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Keys To Transition
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A study from well known golf biomechanist, Dr. Sasho MacKenzie, showed that 39 out of 40 touring professionals had some amount of club shallowing in transition. If you combine this with the fact that many amateur golfers tend to get too steep at this point, we can safely say that this is a key differentiator between low and elite level players. To get a better feel for this pattern, players will get to the top of their swing, drop the club, and then catch it, while pulling in the direction of the target and rotating to a full finish. You will probably want to do this with a split-grip and avoid hitting any balls at first, but you should get a good sense for how the shallowing of the club relates to the movement of the body. Once you have completed a few repetitions of this, you can then move to the next progression, which involves a normal grip and a simple decrease in grip pressure as you again feel the club falling or shallowing in transition. From here, you can go ahead and hit some full shots, while being aware of any tendencies that may overly steepen the club. Overall, this is a great drill that has helped a number of my students quickly pick up on the unique feel of what it takes to properly shallow in transition.
Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Not Enough Distance, Transition, Drill, Intermediate
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This drill is club drop shallowing.
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So many golfers need to work on shallowing the club with the arms and transition to help
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with a variety of different patterns.
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One of the more common patterns that causes a lot of inconsistency, both with contact as
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well as ball flight, is getting the club to steep in two quickly in transition.
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One study that Dr. Sasha McKenzie did found that 39 out of 40 Tor pros had some amount
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of this club shallowing in transition and it's not the most common move for amateur.
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So it seems to be one of those differentiators between skill levels of elite level golfers
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and less than elite level golfers.
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So one drill that I've used to help with a feeling of the club shallowing is going up to
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the top of the swing and let's say you're used to the club being more on an angle kind
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of like this and that would be a shallow movement.
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So what we're going to do is we're going to hold the club in the more vertical position
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it would be at the top of the swing and then we're just going to let it drop where the club
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head is going to fall a little bit faster than the grip.
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So I'm going to bring it here and I'm going to let it drop kind of like this.
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So you can see that I'm actually pretty much taking my hands off the club and I'm losing
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some of the sense of the club face.
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It's rotating as well.
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This I've used with many golfers to get the feel of the club dropping in transition.
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Many good golfers have described the club feels like it's falling.
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I feel like my arms are dropping.
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There's a feel like I'm not doing anything with my arms.
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All these relate to this feeling of a club shallowing.
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So how do we do this as an actual drill?
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So you're going to take your hands off and let it drop.
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At the bottom once you catch the grip again, you're going to be already rotating your body
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and that's going to allow you to pull along the club in the direction of the target.
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So I'm going to drop and then when I catch it I'm going to start pulling.
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So I'm going to drop kind of like that.
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Now it's very hard.
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I do this usually from a split grip.
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So it's very hard to make solid contact when doing it as a hitting drill.
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But I have done it where I'm dropping it for students and it seems to work pretty well.
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For you I would say once you've got this sense of that club dropping,
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then take a few practice swings and try to let go of the club and grab it again down here at the bottom.
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But don't actually take your hands off of the grip.
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So lose the grip pressure but don't let go of the grip.
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So now I'm going to make that movement so I'm going to let it drop with zero grip pressure.
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I'm going to let it drop so it's in a more horizontal position and then catch it and pull.
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Then I'm going to try and execute that same movement with a golf ball getting in the way.
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So I'm going to go up to the top and let it drop and then right about here I'm going to catch it.
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Up. Drop.
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Go. Now I'm going to do it without pausing or without breaking it down quite as much.
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But I do recommend that you do a couple of those where you get used to catching it because many
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of you are going to top the ball the first time that you get there if you're used to pulling
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in a more vertical manner from the start of the swing. So we're going to go up.
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We're going to drop and then from here we're going to swing through. So we'll do it in two parts this time.
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So we're going to go up to the top. Drop and swing through. Like I said I almost I caught that a little
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thin not quite a top but definitely a little thin. To now on this next one I'm not going to pause.
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I'm just going to feel that weightlessness during transition and then pick it back up halfway through the
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downswing. And there you'll see lots of my balance a little bit but by focusing on that drop
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movement I got a really good sense of the club coming more from the inside and from the bottom of
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swing. As long as I do the motorcycle movement that's going to have a nice solid draw to it
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with very little muscular effort. So if you're struggling with getting the club to shallow in transition
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I highly recommend trying this drop for shallow and working through that drill will help you get a
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sense of powering the swing with your body instead of your arms and that is one of the key differentiators
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between elite level ball strikers and amateurs.
