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, in fact there's no wrist
01:40hinge at all, your club's going to hinge from somewhere and it generally tends to be here.
01:46You over swing and you lose power. So from this lovely L-shaped position that you have
01:52here, all that really is required after that is a wind up to the top of the bag swing.
01:57Because the wrists are set properly here, they're likely to unhinge at the right point,
02:02giving you a bit of a crack of the whip through the ball and giving you tons and tons of power
02:07and fizz, especially in your iron play.
02:10A lot of ladies that struggle with this wrist hinge generally tend to have the club in the
02:18wrong position in the hand. So it's worth going and getting a bit of a lesson just on
02:21your fundamentals to check whether the source of the problem is from holding the club in
02:25the wrong place. A lot of the time they tend to hold it more in the palm and it needs to
02:29be in the fingers. This frees the hand up and creates that lovely hinge and then of
02:34course that lovely whoosh of power through the ball. If you're hinging the wrist well,
02:40the golf game will feel a lot easier. It's efficient power. It's a way of actually creating
02:46a good bit of fizz through the ball and getting a good bit of distance without busting it down
02:51there. We've all played against those players where you think, golly, they don't know how
02:56they're going to hit it very far. They step up with a little bit of a hockey swing and smack
03:00it out of sight with a swing that goes from here to here. And that is in fact a kind of
03:05drill that you could practice on the range. Just little seven irons off a tee going from
03:10L through to L like so. And what you'll find there is you start to get a bit more height
03:17with your irons and a little bit more distance as well. So if you've got a decent set of
03:23the wrists, your swing is more efficient and a more efficient swing means that you're going
03:28to last longer out on the golf course, hitting more decent shots. And who doesn't want to hit
03:32lots of decent shots during a round of golf? If you are somebody who gets a bit tired midway
03:38through the round, then the likelihood is that you're not hinging these wrists and you're doing
03:42what we talked about with the pond at the beginning, which is throwing yourself at
03:45that golf ball to generate some form of power. So what I'd recommend, go and get a lesson,
03:51get them to check your grip. If the grip seems a good place, just soften it off a little bit,
03:56because if you're squeezing the life out of this club, you're not going to be able to get
04:00that wrist hinge happening. So softer hands, L to L, and you'll start seeing those iron shots
04:07really get a decent strike on them.