- The Hands At Impact
Do your hands look like this at impact or does your lead wrist bend or break down? The most important alignment in the golf swing is when the shaft of the club lines up with your lead arm. This should happen just past impact. Many of you that release the club early, this happens way before you strike the ball. Without a flat lead wrist and a bent right wrist at the moment of separation, you can’t possibly compress the ball and get the most out of your shots.
What I have found is some of the biggest reasons for this scooping problem is that 1)you are trying to help the ball into the air or 2)the right hand is pushing too hard (or throwing) and overtakes the left hand. If you are a right-handed player and your left hand is your weak one, you will have a hard time supporting this forcing of the right hand through the strike zone. I did a video a few months ago about how to release the club where I unveiled what I call my release program and “Hands and Arms University”. This program includes three drills to help train and strengthen your lead or weaker hand. If you can learn to rotate your forearm (pronate) and get the back of your lead wrist to flatten out, you can break this habit of scooping. It takes a lot of patience (which a lot of students don’t have) to make small swings and do drills with your off-hand, but this is the only way to learn a new skill. impact is probably the hardest area of the swing to change because it happens in a split second. Here is the cliff notes on my 3 steps to impact. If you do this and give it time, you will improve. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Check out my video from my archives and best of luck with your flat left wrist. There will be more posts about this and some videos because it is so important and everyone thinks they have the magic bullet or pill. Nothing can replace hard work and remember……..You can’t fool golf
Check back tomorrow for the Sony Open recap
Guru
The Golf Guru Show 
This is an excellent video that focuses on a problem that I am plagued with…a scooping motion. If I understand your fix correctly, it seems like the key to avoiding the scoop is to rotate the left arm. If the left arm does not rotate and continue to move forward (in other words if the left arm stops moving forward and also does not rotate), then the right hand takes over and a scoop occurs. If possible, I would love to see a couple of more still photos…showing what the left arm/left wrist looks like after impact at say 5 – 4 – 3 o’clock (3 being hip high on the follow through) to understand the full motion. It would seem that the left thumb, at hip high on the follow through, should be pointing at the target? If the top of the left wrist was pointing down and thumb pointing left at this point it would seem this would cause a hook? Any clarification would be appreciated! Thanks Guru!
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Morepars,
that is correct. If you don’t have any rotation in your left forearm, you will break down and also get a chicken wing with no extension. the left palm facing the ground for a full release doen not affect the ball flight because the ball is gone. It is just the momentum of the club rotating. If you think you release and it hooks, you are probably flipping the wrist and shutting the face. The one other important thing that I didn’t mention (due to time), is the left hip and shoulder must continue to rotate through the shot or you will break down. As for the vid on your site, the man talked alot about body rotation which is correct, but it doesn’t always fix the hands. You must train the hands and arma as well with small swings and left arm drills. Body and arms must stay connected and work together. I have some post impact pics that I will put up. I will get deeper into this as I go forward. thanks so much for the comment and support
Guru
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