In this video, Neil Tappin is joined by PGA Pro Alex Elliott to discuss how to improve your impact position for longer straighter shots.
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00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappan here from Golf Monthly and welcome to the range here at West Hill Golf
00:04Club and this video in which we're going to take a look at everything you need to know about the
00:09impact position. No doubt about it this is the bit of the golf swing that everyone needs to get right
00:14if they want to play better so we're going to focus exactly on what the right impact position
00:19should look like. Now the tips and advice in this video comes courtesy of Alex Elliott, PGA Pro,
00:23he's also got a YouTube channel so head over to his YouTube channel and find a link in it below
00:27if you're interested in Alex's tips but let's get started now looking at everything you need to know
00:32about the impact position. So we're going to treat this as a little bit of a step-by-step
00:38guide to building the perfect impact position. Now it's fair to say there is no such thing as a
00:43position impact position because it's all a flowing movement in golf swing but it's still
00:47a good idea to have these thoughts in mind because this is what you're looking to try to recreate.
00:51Is that fair Alex? Exactly yeah and I wanted to think about this video as like if you were
00:55updating your profile picture you want to have a snapshot at impact this is what we'd look for.
00:59Okay fine so the first point then in our step-by-step guide is about hips and shoulders
01:03what do people need to know? So let's just have a look at what we've got set up on the
01:07floor here Neil so I've got my feet line and my shoulder line where I would be nicely addressed
01:12yeah and then I've got another blue alignment stick on the floor here where we'd aim to sort
01:15of get our feeling of our hips to be open okay so I do this in two stages firstly get a golf
01:21across your chest everything's matching this red to start with solid address position nice and
01:28athletic and then what we're going to try and feel is we're going to move our hips on the way back
01:31and our hips on the way through just focusing on first off keeping our shoulders level with this
01:38red so it's almost like exaggerating what we want okay fine but your hips hopefully you can see that
01:42through the camera the hips are opening up and should be replicating or near enough quite close
01:47replicating the other the blue alignment stick that's on the ground exactly then the next stage
01:51of this would just be to make a little bit of a flowing movement back through so at impact what
01:56we're looking for is our hips to be a little bit more open than our shoulders yes yeah so you can
02:01see they're nice and dynamic and if I was to sort of put a lot of force into the ground here you
02:06could really see I'll be dynamic and I'll be into this position where my hip line is a little bit
02:11more open than my shoulder line my right shoulder is sort of down towards the ground yeah it's a
02:15really good picture to have in your mind because it's a technical key that will add speed and power
02:20and also accuracy to your game if you can get that aspect of the impact position right
02:26okay so the next one is about weight transfer really important Alex what are the sort of
02:32faults and what position should people be in through impact so let's start off with a simple
02:36fault so if we lead on from that first point if we don't open up our hips we tend to see our weight
02:42be sort of more 50 50 yeah or potentially on that back foot yes back thin shots or a really high
02:49launch with all our irons yes if we think about what we said on that last point where do we want
02:54our hips to be more here well look where my weight's going yeah it's going pretty much into
03:00my lead side here so at impact then Alex should your right heel be off the ground for right handers
03:08it should be slightly off the ground slight off the ground and I would feel like my weight would
03:11be sort of moving into this instead and how much if you were putting percentages on it how much
03:16weight would be on the lead foot I would say let's do a rough guide of 70 percent so imagine
03:21we started sort of 50 50 back in we would see a lot sort of imagine we had a heat pressure map
03:29under us here we'd see sort of a lot sort of around our heel to the middle of our foot and a little
03:33bit sort of towards the instep and toe of our right yeah and one point I'd make here is that
03:38your upper body is still nicely over the ball yes it's something that's really important isn't it
03:42definitely and that leads us again like I said before from that first point to the second point
03:46of the hips being more open than the upper half so we sort of got our middle of our sternum on
03:51the golf ball impact not both significantly ahead yeah so you're not 90 weight on the front foot
03:57this way it's this move yeah the weight transfer such an important part of the golf swing hopefully
04:04that gives you an idea about how it should work so for the next part we're talking about
04:09wrist position and shaft lean what do people need to know so I think there's probably a bit of a
04:14misconception here I think a lot of golfers just want to get their hands ahead and if if you look
04:18at this and you know if I put my hands ahead here yeah my face points significantly out to the right
04:23and when we're trying to get our hands ahead we will probably see some shots that are quite skinny
04:28low and shooting off to the right for most golfers not what we're after no probably worse than what
04:33you're trying to get in the first place yeah so I've got nothing flashy here just a piece of wood
04:39really we've got to understand is how do we get the hands ahead but keep the club face pointing to
