Phase 2 - The Release
Phase 2 is where you get your first taste of what it feels like to have effortless speed in the golf swing. Learning how to release the golf club properly not only rewards you with free speed, but it is also where you learn how to shape the curvature of your ball flight!
- The 5 Consistency Checkpoints remain the same
- But now the clubface is toed up or slightly in at 3 o'clock
- And the lead wrist is flat or slightly cupped at 3 o'clock
As you move into phase two things start to get a lot more fun because not only are you gonna add more distance to these shots, to your nine to three drill, but you're gonna learn how to be able to start shaping the ball. And you're also going to have a lot more distance without increasing your effort whatsoever. That is what rotary swing has always been all about is effortless power. I love hitting the ball a long ways while putting the minimal amount of effort into it. And I wanna share that secret with you and the release is where that comes from. So as we add this little release, you're gonna be shocked at how much further the ball goes with the same length back swinging that you were doing in phase one. So let's take a look at what this is all about and how we're gonna get this feel for it.
The first thing that I want you to do is get a feel for the free wheeling nature of the release. Many golfers don't understand what the release is or what it means. So ask yourself, what does it mean to release something? Well, it means to let go, right? That is what you wanna feel in your golf swing. The release is not about control or manipulation or flipping your hands over or trying to hold off the release. That's the opposite of releasing it. You wanna let the club go. And so at first that's actually, what I'm gonna have you do is literally let your trail hand right hand for right-handed golfers, come off the club before impact. And you'll be amazed when you get this feeling for how well the club will whip through impact. You'll probably start to feel how much you've been impeding the release and costing yourself effortless speed by trying to be too controlling with the club.
So when we do this, what you're going to start to feel is this again, the same nine to three move, but you wanna start to let that right hand come off before impact. You'll see my right hand is very light on here. And as I do this, the club just whips through and I'm just letting it go. The release is not just about letting go. It's also about rotation. The club face is always rotating throughout the entire swing. And you take a look at every tour pro you'll see the club face towed in, on the release, or even towed over, released over, a little bit more. And that's because they're letting the club go. They're letting it really zip through impact. If you see the club face like this, you're literally holding off the release, because you're not allowing your forms to rotate passively to release that golf club. So by letting the trail hand come off, you'll get a feel for what that feels like for that club to naturally release without you trying to manipulate and control it.
(02:28)
So as you're making some practice swings at first, just again, nine to three back swing movement, very small, and then just let the hand come off. And as I let my left hand release, what I'll start to feel is the club brushing the grass. We don't wanna be digging any squirrel graves here. You're not pushing the club down in the ground. You're wanting it to brush the grass. A great divot is a bruised piece of turf, not a giant, uh, squirrel grave, like I mentioned before. So we're just letting the club release. And as I do this, I'm gonna go back and reinforce the checkpoints that you've already learned. So you're going to make sure your shoulders are square, which you can do when you let your trail hand come off. My hips are open my pressure's on the lead side, head down and now, instead of looking at my position at impact where I was holding off the release in phase one. Now we're gonna start to look at two more checkpoints that we're gonna add to your swing. As you're building your, your movement pattern here.
The first one is from up the line. When you're looking at it, that club phase should be towed up or slightly towed in. We don't wanna see this. That's a held-off release. If you're slicing, this is the last thing on earth you want to do. You need that club to be rotating and releasing through the hitting area in order to not just add speed, but help square the face. If you recall in phase one, I said, if you're seeing the ball kind of consistently launch out to the right just a little bit that's okay, because we weren't allowing the club to release. Now the opposite should be true. We're not gonna see that ball go to the right. We don't wanna see the ball go to the right at all during this phase when you're releasing it, because that means you're not releasing it enough. You're holding off that release, costing yourself, speed and consistency.
The second thing is we don't wanna see this wrist completely cupped and broken down like this. A little bit of cupping is perfectly okay. If you're a flipper, you're somebody who hits the ball really high and looks like this at impact. You're going to work on getting this wrist to be pretty flat through the hitting area, which will close the club face down a little bit, which will help you start to ingrain the idea that your lead hand is for control. The right hand is for power and you're starting to get control of that club face and get rid of that flip.
But we don't need to be bowed like this. That's extremely shut and that's gonna lead to a lot of left shots for right-handed golfers. A little bit of cupping is normal. I like to think about as if you're shaking somebody's hand, you're not gonna shake somebody's hand like this. You're not gonna shake somebody's hand like this. Your wrist should be anatomically neutral, which you can see has about 10 or 20 degrees of cupping in it. So that is a normal neutral position to be in, in the release. And that will get the club with a proper grip, slightly towed in. So you can consistently hit the ball straight or with a slight little draw.
As you move into hitting balls. As I mentioned, we're gonna let that trail hand come off a little bit at first, a little bit before impact is great. We wanna learn how to let the club release, let it release. That's the key.
So when we're doing this, you wanna start to get a feel of letting the club, just brush the turf as your right hand comes off. And you'll find from your nine to three, that instead of hitting these little 10 yard shots, the ball's gonna go about 40 or 50 yards. That's what we're looking for in phase two, we don't want to hit it any farther than that. In phase three, we're gonna show you how to nuke that puppy as we start adding speed into it. But at first we just wanna let the speed come to us. We want to feel what it feels like when the ball rockets off the face. And I didn't do anything you saw when we first did in phase one, these shots were going very, very short. And then by letting the right hand, come off, that ball rocketed another 30 yards.
