2. Thanks for the comment Matt,
    You are right, 65 percent of amateur golfer suffer early extension as a swing flaw. This is why the great players work so hard on their strength and mobility. Make sure you check out my upcoming article in Golf Illustrated on posting and rotating. January/Feb. issue. Thanks and tell someone about the guru. Do you have any questions you want covered in my next show? Merry Christmas
    Jason

    Like

    Reply

  3. Guru: I wanted to add one more comment on top of Matt’s even though this is a two year old post. Dave Phillips (TPI co-founder) has been talking a lot lately about the fact that the pelvis is not shaped like a circle, rather it is elliptical. What this implies is that as you turn the hips, since they are wider than they are deep from front to back, the right hip should come back BEHIND the initial line and through impact the left hip should correspondingly turn BEHIND the initial line.

    So I would agree with Matt that physical limits could prevent doing the drill properly but also that the player should actually start a few inches away from the noodle or wall to allow room for the elliptically shaped pelvis to rotate properly.

    Here’s a very recent video that Dave and Lance Gill posted on this topic:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKnqad8S7Wk

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment