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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00:00Hello everyone, Ben Emerson here, head professional at San Martins Golf Club and golf monthly
00:11top 50 coach.
00:12Today I'm going to give you some of my top drills, I'm going to give you 10 consistency
00:16drills to help you tee to green, hit it further, help some more putts and enjoy your golf more.
00:23So let's get started.
00:29When we're looking at takeaway, one of the things that people get wrong so early doors
00:33in the swing is this initial takeaway point, that initial first forfeit of travel from
00:39the club.
00:40Unfortunately, it sends the club on the wrong path and actually really hurts the entire
00:45swing.
00:46If you've imagined, if you get it wrong in the first point, you are unfortunately going
00:51to have to make some compensations to actually get a good strike on the ball.
00:56One of the things that I love to do is get this understanding that what the club head
01:00has got to do in this first initial forfeit of travel.
01:05Now, along the way, people have been told that they need to take this feeling of almost
01:09like a one-piece takeaway where everything comes together.
01:14Unfortunately, the problems we see with that is the club gets really on the inside here
01:19and actually we get this, I've got nowhere to go, so I either got to lift my arms up
01:23or I'm going to take it straight over the top and get some really weak shots and ball
01:28strikes because of it.
01:29What I want to give you this understanding is this club has got to travel the furthest.
01:35The initial point is if I had an imaginary line or I've got an alignment stick here,
01:40I like to think of this straight down my tailbone as a bit of glass.
01:44The idea is the club head is going to move first and it's going to miss this glass.
01:49It's not going to smash in and break the glass.
01:51We are going to get a nice wrist hinge, we're going to take it up and over, and that's going
01:55to set our takeaway in a nice position.
01:58Now, if you want a good little checkpoint, actually, if you were to take the club to
02:03parallel with the ground, which is here, I want to just check a couple of things.
02:07First of all, is my right forearm looking down on my left?
02:11Not the opposite.
02:12If you can imagine, if I've whipped it in, smashed this glass, this forearm now, my right
02:16forearm is now under and the club face is now massively open.
02:20I want to actually see, is that right forearm looking down on the left and is the club head
02:24now matching my spine?
02:27If it's doing this, I know that I'm on a really good, I've set myself up on a really good
02:31start to the swing, and I can then just simply go up, come down, and enjoy some good shots.
02:42Here's a really nice drill to fix your over-the-top golf swing.
02:47Unfortunately, in the coaching band on the golf course, we see the over-the-top move
02:51just so much in golf, and it produces just some horrendous golf shots.
02:57What I want you to really understand is how sequencing works.
03:00What I mean by sequencing, which parts of the body move first at the very top of the
03:06backswing.
03:07As we finish this backswing, as my hands get to the very top, what the best players in
03:12the world all do is they actually start the swing with their lower body.
03:17These are our strongest muscles that we've got, and they make sure they fire first.
03:22The move looks like this.
03:23You get to the very top.
03:24You actually get this firing sequence of lower body, then upper body, lead arm, and then
03:30club.
03:31Unfortunately, when we see the higher handicappers, something very different happens.
03:35The upper body gets so dominant, it's the first thing to fire.
03:40It's firing this way.
03:41It's coming over the top, and then you're really trying to correct it in the downswing.
03:46What I want you to try and do is a little pause at the top drill, where very simply,
03:50you take the club to the top, and I want you to try and feel like you're going to stop
03:54there for just a fraction of a second, let gravity take over, and then you're going to
03:59have time to get the lower body firing.
04:02It always goes a little bit like this.
04:05Take it to the top.
04:06Let's do a couple of rehearsals where you let it drop, and then turn the lower body
04:10through.
04:11If I do one more just before I hit, nice rehearsal to the top, let it drop, lower body through,
04:19and then try and hit a shot.
04:29Give that a go, and I really hope that it fixes your over-the-top swing.
04:37One of the questions that we get asked quite a lot is, how do you hit a three-wood off
04:42a tee?
04:43Now, for me, one of the biggest problems that I find with people when they're set up like
04:47this is, unfortunately, the tee is far too high to start with, and they try and mimic
04:52what they do with the driver.
04:54You end up getting this move where you actually get your weight too far onto your back foot.
05:00You try and get a nice big sweeping swing, but unfortunately, what happens is the weight
05:05stays on the back foot far too much, and you end up trying to hit up on it too much.
