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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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00:05Hello 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
00:54the ball. So one of the things that I love to kind of do is get this understanding that what
00:59the club
01:00head has got to do in this first initial four foot of kind of travel. Now along the way, people
01:07have
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
01:16really on the inside here and actually we get this kind of, I've got nowhere to go. So I either
01:22got
01:22to lift my arms up or I'm going to take it straight over the top and get some really weak
01:26shots 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
01:38or I've got
01:39an alignment stick here, I like to think of this straight down my tailbone as a bit of glass.
01:43And the idea is the club head is going to move first and it's going to miss this glass. It's
01:49not
01:49going to smash in and break the glass. We are going to get a nice wrist hinge, we're going to
01:53take it
01:53up and over and that's going to set our takeaway in a nice position. Now if you want a good
02:00little
02:00checkpoint, actually if you were to take the club to parallel with the ground which is here, I want to
02:06just check a couple of things. First of all, is my right forearm looking down on my left? So not
02:11the
02:11opposite, if 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. I want to actually see is that
02:21right forearm looking down on the left and is the club head now matching my spine? If it's doing this,
02:28I know that I'm on a really good, I've set myself up on a really good start to the swing
02:32and I can then
02:33just simply go up, come down and enjoy some good shots. So here's a really nice drill to get to
02:44fix
02:45your over the top golf swing. Unfortunately in the coaching bed on the golf course, we see the over
02:50the top move just so much in golf and it produces just some horrendous golf shots. What I want you
02:57to
02:57really understand is how sequencing works. So when I mean by sequencing, which parts of the body move
03:03first at the very top of the backswing. So as we finish this backswing, as my hands get to the
03:10very
03:10top, what the best players in 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. So the move looks like
03:22this. You get to the very top, you actually get this firing sequence of lower body, then upper body,
03:29lead arm and then club. Unfortunately, when we see the higher handicappers, something very different
03:34happens and the upper body gets so dominant, it's the first thing to fire. You get, it's firing this
03:40way, it's coming over the top and then you're really trying to correct it in the downswing. So what I
03:46want
03:46you to try and do is a little pause of the top drill, where very simply you take the club
03:50to the top
03:52and I want you to try and feel like you're going to stop there for just a fraction of a
03:56second,
03:56let gravity take over and then you're going to have time to get the lower body firing. So it always
04:02goes a little bit like this. Take it to the top, just do a couple of rehearsals where you let
04:08it drop
04:08and then turn the lower body through. If I do one more just before I hit, nice rehearsal to the
04:15top,
04:15let 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.
04:38So 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
04:47like
04:47this is unfortunately the tee is far too high to start with and they try and mimic what they do
04:53with
04:53the driver. So you end up getting this kind of move where you actually get your weight too far onto
04:58your
04:58back foot. You try and get a nice big sweeping kind of 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
05:11changes and just so many problems happen with this. What I want you to try and do is actually
05:17understand that you don't need to tee it up high to do this. I want you to feel like you're
05:21really
05:21trying to hit it off more of a perfect lie. So tee the ball down slightly, give yourself a nice
05:27perfect
05:28lie to start with because now I want you to really try and feel that we are not trying to
05:33hit up onto it
05:35like we are with a driver. There is a nice kind of descending blow to the back of the ball
05:40to get a
05:41three would to go up into the air. So if I take a set up here and take a shot,
05:46I want to make sure
05:47that the ball position is not like it is with a driver. So it's not on our left heel, it's
05:53two golf
05:53balls in so and I feel my weight is a lot more 50 50. For some people they can really
05:59benefit having
06:00more of their weight on their front foot to start with. But far more important than that, if you are
06:05going to go onto your back foot, you've got to get your weight off, you've got to get energy going
06:10towards the target. So I want you to really focus on the finish, finish the pose and actually feel
06:16like you're going to hold a little bit of balance right at the end. So let's have a go.
06:31Give that a go and I really hope it helps you three words 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 to just to give you the understanding of how the club passes the body. Now what we see, we
06:55see
06:55two types of poor release patterns when when we're talking about these kind of short shots. The first
07:01one is we've been told at some point that we don't want to use too much wrist. So what we
07:06tend to do
07:06is get very wooden, very kind of stiff with our whole upper body and our arms and we actually try
07:13and
07:13then hold the club off. This is what we call a block release. The opposite can happen when we get
07:18too
07:19kind of wristy and actually we get this kind of what we call this open sort of early kind of
07:25release
07:25pattern here where we actually return the club at the wrong kind of the wrong way. So the drill looks
07:32like this. What I want you to do is take your left hand off and just place it onto your
07:35lead
07:36thigh and I just want you to grip the club as you would normally with your with your trail arm
07:40and
07:41I want you to feel like it's really nice and soft and you're just going to practice making some swings
07:46where the club comes up going to let it just naturally drop let gravity do its thing and
07:51actually just get used to brushing the ground. You can see the club is now releasing past my body it's
07:57exposing the bounce. If I do it on the ball just as a practice it's here let it drop and
08:03let it
08:03naturally kind of release. If I then take another normal shot put my hands back on a nice way to
08:09just transition from this is then just with your lead arm just try and do exactly the same thing
08:14but let's just grip this nice and lightly to start with just do a couple of practice swings let the
08:19club
08:20drop that it pass go past your body and then let's just try and do one onto the ball.
08:28That's a great way to give you the understanding of how to the club releases
08:32past 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
08:46an 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 positions
08:57or this kind of downswing move. The only thing the ball really understands is impact so for me it's
09:04one of the first areas that I ever go to with a player of just to give them the real
09:08understanding
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
09:20middle
09:20most people have their hips very level and they have their hands pointing straight up but impact
09:27doesn't look like that actually when we come to impact some of the best players in the world
09:31they do something very different their hips have cleared their chest is cleared and their hands are
09:37just in front of the golf ball. Now if you think about it when we're trying to get the ball
09:42to go
09:42high for most people when they're starting that that's a real that takes a lot of sort of thought
09:48process to get that kind of move because it doesn't make much sense to try and hit down on something
09:53for the ball to go up so what they end up doing is they go onto their back foot and
09:59they really try
10:00and scoop this ball into the air it gets the opposite effect of this nice compressed look that
10:05we are looking for. Unfortunately what happens is it's twofold you lose so much distance because of it
10:11because the club is now not in this position like it's being built for it's either back how it started
10:17or it's being de-lofted completely to this so you get a lot of distance strikes can be all over
10:23the place
10:23so one of the nice drills that i like to do is actually do a drill we actually start at
10:28impact
10:28and work back so what i want you to do is take your normal setup position and i want you
10:33to push
10:34your hands forward i want you to rotate your hips just about a couple of feet in front of the
10:38ball
10:39and do the same thing with your chest i want you to do some really slow kind of awareness swings
10:44where
10:45you just take the club back and try and return back to that position do this rehearsal a couple of
10:51times and just get so used to feeling what impact looks like so hopefully we put that all together
10:57and we get some nice compressed shots
11:09i really hope that helps
11:15so one of the questions that i get asked quite a lot is how fast or slow should i swing
11:20a golf club to get
11:21the most out of my swing and 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 you i don't just say
11:32you
11:33need to swing it at five if we had a scale of one to ten ten being the fastest because
11:37that would be
11:38wrong because not everyone plays their best golf at five so what i like to try and do is i've
11:43got a
11:43three ball set up is this is just a nice little drill to try and find your own tempo so
11:49the idea
11:49with is i want you to think of the first ball as we're going to swing this as slow as
11:54we can this is
11:55what we call awareness speed swing so kind of as slow as i can the whole way back and through
12:00just to
12:01give myself a guide of what slow is so if i just hit one and i'm thinking this is only
12:06going to go kind of
12:0820 yards just really slow back and through and i just about carry the water just to give myself
12:16a gauge now i want the second ball to be as fast as i can so this is 10 on
12:21the scale so literally like
12:22blink and you miss it type swings but i really want you to hit one i need i need you
12:26to feel what the
12:27fastest one feels like so if i was to set up and let's try and crack one down there
12:36oh that was far too fast for me but now all of a sudden i can actually i've felt what
12:41slow is
12:41and i felt what fast is now i want to try and find something that i can settle with that
12:47feels
12:47natural right so i'm going to try i actually quite like to have a fastest sort of swing so i'm
12:53aiming
12:54for the sort of six and seven mark and let's see if i can just find one with a nice
12:58kind of tempo
13:01back 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
13:31club face
13:31is returning to the ball square is i like to use just on my chrome soft here i've got
13:37i've actually got these three lines the triple track lines and i'm going to use these as
13:41as kind of a drill and very simply what i'm going to do is i'm just going to aim at
13:44a target
13:46and i'm going to point those lines literally directly at this target now when i take my putt
13:51and actually i'm going to do this one 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
13:59wobbling and the ball's going to go off to the left if i do the opposite and the club face
14:04is returning
14:04open again that those lines are just going to start wobbling off to the right so what i want to
14:10do is
14:10just i've got a cup of balls i'm just going to hit a few towards the target and i just
14:14want to see
14:14can i get these lines to just go end over end towards the hole so let me just have a
14:19little go
14:21strike one just to the target
14:24so i missed it on the right and i could really see the lines wobbling off to the right when
14:29i 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
14:36that
14:36again line it straight up to a target set up behind and i'm just going to try now and close
14:42the club face
14:43down slightly just so i can really see those lines going end over end it's a really good way of
14:50using
14:50the triple track technology to help you putting
14:57so 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
15:14the 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
15:24drop
15:24down and we get this flat sort of c shape with our back the other one is s where actually
15:30the shoulders
15:30get pushed back quite a lot and we get this really big arc in our back right these two problems
15:36can
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
15:56want 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
16:07back round your
16:08shoulders and then very simply i just want you to find the middle ground i want you to find
16:12neutral now you can see i've got this really nice flat back and i'm able to rotate around my body
16:17so much smoother if you're still struggling with that another drill that i love is literally with
16:23your seven iron with a club just stand nice and tall and i want you to just put it just
16:27below your
16:28belt line and i want you to have this feeling of actually just pushing the club back so if i
16:32stand
16:33from this angle it's nice and tall clubs out here and i'm just going to push with my hands back
16:38so
16:38bum goes out back stays straight i'm just going to let my hands dangle down and i'm just going to
16:44flex
16:44my legs now i'm in a nice solid position to rotate around myself and hopefully hit some good shots so
16:51let's give it a go
17:08so if you're one of those golfers that really struggles to make a good strike one of the things
17:13that could be happening is you're decelerating the club throughout the downswing now one of the things
17:18that i see a lot of sort of higher handicappers do they take the club so far back for such
17:23a short
17:24shot the brain is very good at kind of making its own kind of calibration and it kind of just
17:29goes well
17:30if i make a normal swing and i flush it i'm just going to nut it over the back so
17:34what will that what
17:35they do is they naturally start to slow down unfortunately what then happens is the club is then
17:41decelerating to the point of when it strikes what 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 just past the
17:53golf ball so one of the really nice drills that i like to practice i've just got six balls here
17:57at
17:57the green and all i'm going to try and do is take a nicer kind of shorter backswing back i'm
18:02going to
18:02feel like i'm accelerating through and do a slightly longer finish so it's not going to be too far back
18:09nice and short longer finish through the whole idea with this is the club is accelerating towards the
18:16target now 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 i still want you to keep your nice
18:25tempo
18:26your 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
18:41achieve with this for me it's this whole understanding that i'm trying to produce two
18:46things i'm trying to produce a nice stable base and i'm trying to produce a body movement that helps me
18:51turn away from the target and turn towards now there is a fine line between having too stable of a
18:57base
18:58too wide of a stance it's going to affect my turn so for me the ideal sort of position right
19:05if i had a
19:05driver in my hand like i've got here i want to make sure that i'm this is the fastest club
19:10this is the club
19:11i'm trying to produce the most power with so i need a really nice stable base stable platform so how
19:17i'm going to start this is i always start with my left foot first and if i'm going to set
19:22up with this
19:23ball inside this left heel i'm going to then feel like i'm shoulder width apart there's a nice kind of
19:30baseline and i'm then going to take one step back to give me a nice big stable base for me
19:37to produce
19:37a nice powerful hit with now when i take another club like a seven iron i don't need as much
19:44balance
19:44i'm not trying to hit it as hard so all of a sudden this stable base can come in i
19:49can actually produce
19:50just if i was shoulder width apart let's just go slightly wider just to give myself that nice
19:56stability because i still want to make sure i can hold balance now when i get like a wedge in
20:01my hand
20:01like this all of a sudden we're talking about finesse we're not talking about power so i don't
20:07need that stable base i just need to produce something that can keep me in balance give myself
20:13a lot of control and allow my body to rotate backwards and forwards and enjoy the shot that
20:19we're trying to produce so there we have it guys i really hope you enjoyed that video i really hope
20:24it
20:24helps you with your consistency out on the golf course if it's something that you liked please give
20:28this video a like and we look forward to seeing you on the next video
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