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This is a great drill for players who tend to start their swing with a "disconnected" arm action; this "disconnect" will usually manifest itself as an early wrist/shoulder load or an excessive internal rotation and shrug of the lead shoulder. If you fall into this category, be sure to maintain the pressure of the alignment stick or grip into your side until the club is parallel. This will allow your core and hips to drive the take-away, as opposed to the arms, leading to better low-point control and a more athletic pivot.
Tags: Fundamentals, Drill, Beginner
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This drill is the alignment stick takeaway.
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So this drill is inspired by a good golf coach in front of mine, Ryan and Cheney.
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So you showed this to me a little way back.
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And I use it for golfers who tend to have more of a disconnected arm action, especially if
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they start going into this kind of internal rotation or shrug very early.
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So if you see yourself doing this from down the line or from the face on camera, then this
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drill can help.
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The first version of the drill is choking up to about six inches from the club head, just
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like this.
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And then you're going to get set up in your normal angle, but you're going to feel the
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club up against the bottom of your ribs.
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So you're just that little space in between your ribs and your pelvis.
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Or essentially if I took this angle and then drove it up, if you're right here on kind of
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the bottom of my ribs.
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And now I'm going to apply just a little bit of pressure into the my side this way and
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I'm going to keep that pressure all the way through until I get the club to about parallel.
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So keeping that pressure just like this.
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I find when some golfers start to do it, they get that pressure and then they lose it,
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because old habits tend to die hard.
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So keeping that pressure, that will help you control this initial movement more with the
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hips and the chest rotating, instead of doing it all with the arms.
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Now the second phase is you're going to take the alignment stick and you're going to hold
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it on the bottom of the grip.
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So the stick sticks out far enough so that you can set up to the ball and basically keep
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the pressure the same way you were just doing.
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Now it will force you to start with a little bit more angle, so you're not going to be
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able to start with the shaft vertical.
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It's going to have a little bit of an angle, but this does allow you to hit little waist
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height 9 to 3 swings, keeping that pressure and just kind of really feeling like your arms
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you're doing almost nothing and that you're doing your controlling majority of the
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hit with the hips and the chest.
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So hitting these shots very much like a triangle drill hitting the shots with the pelvis.
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Then in your takeaway it will force you to keep that connection and you may feel like
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the club is a little bit more outside the hands especially if you're used to loading the
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wrists early or loading the shoulders early and whipping the club inside.
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Then once you have a feeling you can either drop the club or drop the alignment stick
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as I did and move on to duplicating the shot with the golf club or you can take three
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cool quarter shots.
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Knowing that the club is going to disconnect when it leaves there and then it'll feel
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almost like it reconnects on the way through or if you're really good you can disconnect
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and then keep the disconnect as long as you can through finish.
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It may hit you especially if you go past waist height but it shouldn't hit you down right
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as you're making contact.
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Once you have that feeling then you can try and duplicate keeping that pressure to help
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create that one piece takeaway where the club stays a little bit more outside and on
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plane and then hitting it more with your triangle.
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This is a great drill.
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If you struggle with getting the club a little bit more disconnected inside which usually
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creates either if I stay there more of a fat or low point behind the ball pattern
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or sometimes it will cause more of a lunge and some steep chicken wing patterns.
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But ultimately refining your takeaway so that it's a little bit more hip, cord, driven
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should help control low point especially when it comes to the shorter irons or the scoring
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clubs.
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And we'll do a quick little demo of the full swing.
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Keep that pressure all the way through.