05:11Your spine angle changes, and just so many problems happen with this.
05:15What I want you to try and do is actually understand that you don't need a teed-up high
05:19to do this.
05:20I want you to feel like you're really trying to hit it off more of a perfect lie.
05:24Tee the ball down slightly.
05:26Give yourself a nice perfect lie to start with, because now, I want you to really try
05:32and feel that we are not trying to hit up onto it like we are with a driver.
05:36There is a nice descending blow to the back of the ball to get a three-way to go up into
05:42the air.
05:43If I take a set up here and take a shot, I want to make sure that the ball position is
05:49not like it is with a driver.
05:51It's not on our left heel.
05:53It's two golf balls in, and I feel my weight is a lot more 50-50.
05:58For some people, they can really benefit having more of the weight on their front foot to
06:01start with, but far more important than that, if you are going to go onto your back foot,
06:07you have got to get your weight off.
06:09You've got to get energy going towards the target.
06:12I want you to really focus on the finish, finish to the pose, and actually feel like
06:17you're going to hold a little bit of balance right at the end.
06:20Let's have a go.
06:29Give that a go, and I really hope it helps you three words off the tee.
06:37If you're one of those golfers that really struggles with releasing the club, actually
06:42how you strike the ball when you're doing these short chip shots, I've got a great little
06:47drill just to give you the understanding of how the club passes the body.
06:51Now, what we see, we see two types of poor release patterns when you've got a player
06:56two types of poor release patterns when we're talking about these short shots.
07:00The first one is we've been told at some point that we don't want to use too much wrist.
07:05What we tend to do is get very wooden, very stiff with our whole upper body and our arms,
07:12and we actually try and then hold the club off.
07:15This is what we call a block release.
07:17The opposite can happen when we get too wristy, and actually we get this what we call this
07:24open early release pattern here where we actually return the club the wrong way.
07:31The drill looks like this.
07:32What I want you to do is take your left hand off and just place it onto your lead thigh.
07:37I just want you to grip the club as you would normally with your trail arm, and I want you
07:41to feel like it's really nice and soft.
07:44You're just going to practice making some swings where the club comes up, going to let
07:48it just naturally drop, let gravity do its thing, and actually just get used to brushing
07:52the ground.
07:53You can see the club is now releasing past my body.
07:56It's exposing the bounce.
07:58If I do it on the ball just as a practice, it's here, let it drop, and let it naturally
08:04release.
08:05If I then take another normal shot, put my hands back on, a nice way to just transition
08:10from this is then just with your lead arm, just try and do exactly the same thing, but
08:14let's just grip this nice and lightly to start with.
08:18Just do a couple of practice swings, let the club drop, let it go past your body, and then
08:23let's just try and do one onto the ball.
08:28That's a great way to give you the understanding of how the club releases past your body, stops
08:33you thinning it, stops you hitting all those terrible shots, and start enjoying some good
08:37chips.
08:39One of the questions that we get asked quite a lot is, how do you compress an iron?
08:48This is a really interesting one because for me, when I see a lot of players working on
08:52their swing, most of the time they're working on either the backswing at different positions
08:57or this downswing move.
08:59The only thing the ball really understands is impact.
09:03For me, it's one of the first areas that I ever go to with a player, just to give them
09:08the real understanding of what impact looks like.
09:11Unfortunately, we have been told a bit of a lie in how we've been told to set up.
09:16If you think of a normal set up position with the ball position in the middle, most people
09:22have their hips very level and they have their hands pointing straight up, but impact doesn't
09:28look like that.
09:29Actually, when we come to impact, some of the best players in the world, they do something
09:32very different.
09:33Their hips have cleared, their chest has cleared, and their hands are just in front of the golf
09:38ball.
09:39Now, if you think about it, when we're trying to get the ball to go high, for most people
09:43when they're starting, that takes a lot of thought process to get that kind of move because
09:50it doesn't make much sense to try and hit down on something for the ball to go up.
09:55What they end up doing is they go onto their back foot and they really try and scoop this
10:01ball into the air.
10:02It gets the opposite effect of this nice compressed look that we are looking for.
10:07Unfortunately, what happens is it's twofold.
10:09You lose so much distance because of it because the club is now not in this position like
10:14it's been built for.
10:15It's either back how it started or it's been de-lofted completely to this, so you get a
10:20lot of distance, strikes can be all over the place.
