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