04:43target square right got it so I dress that piece of wood and I want you just to not put any hands
04:48on this golf club to begin with and just realize what direction this club's got to work in it's not
04:54out this way it works very much like this yeah okay so if we then just put our glove hand on
05:00how would we keep that leading edge nice and square to that piece of wood well it wouldn't
05:04work like this we'd have to have an element of this motion got it okay okay so we just felt this
05:12a few reps then we went and placed our right hand on a few reps and now you can really see with this
05:19bendy shaft on my golf club how much force I can put through this rather than no force
05:28lots of force yeah and if you can get that position where your hands are slightly ahead
05:33of the ball and you're squaring the face that's the dream combo isn't it that's when you hit those
05:38shots that sound amazing that have got easy power involved exactly and that strike goes from sort of
05:43I guess around the bottom to right in the middle right in the middle so we become a lot more
05:48efficient okay Alex can you take the wood away yeah and can you hit a shot for us you're gonna
05:52hit a shot with that club isn't that throw me right in the deep end here I will try you don't
05:57have to you can hit one with you no no we'll go with that I just want to say one more thing on
05:59this I think this is really important so if we sort of bring the first two points into this and
06:03we use this as sort of like our blueprint almost of everything that we're looking for up to this
06:08point well let's go in order hips open now where's my weight hands ahead yeah so if we wanted to make
06:16some little half back in and through this is a great way of bringing everything back to square
06:23feeling that you're looking for okay go on I've been wanting to hit one
06:28so nice and smooth trying to really feel it
06:34beautiful
06:43very good hopefully you get a feel there for exactly where your hands
06:46should be through impact where your wrists need to be to get that shaft lean for a pure contact
06:51so for the last part of this video we're going to combine the last two points because there is a
06:55difference between how you approach impact with your irons and how you approach it with your
07:00driver isn't it Alex let's start with the irons yeah and let's have a concept with an iron we're
07:04looking to get our bottom of the arc happening just past the goal okay yes down on the ball yeah
07:10so you get that nice ball first a little bit of turf just slightly after uh what are you thinking
07:17to help you do that so I think we can think about this in two ways really one understanding the
07:21concept so really realizing that my club's going to travel from high to low through the ball okay
07:27but what I try and feel is that my chest and sternum are more on top of the golf ball you
07:32mentioned this in sort of that that second part of the video here rather than with a driver where
07:38we'll talk about in a second I want to be a little bit more behind okay hit one for us so we can see
07:43what it looks like so I would really just create a few practice swings and I would encourage a lot
07:46of golfers to do this just inside the ball halfway back halfway through really trying to feel as
07:51though from the golf ball forwards I'm making that little bit of a bruising divot yeah and into the
07:57ball a little waggle Justin Thomas-esque and then we can hit it away beautiful and you can see there
08:07the divot has come just after where the ball was positioned exactly what Alex is looking for
08:13but that's no good with driver well that's no good I'm sure it would be okay but you would be
08:16getting the most from your driver if you if you approached it in exactly the same way would you
08:20no and with driver we're looking for maximum distance aren't we we're looking to hit this
08:24golf ball as far as we can so I think the simplest way to do this now is change our setup a little
08:30bit okay so we move our ball position a little bit further forward hit later in our arc more
08:38ascending rather than descending yes so ball position inside that left heel and I like to
08:46simply do this so it's a simple routine driver shaft sort of matching my zip tilt so it points
08:52sort of towards my left toe down and in now I'm in a position where okay if I returned back here
08:59my bottom of the arc would be organized upwards and before the ball before the ball rather than
09:04with an iron and more sort of level shoulders yeah that shoulder tilt hopefully you can see
09:09it on the camera there is is is very um clear to see and it's it might only be a small technical
09:15point but it's really important isn't it for this massive we set up to hit the shot how we want to
09:20for example you wouldn't set up to a flop shot like you would a chip and run so we've got to
09:24make sure we're doing the right things with driver that's an all a totally different video
09:27yes right gonna hit one for us again hopefully we can get it on slow-mo you can see exactly what
09:33Alex looks like through the ball and it's high launch it's low spin it seems like it's in the
09:51air for absolutely ages because Alex has just changed that impact position just fractionally
09:56but not doing anything particularly technical really the golf swing itself is the same isn't
10:01and that's how we make golf simple we can't be thinking about too many things in the golf course
10:05use your setup change sets up to suit the shot you're about to hit and swing away so there you
10:11have it that's our look at everything you need to know about the perfect impact position and
10:16hopefully some ideas there about how it differs just slightly between the irons and the driver
10:20as well if you do have any questions please do post them below we'll get back to as many of you
10:24as we can but that's it for now from West Hill thanks for watching we'll see you next time