10:24One of the nice drills that I like to do is actually do a drill where we actually start
10:28at impact and work back.
10:30What I want you to do is take your normal setup position and I want you to push your
10:34hands forward.
10:35I want you to rotate your hips just about a couple of feet in front of the ball and
10:39do the same thing with your chest.
10:41I want you to do some really slow kind of awareness swings where you just take the club
10:46back and try and return back to that position.
10:49Do this rehearsal a couple of times and just get so used to feeling what impact looks like.
10:56Hopefully, we put that all together and we get some nice compressed shots.
11:09I really hope that helps.
11:16One of the questions that I get asked quite a lot is how fast or slow should I swing a
11:21golf club to get the most out of my swing.
11:24This is a really difficult question to answer because unfortunately, not everyone swings
11:29at the same speed.
11:30It's very important that I don't just say you need to swing it at five if we had a scale
11:35of one to 10, 10 being the fastest because that would be wrong because not everyone plays
11:39their best golf at five.
11:42What I like to try and do is I've got three balls set up.
11:45This is just a nice little drill to try and find your own tempo.
11:49The idea with is I want you to think of the first ball as we're going to swing this as
11:54slow as we can.
11:55This is what we call awareness speed swings.
11:58Kind of as slow as I can the whole way back and through just to give myself a guide of
12:03what slow is.
12:04If I just hit one and I'm thinking this is only going to go kind of 20 yards, just really
12:10slow back and through and I just about carry the water just to give myself a gauge.
12:18Now I want the second ball to be as fast as I can.
12:20This is 10 on the scale.
12:22Literally like blink and you miss it type swings.
12:24I really want you to hit one.
12:25I need you to feel what the fastest one feels like.
12:29If I was to set up and let's try and crack one down there.
12:36That was far too fast for me.
12:38Now all of a sudden I felt what slow is and I felt what fast is.
12:43Now I want to try and find something that I can settle with that feels natural.
12:48I'm going to try.
12:49I actually quite like to have a fastest sort of swing.
12:52I'm aiming for the sort of six and seven mark.
12:55Let's see if I can just find one with a nice kind of tempo back and through.
13:03That surprisingly was quite a nice shot.
13:05But the way I've did that was I experienced both ends of the spectrum really slow, really fast.
13:11And I settled for something that I can do on time and time again on the golf course.
13:16Take that to the driving range, really experience both ends and trap the middle and enjoy some good shots.
13:27So one of the drills that I love to do on the passing green just to make sure that my club face is returning to the ball square.
13:34Is I like to use just on my Chrome Soft here.
13:36I've got I've actually got these three lines of triple track lines and I'm going to use these as kind of a drill.
13:42And very simply what I'm going to do is I'm going to aim at a target.
13:46And I'm going to point those lines literally directly at this target.
13:50Now when I take my putt and actually I'm going to do this when I'm going to hit quite a few putts doing this.
13:55If I start closing the club face down, what we're going to see is those lines are going to start wobbling and the ball is going to go off to the left.
14:02If I do the opposite and the club face is returning open.
14:05Again, those lines are just going to start wobbling off to the right.
14:09So what I want to do is just I've got a club of balls.
14:11I'm just going to hit a few towards the target.
14:13And I just want to see can I get these lines to just go end over end towards the hole.
14:18So let me just have a little go.
14:21Striking just to the target.
14:25So I missed it on the right and I could really see the lines wobbling off to the right when I did that.
14:30So I know the club face didn't close down well enough.
14:34It was open through.
14:35So I'm going to do that again.
14:36Line it straight up to a target.
14:39Set up behind.
14:40And I'm just going to try now and close the club face down slightly.
14:44Just so I can really see those lines going end over end.
14:48It's a really good way of using the triple track technology to help your putting.
14:52So what we're looking for here is finding neutral posture.
14:55Now, one of the things that we see with very good ball strikers is they have this really nice flat back that we call neutral posture.
15:03Where we get this nice hip hinge and a nice flat back.
15:07Now, one of the things that we see with the higher handicappers is there's two types of postures that categories that we can kind of fall into.
15:13One is what we call C posture, which is kind of like a straight back.
15:18One is what we call C posture, which is kind of a lazy sort of position where the shoulders kind of drop down and we get this flat sort of C shape with our back.
