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 Top 50
00:11Coach. Today 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.
00:22So let's get started. So when we're looking at takeaway, one of the things that people get wrong
00:32so early doors in the swing is this initial takeaway point, that initial first kind of
00:38four foot of travel from the club. And unfortunately it sends the club on the wrong path and actually
00:44really hurts the entire swing. If you've imagined, if you get it wrong in the first kind of point,
00:50you are unfortunately going to have to make some compensations to actually get a good strike on
00:55the ball. So one of the things that I love to kind of do is get this understanding that what the club
01:00head has got to do in this first initial four foot of kind of travel. Now along the way, people have
01:07been told that they need to take this feeling of almost like a one piece kind of takeaway where
01:12everything kind of comes together. Unfortunately, the problems we see with that is the club gets
01:17really on the inside here and actually we get this kind of, I've got nowhere to go. So I either got
01:22to lift my arms up or I'm going to take it straight over the top and get some really weak shots and ball
01:28strikes because of it. What I want to kind of have you this, give you this understanding is this club
01:33has got to travel the furthest. So at the initial point is if I had an imaginary kind of line or I've got
01:39an alignment stick here, I like to think of this straight down my tailbone as a bit of glass.
01:44And the idea is the club head is going to move first and it's going to miss this glass. It's not
01:49going to smash in and break the glass. We are going to get a nice wrist hinge. We're going to take it
01:54up and over and that's going to set our takeaway in a nice position. Now, if you want a good little
02:00checkpoint, actually, if you were to take the club to parallel with the ground, which is here,
02:05I want to just check a couple of things. First of all, is my right forearm looking down on my left?
02:10So not the opposite. If you can imagine if I've whipped it in, smashed this glass,
02:14this forearm now, my right forearm is now under and the club face is now massively open. I want to
02:20actually see is that right forearm looking down on the left and is the club head now matching my spine?
02:26If it's doing this, I know that I'm on a really good, I've set myself up on a really good start to
02:32the 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 get to fix your over the top golf swing. Unfortunately, in the
02:48coaching bed on the golf course, we see the over the top move just so much in golf and it produces
02:54just some horrendous golf shots. What I want you to really understand is how sequencing works. So when
03:00I mean by sequencing, which parts of the body move first at the very top of the backswing. So as we
03:07finish this backswing, as my hands get to the very top, what the best players in the world all do is
03:14they actually start the swing with their lower body. These are our strongest muscles that we've got and
03:19they make sure they fire first. So the move looks like this, you get to the very top, you actually get
03:25this firing sequence of lower body, then upper body, lead arm and then club. Unfortunately, when we see
03:32the higher handicappers, something very different happens. And the upper body gets so dominant, it's
03:37the first thing to fire, you get is firing this way, it's coming over the top, and then you're really
03:43trying to correct it in the downswing. So what I want you to try and do is a little pause of the top drill, where
03:49very simply, you 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 have time to get
04:00the lower body firing. So it always goes a little bit like this, take it to the top, just do a couple
04:06of rehearsals where you let it drop, and then turn the lower body through. If I do one more just before I
04:13hit, nice rehearsal to the top, let it drop, lower body through, and then try and hit a shot.
04:29Give that a go, and I really hope that it fixes your over the top swing.
04:32So one of the questions that we get asked quite a lot is, how do you hit a three-wood
04:42off a tee? Now 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 what they do
04:53with the driver. So you end up getting this kind of move where you actually get your weight too far
04:58onto your back foot. You try and get a nice big sweeping kind of swing, but unfortunately,
05:03what happens is the weight stays on the back foot far too much, and you end up trying to hit
05:09up on it too much. 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 to tee it up high to do this. I
05:19want you to feel like you're really trying to hit it off more of a perfect lie. So tee the ball down
05:25slightly, give yourself a nice perfect lie to start with, because now I want you to really try
05:31and feel that we are not trying to hit up onto it like we are with a driver. There is a nice kind of
05:37descending blow to the back of the ball to get a three-wood to go up into the air. So if I take a
05:44set up here and take a shot, I want to make sure that the ball position is not like it is with a driver.
05:51So it's not on our left heel, it's two golf balls in, and I feel my weight is a lot more 50-50. For
05:58some people, they can really benefit having more of the weight on their front foot to start with.
06:02But far more important than that, if you are going to go onto your back foot, you've got to get your
06:08weight off. You've got to get energy going towards the target. So I want you to really focus on the
06:13finish, finish the pose, and actually feel like you're going to hold a little bit of balance
06:19right at the end. So let's have a go.
06:31Give that a go and I really hope it helps you three-woods off the tee.
06:40So if you're one of those golfers that really struggles with releasing the club, actually how
06:45how you strike the ball when you're doing these kind of short chip shots, I've got a great little
06:50drill just to give you the understanding of how the club passes the body. Now what we see, we see two
06:55types of poor release patterns when we're talking about these kind of short shots. The first one is
07:01we've been told at some point that we don't want to use too much wrist. So what we tend to do is get
07:07very wooden, very kind of stiff with our whole upper body and our arms, and we actually try and then hold
07:14the club off. This is what we call a block release. The opposite can happen when we get too kind of
07:19wristy and actually we get this kind of what we call this open sort of early kind of release pattern
07:26here where we actually return the club at the wrong kind of the wrong way. So 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 and I just want
07:37you to grip the club as you would normally with your with your trail arm and I want you to feel like
07:41it's really nice and soft and you're just going to practice making some swings where the club comes
07:47up going to let it just naturally drop let gravity do its thing and actually just get used to brushing
07:52the ground. You can see the club is now releasing past my body it's exposing the bounce. If I do it on
07:59the ball just as a practice it's here let it drop and let it naturally kind of release. If I then take
08:05another normal shot put my hands back on a nice way to just transition from this is then just with your
08:11lead arm just try and do exactly the same thing but let's just grip this nice and lightly to start
08:17with just do a couple of practice swings that the club drop that it pass go past your body and then
08:23let's just try and do one onto the ball. That's a great way to give you the understanding of how to
08:31the club releases past your body stops you thinning it stops you hitting all those terrible shots
08:36and start enjoying some good chips.
08:43So one of the questions that we get asked quite a lot is how do you compress
08:47an iron? Now this is a really interesting one because for me when I see a lot of players working
08:51on their swing most of the time they're working on either the backswing at different kind of
08:56positions or this kind of downswing move. The only thing the ball really understands is impact so for me
09:03it's one of the first areas that I ever go to with a player of just to give them the real understanding
09:09of what impact looks like because unfortunately we have been told a bit of a lie in how we've been
09:15told to set up. If you think of a normal kind of setup position with the ball position in the middle
09:21most people have their hips very level and they have their hands pointing straight up but impact doesn't
09:27look like that. Actually when we come to impact some of the best players in the world they do something very
09:32different. Their hips have cleared their chest is cleared and their hands are just in front of the
09:38golf ball. Now 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 that's a real that takes a lot of sort of thought process to get that kind
09:49of move because it doesn't make much sense to try and hit down on something for the ball to go up.
09:55So what they end up doing is they go onto their back foot and they really try and scoop this ball into the air.
10:02It gets the opposite effect of this nice compressed look that we are looking for. Unfortunately what
10:07happens is it's twofold. You lose so much distance because of it because the club is now not in this
10:14position like it's been built for. It's either back how it started or it's been de-lofted completely to
10:19this. So you get a lot of distance, strikes can be all over the place. So one of the nice drills that
10:25I like to do is actually do a drill where we actually start at impact and work back. So what I want
10:30you to do is take your normal setup position and I want you to push your hands forward. I want you to
10:35rotate your hips just about a couple of feet in front of the ball and do the same thing with your
10:40chest. I want you to do some really slow kind of awareness swings where you just take the club back
10:46and try and return back to that position. Do this rehearsal a couple of times and just get so used to
10:53feeling what impact looks like. So hopefully we put that all together and we get some nice compressed shots.
11:09I really hope that helps.
11:10So one of the questions that I get asked quite a lot is how fast or slow should I swing a golf club to
11:21get the most out of my swing? Now this is a really difficult question to answer because unfortunately
11:27not everyone swings at the same speed. So it's very important that I just say, I don't just say you need
11:33to swing it at five if we had a scale of one to ten, ten being the fastest because that would be wrong
11:38because not everyone plays their best golf at five. So what I like to try and do is I've got a
11:43three ball set up is this is just a nice little drill to try and find your own tempo. So the idea
11:49with is I want you to think of the first ball as we're going to swing this as slow as we can. This is
11:55what we call awareness speed swing. So kind of as slow as I can the whole way back and through just to
12:01give myself a guide of what slow is. So if I just hit one and I'm thinking this is only going to go kind of
12:0820 yards just really slow back and through and I just about carry the water just to give myself
12:17a gauge. Now I want the second ball to be as fast as I can. So this is 10 on the scale. So literally
12:22like blink and you miss it type swings but I really want you to hit one and I need you to feel what the
12:27fastest one feels like. So if I was to set up and let's try and crack one down there.
12:36That was far too fast for me. But now all of a sudden I can actually I felt what slow is and I
12:42felt what fast is. Now I want to try and find something that I can settle with that feels natural.
12:48Right. So I'm going to try. I actually quite like to have a fastest sort of swing. So I'm aiming for the
12:53sort of six and seven mark and let's see if I can just find one with a nice kind of tempo
13:02back and through. And that surprisingly was quite a nice shot. But the way I did that was I experienced
13:07both ends of the spectrum really slow really fast and I settled for something that I can do on time
13:14and time again on the golf course. Take that to the driving range really experience both ends
13:19and trap the middle and enjoy some good shots.
