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.
00:29So when we're looking at takeaway, one of the things that people get wrong so early
00:33doors in the swing is this initial takeaway point, that initial first forfeit of travel
00:39from the club and unfortunately it sends the club on the wrong path and actually really
00:44hurts the entire swing.
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.
00:56So one of the things that I love to do is get this understanding that what the club
01:00head has 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 like
01:09a 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've 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 kind of give you this understanding is this club has got to travel the furthest.
01:35So the initial point is if I had an imaginary kind of line or I've got an alignment stick
01:40here, I 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.
01:59Now if you want a good little checkpoint, actually if you were to take the club to parallel
02:03with 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?
02:11So not the opposite if you can imagine if I've whipped it in, smashed this glass, this
02:15forearm now, my right forearm 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
02:25now 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.
02:42So here'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.
03:00So what I mean by sequencing, which parts of the body move first at the very top of
03:06the backswing.
03:07So as we finish this backswing, as my hands get to the very top, what the best players
03:12in the 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.
03:22So the move looks like this, you get to the very top, you actually get this firing sequence
03:26of lower body, then upper body, lead arm and then club.
03:31Unfortunately, when we see the higher handicappers, something very different happens and the upper
03:36body gets so dominant, it's the first thing to fire.
03:39You get this firing this way, it's coming over the top and then you're really trying
03:43to correct it in the downswing.
03:45So what I want you to try and do is a little pause at the top drill, where very simply
03:49you 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.
04:02So it always goes a little bit like this, take it to the top, just do a couple of rehearsals
04:07where you let it drop and then turn the lower body through.
04:10If 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.
04:38So one of the questions that we get asked quite a lot is, how do you hit a three wood
04:42off a 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.
04:54So you end up getting this kind of move where you actually get your weight too far onto
04:58your back foot, you try and get a nice big sweeping kind of swing but unfortunately what
05:04happens is the weight stays on the back foot far too much and you end up trying to hit
05:09up on it too much and your 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.
05:24So tee the ball down slightly, give yourself a nice perfect lie to start with because now
05:30I want you to really try and feel that we are not trying to hit up onto it like we are
05:35with a driver.
05:36There is a nice kind of descending blow to the back of the ball to get a three wood to
05:41go up into the air.
05:43So if I take a set up here and take a shot, I want to make sure that the ball position
05:49is not like it is with a driver.
05:51So it's not on our left heel, it's two golf balls in so and I feel my weight is a lot
05:56more 50-50.
05:57For 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, you've got to get energy going towards the target.
06:12So I want you to really focus on the finish, finish the pose and actually feel like you're
06:17going to hold a little bit of balance right at the end.
06:20So let's have a go.
06:32Give that a go and I really hope it helps you three woods off the tee.
06:40So if you are one of those golfers that really struggles with releasing the club, actually
06:45how you strike the ball when you are doing these kind of short chip shots, I've got a
06:49great little drill just to give you the understanding of how the club passes the body.
06:54Now what we see, we see two types of poor release patterns when we're talking about
06:59these kind of short shots.
07:00The first one is we've been told at some point that we don't want to use too much wrist.
07:05So what we tend to do is get very wooden, very kind of stiff with our whole upper body
07:11and our arms and 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 kind of wristy and actually we get this kind of
07:22what we call this open sort of early kind of release pattern here where we actually
07:27return the club at the wrong kind of the wrong way.
07:31So the 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
07:36and I just want you to grip the club as you would normally with your trail arm and I want
07:41you to feel like it's really nice and soft and you're just going to practice making some
07:45swings where the club comes up, going to let it just naturally drop, let gravity do
07:49its thing and actually just get used to brushing the ground.
07:53You can see the club is now releasing past my body, it'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
08:03kind of release.
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.
08:29That'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.
08:43One 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
08:51their swing, most of the time they're working on either the backswing at different kind
08:56of positions or this kind of 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 of just to give them
09:08the real understanding of what impact looks like because unfortunately, we have been told
09:13a bit of a lie in how we've been told to set up.
09:16If you think of a normal kind of set up position with the ball position in the middle, most
09:21people have their hips very level and they have their hands pointing straight up but
09:27impact doesn't look like that.
09:28Actually, 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.
09:40If you think about it, when we're trying to get the ball to go high, for most people when
09:44they're starting, that takes a lot of thought process to get that kind of move because it
09:50doesn'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.
10:20You get a lot 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 set up 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.
10:55Hopefully, 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
11:53slow as we can.
11:55This is what we call awareness speed swings, so kind of as slow as I can the whole way
11:59back and through just to give myself a guide of what slow is.
12:04If I just hit one and I'm thinking this is only going to go kind of 20 yards, just really
12:09slow 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, so literally like blink and you miss it type swings, but I really
12:24want 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, that was far too fast for
12:38me.
