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Hogan Open Right Thumb

This Ben Hogan inspired drill is excellent for players who struggle with the patterning of the trail arm. Specifically, it is useful for golfers who tend to apply too much pressure with the thumb and "webbing" of the trail hand. This leads to a near "baseball" style grip that can produce a strong club flip at impact, creating issues with contact and start-line.

To alleviate these symptoms, a simple "thumbs off" approach is all that is needed; this will help players load the correct pressure points of the trail hand and hopefully, encourage a "quieter" & more efficient release of the club.

Tags: Fundamentals, Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Release, Drill, Advanced

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This drill is the open right thumb.

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So one of my students I had them do this drill and they said, oh that's the way hooking

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used to practice so I don't know I've never been able to fact check it but it seems

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reasonable to me so I'm going to call it the hooking open right thumb drill.

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And basically this is to help with golfers who have a tendency to use too much of their

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thumb or the webbing of their right hand.

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Or like a baseball pressure point or pushing on the club more like this with that right

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thumb down or with the webbing of the right thumb.

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Instead of pushing on it more with that pressure of that first joint on that index finger

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similar to the alignment stick loading or the finger release or some of the other trail

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hand drills.

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So I'm going to when I activate the muscles on the top side of my arm up on this form by pressing

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a lot with either the thumb or again the webbing this will encourage this movement

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here on the way through.

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If I activate more of the pressure in the middle fingers and connect to the club through

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this index finger it'll activate more the inside of the arm kind of like this.

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So what we're going to do is we're going to hit some shots with the thumb no longer

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in contact.

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And I want to emphasize that it's the whole thumb.

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What I see a lot of students when I try to do this drill for the first time is they will

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just pick up, they'll just pick the thumb off but not kind of the meaty part.

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They won't disconnect from the left thumb.

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They'll just pick the thumb up off the grip.

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I want the whole thumb out of commission.

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I want that thumb off the left thumb as well.

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So now I have to get a little more of the control in my fingers there so in my middle

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two fingers gripping there and that index finger pushing on the grip.

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I still feel like I have a lot of control of the club.

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It might feel a little lost if I were to take full swings which you're more than welcome

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to.

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But especially down in the release zone, not having the thumb on should have very little impact

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in how well I'm able to do the right hand or the trail hand release.

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So thumb completely off doing either nine to three or again you can do this all the way

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up.

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We'll go kind of attend to two.

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So because the key movements of the right hand are more in line with this finger

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and pushing through the inside of the arm taking the thumb off should have very little

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impact on your stock swing.

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If you find that you have a lot of forearm rotation and roll you find that this elbow starts

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pointing at the camera kind of like this.

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Then this is a kind of a full proof way to remove some of the power from the right hand

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doing that move.

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You may feel if you do too many of these at first that the left hand might get a little

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sore because it's having to do a little bit more work so work yourself up in terms

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of doing reps but this should help coordinate the two hands into doing more of your tour

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release really by removing one of the key culprits that I see with a lot of of poor golfers.

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In particular I tend to see this being a problem for X baseball players more so than any

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other sports.

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So even if you don't think you have this problem if you played a lot of baseball I would

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highly recommend trying to hit some shots with that thumb completely out of the way and

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if it becomes hard to do it then it could be an indication that you need to do a little

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bit of release training.

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Okay so now we'll do 9 to 3 solid and we'll do 10 to 2 also solid.

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Now we'll try for the full swing the toughy.

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Now I pulled it a little bit that's one of my tendencies let's try one more full swing

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we'll get it on this one.

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So really good no connection from the thumb.