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How Face Angle Affects Compression
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Opening or closing your club face through impact influences how solidly you'll strike the shot. In this video, I'll show you how club face angle affects compression. You'll find out how to transfer the maximum amount of energy to the ball.
- Square Face to Path Gives Maximum Compression
- Open Face in Relation to Path Will Cause Fade
- Closed Face in Relation to Path Will Cause Draw
So now that we've got some speed and we've got a proper path coming to the ball, let's get that face angle going where we want.
Face angle is one of the most important determining factors on how well you're going to compress the ball, and, of course, what direction the ball is going to fly when you hit it.
My favorite drill on the planet is the simplest drill in the world to teach you how to control the club face angle.
And it forms the basis for the five minutes, the perfect release drill.
And so that video, if you, if you remember, you're going halfway back, stopping.
And you start hitting these little tiny little check shots, and you start checking the position of your wrist and clubface angle.
So as I'm doing this I should see that clubface is dead square every time.
The whole key to this drill is to start training your brain what it feels like to be in a proper impact position with the clubface, angle, wrist, shoulders and hips.
Hips are going to be slightly open, weights going to be to the left, wrist is going to be flat, clubface is going to be square.
If you're not used to this, you have no idea, and you're used to coming through like this, like so many golfers are, This drill will all of a sudden help you feel what it's like to have a properly square clubface angle.
And when you do this drill the ball should fly really really low.
It's not going to really even get off the ground and you're just going to hold the clubface angle, make sure it's square.
Then, from there, we go the next piece of the five minutes perfect release video, we add the release.
And that's more important to see from up the line, because there we want to see the clubface is towed up or slightly towed in.
The greatest myth and fallacy that's constantly perpetuated on TV is when golf and analysts say, Oh, he holds the clubface square to the target longer than anybody in the game.
Nobody does that.
It costs you so much speed if you were to take that clubface and hold it square to the target.
Every single tour pro on the planet releases the toe of the club every single one.
The clubface is doing this through the hitting area every single time.
That's worth seven to eight miles an hour clubhead speed for free.
Nobody can afford to give up eight miles an hour clubhead speed.
You have to allow the toe of the club to release.
So go back and take a good look at that five minutes the perfect release video.
But then what I want you to do is take the impact cube, and I want you to do a couple things and this is another.
I love drills that I can have you guys do indoors.
These are the best, and this is another one to where we can take a club, a ball and stick it right in front of the impact cube.
And actually start working on this drill inside, still hitting balls, because I know for many of you, as a winter comes along, you know you can't get out hitting balls, but this drill allows you to still hit balls.
And get your eyes comfortable.
With that little white devil in the way, right.
So for so many of us it just causes us so many mind tricks.
So this drill allows you to start training the impact position, checking your impact position, because the impact bag is going to stop it.
So I'm going to turn this face on so you can see what I have set up here.
The ball is just a couple inches behind the bag, it doesn't really matter going halfway back and stopping.
As the bag stops my club I want to make sure it's dead square.
If it's not, and I see the club face doing this now, I know I'm in trouble and I need to understand what's causing that.
And that's what I want to go over.
Next is that if you start doing this drill and seeing the club face really open, you're almost definitely pushing against the shaft with that left thumb.
That left thumb coming down.
Causes the club face to be released in this fashion and leaves a lot of loft on the table and causes the club face to come in open.
We need to take these last three fingers and roll them under to get the knuckles pointing down so that your logo on the glove is pointing down, which also squares the club face.
As your club face comes in square now, we're going to get a way better strike than if the club face is working open.
Then it's more of a glancing, deflected blow.
It costs you a ton of compression and losing compression is losing ball speed.
Losing ball speed is losing distance.
So to get more distance we need control of that club face.
So doing this drill with your left hand, only you should be able to get to in a very short period of time.
The club face is dead square every time.
Now, let's add that pesky little right hand in there, because this is where stuff starts getting tricky for most golfers.
Same drill indoors, hitting the bag and the ball, but we're gonna put our right hand on there now.
Make a little takeaway make sure that the club face in the ball or the club face in the bag are dead square here.
If they are what we're going to start doing from here adding a little more speed to it.
Now you'll notice I'm actually even catching the bat, the ball a little bit.
If the club face is open, notice I can't catch the ball anymore.
But if the club face is square, I'm going to be able to cradle it into the face.
And that's going to be another cue for me to know when the club face is square to the target.
A square club face is the name of the game.
The best drill in the world to simplify all this stuff and get yourself re-centered when you get a little lost.
Is just this first little piece of the five minutes to the perfect take, perfect release video, nice straight, low shot, it'll get you back on track every time.
Dugald
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Martin L
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
GC
Chuck
Hector
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Tom
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Casey
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Casey
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Phillip
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)