12:39Now all of a sudden, I felt what slow is and I felt what fast is.
12:44Now I want to try and find something that I can settle with that feels natural.
12:50I actually quite like to have a fastest sort of swing, so I'm aiming for the sort of six
12:54and seven mark.
12:56Let's see if I can just find one with a nice kind of tempo back and through.
13:04That surprisingly was quite a nice shot, but the way I did that was I experienced both
13:08ends of the spectrum really slow, really fast, and I settled for something that I can
13:13do on time and time again on the golf course.
13:17Take that to the driving range, really experience both ends and trap the middle and enjoy some
13:21good shots.
13:27One of the drills that I love to do on the putting green, just to make sure that my club
13:31face is returning to the ball square, is I like to use just on my Chrome Soft here, I've
13:37actually got these three lines, the triple track lines, and I'm going to use these as
13:41kind of a drill.
13:42Very simply, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to aim at a target and I'm going to
13:46point those lines literally directly at this target.
13:50Now when I take my putt, and actually I'm going to do this one, I'm going to hit quite
13:53a few putts doing this.
13:55If I start closing the club face down, what we're going to see is those lines are going
13:59to start wobbling and the ball's going to go off to the left.
14:02If I do the opposite and the club face is returning open, again, those lines are just
14:07going to start wobbling off to the right.
14:09What I want to do is just, I've got a club of balls, I'm just going to hit a few towards
14:12the target.
14:13I just want to see, can I get these lines to just go end over end towards the hole?
14:19Let me just have a little go, strike one just to the target.
14:25I missed it on the right and I could really see the lines wobbling off to the right when
14:29I did that.
14:30I know the club face didn't close down well enough.
14:34It was open through.
14:35I'm going to do that again, line it straight up to a target, set up behind, and I'm just
14:41going to try now and close the club face down slightly just so I can really see those lines
14:47going end over end.
14:48It's a really good way of using the triple check technology to help your putting.
14:58What we're looking for here is finding neutral posture.
15:01One of the things that we see with very good ball strikers is they have this really nice
15:05flat back that we call neutral posture, where we get this nice hip hinge and a nice flat
15:12back.
15:13One of the things that we see with the higher handicappers is there's two types of postures
15:17that categories that we can fall into.
15:19One is what we call C posture, which is a lazy position where the shoulders drop down
15:25and we get this flat 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
15:32really big arc in our back.
15:35These two problems can really help and unfortunately hurt your striking abilities.
15:41If we actually understand what they feel like, we can actually do something where we can
15:44find the middle ground and we can trap that middle feeling that we call neutral posture.
15:49What I want you to try and do is with a club, literally put it on your shoulder line like
15:54this, 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
16:00experience this S position.
16:03I then want you to go from here, I want you to go to C. Flatten your back, round your
16:08shoulders 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
16:17body so much smoother.
16:19If you're still struggling with that, another drill that I love is literally with your 7-iron
16:23with a club, just stand nice and tall and I want you to just put it just below your
16:28belt line and 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
16:37to push with my hands back.
16:38So bum goes out, back stays straight.
16:41I'm just going to let my hands dangle down and I'm just going to flex my legs.
16:46Now I'm in a nice solid position to rotate around myself and hopefully hit some good
16:50shots.
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
17:12things 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 higher handicappers do, they take the club
17:22so far back for such a short shot, the brain is very good at making its own calibration
17:29and it kind of just goes, well, if I make a normal swing and I flush it, I'm just going
17:33to 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
17:43it strikes.
17:44What really good chippers do is the complete opposite.
17:46The club is actually accelerating past the ball to the fastest point of the swing is
17:52just past the golf ball.
17:54So one of the really nice drills that I like to practice, I've just got six balls here
17:57at the green, and all I'm going to try and do is take a nicer kind of shorter backswing
18:01back.
18:02I'm going to feel like I'm accelerating through, I'm going to 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.
18:17Now one of the problems that some people do when they try this for the first time is actually
18:21they 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
18:29always 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
18:41trying 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
18:50that helps me turn away from the target and turn towards.
18:55Now there is a fine line between having too stable of a base, too wide of a stance, it's
18:59going to affect my turn.
19:02So for me, the ideal position, if I had a driver in my hand like I've got here, I want
19:07to make sure that this is the fastest club, this is the club that I'm trying to produce
19:11the 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, and if I'm
19:21going to set up with this ball inside this left heel, I'm going to then feel like I'm
19:28shoulder width apart, there's a nice kind of baseline, and I'm then going to take one
19:32step 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, if I was shoulder width apart, let's just go slightly wider
19:54just to give myself that nice stability because I still want to make sure I can hold balance.
20:00Now when I get 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, and we look forward to
20:30seeing you on the next video.