Understanding What Wrist Hinge In The Golf Swing Is
In this video, PGA Professional Katie Dawkins explains how to use wrist hinge more effectively in the golf swing.
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00:00Hi, I'm Katie Dawkins. I am an advanced PGA professional and I'm here at West Hill Golf
00:09Club today to talk to you about wrist hinge in the golf swing. Wrist hinge is where we
00:15get power from. Imagine, for example, that you had a flat pebble. I'm going to skim
00:19it across a beautiful mill pond like I used to do as a kid. I'm going to first of all
00:24hinge my wrist like this. I'm then going to wind everything up and the last thing I'm
00:28going to do is unhinge my wrist to get that lovely bouncing across the water. If we didn't
00:35hinge our wrist to skim that stone, you imagine that. Imagine a flat pebble skimming a stone.
00:41I'm going to have to hurl myself into the drink to actually gain any sort of power at
00:45all and the pebble's probably just going to go plop. So wrist hinge in the golf swing
00:51is where power is created and club head speed. So what actually happens in the golf swing?
00:58Where do the wrists actually hinge from? The club moves away, club and arms move away together
01:04and the wrist will start hinging, almost giving you a thumbs up feeling at this point here.
01:09You can see I've created a lovely L shape between my club shaft and my arm and what's
01:15going to happen from there, depending on my own mobility, is I'm just going to wind myself
01:19up to the top of my bag swing. Some people wind up a bit like John Rahm, some people
01:24wind up a lot like Rory McIlroy. How much you wind up, it's not a competition. The most
01:29important thing when it comes to power in the golf swing is that wrist set and for ladies
01:35especially, if there's no wrist hinge early on in the golf swing and in fact there's no
01:40wrist hinge at all, your club's going to hinge from somewhere and it generally tends to be
01:45here. You over swing and you lose power. So from this lovely L shaped position that you have here,
01:52all that really is required after that is a wind up to the top of the back swing. Because
01:58the wrists are set properly here, they're likely to unhinge at the right point, giving you a bit
02:03of a crack of the whip through the ball and giving you tons and tons of power and fizz,
02:07especially in your iron play. A lot of ladies that struggle with this wrist hinge generally
02:17tend to have the club in the wrong position in the hand. So it's worth going and getting
02:20a bit of a lesson just on your fundamentals to check whether the source of the problem
02:24is from holding the club in the wrong place. A lot of the time they tend to hold it more
02:28in the palm and it needs to be in the fingers. This frees the hand up and creates that lovely
02:33hinge. And then of course, that lovely whoosh of power through the ball. If you're hinging
02:39the wrist well, the golf game will feel a lot easier. It's efficient power. It's a way
02:45of actually creating a good bit of fizz through the ball and getting a good bit of distance
02:50without busting it down there. We've all played against those players where you think, golly,
02:55they don't know how they're going to hit it very far. They step up with a little bit of
02:58a hockey swing and smack it out of sight with a swing that goes from here to here.
03:03And that is in fact, a kind of drill that you could practice on the range. Just little
03:07seven irons off a tee going from L through to L like so. And what you'll find there is
03:16you'd start to get a bit more height with your irons and a little bit more distance
03:20as well. So if you've got a decent set of the wrists, your swing is more efficient and
03:26a more efficient swing means that you're going to last longer out on the golf course,
03:30hitting more decent shots. And who doesn't want to hit lots of decent shots during a
03:34round of golf? If you are somebody who gets a bit tired midway through the round, then
03:39the likelihood is that you're not hinging these wrists and you're doing what we talked
03:42about with the pond at the beginning, which is throwing yourself at that golf ball to
03:46generate some form of power. So what I'd recommend, go and get a lesson, get them to check your
03:52grip. If the grip seems a good place, just soften it off a little bit because if you're
03:57squeezing the life out of this club, you're not going to be able to get that wrist hinge
04:01happening. So softer hands, L to L, and you'll start seeing those iron shots really get a
04:09decent strike on them.