15:28The other one is S, where actually the shoulders get pushed back quite a lot and we get this really big arc in our back, right?
15:35These two problems can really help and unfortunately hurt your striking abilities.
15:40But if we actually understand what they feel like, we can actually do something where we can find the middle ground and we can trap that middle feeling that we call neutral posture.
15:48So what I want you to try and do is with a club, literally put it on your shoulder line like this and I want you to go into this S shape.
15:56I want you to actually hinge your hips and actually push your shoulders back and really experience this S kind of position.
16:02I then want you to go from here, I want you to go to C.
16:06So flatten your back, round your shoulders and then very simply, I just want you to find the middle ground.
16:11I want you to find neutral.
16:13Now you can see I've got this really nice flat back and I'm able to rotate around my body so much smoother.
16:19If you're still struggling with that, another drill that I love is literally with your 7-iron, with a club, just stand nice and tall and I want you to just put it just below your belt line.
16:29And I want you to have this feeling of actually just pushing the club back.
16:32So if I stand from this angle, it's nice and tall, club's out here and I'm just going to push with my hands back.
16:38So bum goes out, back stays straight, I'm just going to let my hands dangle down and I'm just going to flex my legs.
16:45Now I'm in a nice solid position to rotate around myself and hopefully hit some good shots.
16:51So let's give it a go.
17:02So if you are one of those golfers that really struggles to make a good strike, one of the things that could be happening is you're decelerating the club throughout the downswing.
17:17Now one of the things that I see a lot of sort of high handicappers do, they take the club so far back for such a short shot, the brain is very good at kind of making its own kind of calibration.
17:29And it kind of just goes, well, if I make a normal swing and I flush it, I'm just going to nut it over the back.
17:34So what they do is they naturally start to slow down.
17:38Unfortunately, what then happens is the club is then decelerating to the point of when it strikes.
17:44What really good chippers do is the complete opposite.
17:47The club is actually accelerating past the ball to the fastest point of the swing is just past the golf ball.
17:54One of the really nice drills that I like to practice, I've just got six balls here at the green, and all I'm going to try and do is take a nicer kind of shorter backswing back.
18:02I'm going to feel like I'm accelerating through and do a slightly longer finish.
18:07So it's not going to be too far back, nice and short, longer finish through.
18:12The whole idea with this is the club is accelerating towards the target.
18:17And one of the problems that some people do when they try this for the first time is actually they go really too short and they sort of stab at it.
18:24I still want you to keep your nice tempo, your nice rhythm, let that club fall, but always make sure you're accelerating through to the target.
18:37So when we're looking at stance width, it's really important to understand what we're trying to achieve with this.
18:42For me, it's this whole understanding that I'm trying to produce two things.
18:46I'm trying to produce a nice stable base, and I'm trying to produce a body movement that helps me turn away from the target and turn towards.
18:53Now, there is a fine line between having too stable of a base, too wide of a stance, it's going to affect my turn.
19:01So for me, the ideal sort of position, right, if I had a driver in my hand like I've got here, I want to make sure that this is the fastest club.
19:10This is the club that I'm trying to produce the most power with.
19:13So I need a really nice stable base, a stable platform.
19:17So how I'm going to start this is I always start with my left foot first.
19:21And if I'm going to set up with this ball inside this left heel, I'm going to then feel like I'm shoulder width apart.
19:29There's a nice kind of baseline.
19:31And I'm then going to take one step back to give me a nice, big, stable base for me to produce a nice, powerful hit with.
19:40Now, when I take another club, like a 7-iron, I don't need as much balance.
19:44I'm not trying to hit it as hard.
19:46So all of a sudden, this stable base can come in.
19:49I can actually produce just, if I was shoulder width apart, let's just go slightly wider just to give myself that nice stability,
19:57because I still want to make sure I can hold balance.
20:00Now, when I get like a wedge in my hand like this, all of a sudden, we're talking about finesse.
20:05We're not talking about power.
20:07So I don't need that stable base.
20:09I just need to produce something that can keep me in balance, give myself a lot of control,
20:14and allow my body to rotate backwards and forwards and enjoy the shot that we're trying to produce.
20:20So there we have it, guys.
20:21I really hope you enjoyed that video.
20:23I really hope it helps you with your consistency out on the golf course.
20:27If it's something that you liked, please give this video a like.
20:30And we look forward to seeing you on the next video.
20:39.