13:27So one of the drills that I love to do on the putting green just to make sure that my club face is
13:31returning to the ball square is I like to use just on my ChromeSoft here I've got I've actually got
13:38these three lines the triple track lines and I'm going to use these as kind of a drill and very
13:42simply what I'm going to do is I'm just going to aim at a target and I'm going to point those lines
13:47literally directly at this target. Now when I take my putt and actually I'm going to do this one I'm
13:53going to hit quite a few putts doing this. If I start closing the club face down what we're going to see
13:58is those lines are going to start wobbling and the ball's going to go off to the left. If I do
14:02the opposite and the club face is returning open again that those lines are just going to start
14:07wobbling off to the right. So what I want to do is just I've got a cup of balls I'm just going to hit
14:12a few towards the target and I just want to see can I get these lines to just go end over end towards
14:17the hole. So let me just have a little go strike one just to the target.
14:22So I missed it on the right and I could really see the lines wobbling off to the right when I did that
14:29so I know the club face didn't close down well enough it was open through so I'm going to do that
14:36again line it straight up to a target set up behind and I'm just going to try now and close the club face
14:43down slightly just so I can really see those lines going end over end. It's a really good way of using
14:50the triple track technology to help you putting.
14:58So what we're looking for here is finding neutral posture. Now one of the things that we see with
15:02very good ball strikers is they have this really nice flat back that we call neutral posture where
15:09we get this nice hip hinge and a nice flat back. Now one of the things that we see with the higher
15:14handicappers is there's two types of postures that categories that we can kind of fall into. One
15:19is what we call c posture which is kind of a lazy sort of position where the shoulders kind of drop
15:24down and we get this flat sort of c shape with our back. The other one is s where actually the shoulders
15:30get pushed back quite a lot and we get this really big arc in our back right these two problems can
15:36really help and unfortunately hurts your your striking abilities but if we actually understand what
15:42they feel like we can actually do something where we can find the middle ground and we can trap that
15:46middle feeling that we call neutral posture. So what I want you to try and do is with a club
15:51literally put it on your shoulder line like this and I want you to go into this s shape I want you to
15:56actually hinge your hips and actually push your shoulders back and really experience this s kind
16:02of position. I then want you to go from here I want you to go to c so flatten your back round your
16:08shoulders and then very simply I just want you to find the middle ground I 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
16:18smoother. If you're still struggling with that another drill that I love is literally with your
16:23seven iron with the club just stand nice and tall and I want you to just put it just below your belt
16:28line and I want you to have this feeling of actually just pushing the club back so if I stand from this
16:33angle it's nice and tall clubs out here and I'm just going to push with my hands back so bum goes out
16:39back 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 so let's
16:51give it a go so if you're 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. Now one of the
17:17things that I see a lot of sort of higher handicappers do they take the club so far back for
17:23such a short shot the brain is very good at kind of making its own kind of calibration and it kind
17:29of 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 will that what they do is they naturally start to slow down unfortunately what then happens
17:39is the club is then decelerating to the point of when it strikes what really good chippers do is
17:45the complete opposite the club is actually accelerating past the ball to the fastest
17:50point of the swing is just past the golf ball so one of the really nice drills that I like to practice
17:55I've just got six balls here at the green and all I'm going to try and do is take a nicer kind of
18:00shorter backswing back I'm going to feel like I'm accelerating through I'm going to do a slightly
18:05longer finish so it's not going to be too far back nice and short longer finish through the whole idea
18:13with this is the club is accelerating towards the target now one of the problems that some
18:18people do when they try this for the first time is actually they go really too short and they sort
18:23of stab at it I still want you to keep your nice tempo your nice rhythm let that club fall but always
18:29make sure you're accelerating through to the target so when we're looking at stance width it's really
18:39important to understand what we're trying to achieve with this for me it's this whole understanding that
18:44I'm trying to produce two things I'm trying to produce a nice stable base and I'm trying to produce
18:49a body movement that helps me turn away from the target and turn towards now there is a fine line
18:55between having too stable of a base too wide of a stance it's going to affect my turn so for me the
19:03ideal sort of position right if I had a driver in my hand like I've got here I want to make sure that
19:09I'm this is the fastest club this is the club that I'm trying to produce the most power with so I need
19:13a really nice stable base a stable platform so how I'm going to start this is I always start with my
19:20left foot first and if I'm going to set up with this ball inside this left heel I'm going to then feel
19:27like I'm shoulder width the path is a nice kind of baseline and I'm then going to take one step back
19:34to give me a nice big stable base for me to produce a nice powerful hit with now when I take another
19:40club like a seven iron I don't need as much balance I'm not trying to hit it as hard so all of a sudden
19:47this stable base can come in I can actually produce just if I was shoulder width apart let's just go
19:53slightly wider just to give myself that nice stability because I still want to make sure I
19:58can hold balance now when I get like a wedge in my hand like this all of a sudden we're talking about
20:04finesse we're not talking about power so I don't need that stable base I just need to produce something
20:10that can keep me in balance give myself a lot of control and allow my body to rotate backwards and
20:17forwards and enjoy the shot that we're trying to produce so there we have it guys I really hope you
20:22enjoyed that video I really hope it helps you with your consistency out on the golf course if it's
20:27something that you liked please give this video a like and we look forward to seeing you on the next
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