And that's what I want to feel. I felt no effort. It was just letting the club go. Once you get a feel for this, and you're consistently finding in your checkpoint that you're still hitting all the checkpoints from phase one, but of course the risks we're now allowing to cut slightly in the release. Or if you're a flipper, you may wanna practice keeping it a little bit more bow at first, just so that you get out of the habit of flipping. But all the other checkpoints are the same head down pressure on the lead side, hips, open shoulder square. If we've got that and you're letting that right hand come off and you're seeing the ball fly nice and straight and not to the right, you're seeing your, your club face released instead of held open. You see if I hold it open because I'm holding off the release. Look where the ball went and look at my club face angle. I could hold a glass of wine on there. We're not waiters. We're golfers. We want that puppy to be released.
So what you're learning from phase one is how did the ball straight without releasing the club? You're learning how to control the impact conditions. Now you're learning how to get speed into it effortlessly and how the club release helps square the face. If I don't release it, you're gonna see the ball go off to the right, just like you saw there. The first one went nice and straight. If you over rerelease it a little bit, which is normal. When you're letting the trail hand come off, it'll go a little bit left. That's okay. Your goal is to learn how to balance out the use of the right hand and left hand to get them to work nicely together, which is what you will do once you're hitting your checkpoints, letting the trail hand come off.
If you're doing that consistently and you're seeing the club face is nice and released your wrist is in a good position. You're hitting all your other checkpoints. Then we're gonna move into adding that right hand back on there. So we still get the same result, but now we've gotta let their trail hand rotate over so we can shake hands on this side with a trail hand instead of just letting it come off. So same thing, a little nine to three swing.
Now I chunked that one a little bit. Now, as we get into the faults and fixes, what's gonna cause that I hung back, I didn't use my lower body enough. I started to kind of get lazy with my lower body. And so my pressure was too much on my trail side and I could catch that in my checkpoints as I was working through them. I know that I hung back a little bit. So I need to be a little bit more assertive of getting off this right side and that will be normal. You're gonna get kind of fixated on swinging the club and hitting the ball. So you're gonna, your lower body might kind of take a nap for a little bit, just like you saw there. So that's okay. Go back and do a couple practice swings and make sure you get that right foot rolled in. That's gonna weigh a checkpoint if your foot's rolled in, you've moved more pressure to the lead side. If it's flat at impact, you're still hanging back too far and you'll hit shots like that, which will be chunky and tend to be to the left.
So now I know, okay, I gotta make sure I gotta shift, pay attention to what I'm doing. There we go. Now I'm checking that my club face is towed up or slightly towed in that my wrist is flat or slightly cupped and that my posture is still in the same spot. My pressure's on the lead side. Hips are open, shoulders square, head down. If I did all that good, that counts as one good one. And as long as the ball was pretty much starting on my line and our goal again is we're gonna hit it about 40 to 50 yards. And we want about a five yard grouping. Five yards on either side of the flag is a good margin of error. If you're hitting it, spraying it all over the place. You need to go and check your checkpoints because you're starting to manipulate that clubface they should all start to do about the same thing over and over. Here we go. Nice and straight checking my checkpoints. I'm at roughly three o'clock pressure's on the lead side. Hips are open shoulders square. You keep doing this. You keep going through your checkpoints, making sure that everything is a okay.
Notice that I'm keeping my head down and back. I'm not trying to go up here and look at the ball. I'm trying to keep my head back and down. I can look at the ball as long as I let my head swivel, but you don't wanna pick your head up, it pulls you outta your posture. So once you can do this, eight outta 10 times consistently where you're hitting all your checkpoints and the ball's ending up in a nice tight grouping at about 40 to 50 yards. We don't wanna hit it any further than that, then you're ready to start ingraining it. If you find that you're missing these checkpoints, go to the faults and fixes, find the fault that you're struggling with. And you'll be able to find a solution in there. Make sure you track your, your practice in the notes and in your self assessment, track the things you're doing, right track the things you're doing wrong and enter your score. So you start to see your trend improve over time.
All right, let's take a quick look at my nine to three move here. I'm gonna let it play through first. Then I'm gonna come back and take a look at it. We'll look at this in slow motion at about 240 frames per second. So the first thing you'll notice, I'm making a turn, my logo and my buttons on my shirt move first and then on my lower body leads and I'll let the club fully release and get into a good impact position. Now let's walk through it a little bit more slowly so we can talk through some of the things that you're gonna notice as you're working on this, drill yourself. One, as I mentioned, the first big thing is to make sure from a proper setup, you start rotating right away. You can see the buttons on my shirt and my logo or moving immediately.
And by the time that the club shaft is parallel, which would be our nine o'clock position ,that my hands are, have a nice big space between my hands and my pocket. And my right arm is nice and straight. And my hands are in front of my chest. This is what we're looking for. If you see this right arm, all bent like this, then we're in trouble. Cause now we're getting very armsy with our swing. We're taking power out of our swing. So you want to stay nice and wide and just turn. You can see my head has stayed nice and centered. I've shifted a little bit of pressure to my trail leg. And now I've loaded that up on this small swing to help me shift back to the lead side. Now, if you stop here at a nine o'clock position, you will lose a little bit of distance from the shot that I hit here, which went about 50 yards.
As you add a little bit of momentum and you relax, you'll keep going a little bit past this perfect nine o'clock position. And so from here you would only hit it maybe 25 or 30 yards. But as you keep going, just by letting a little bit of momentum, this is not me trying to turn further. I'm still feeling and thinking that I'm stopping at nine o'clock, but I'm relaxed. I'm not trying to force myself to be rigid and hit these positions. Just perfect. You'll do that at first, as you're learning to hit these checkpoints, I don't want you to be rigid of course, but you will stop at a true nine o'clock, but as you get comfortable, I want you to start to allow that momentum to carry you back just a little bit further and let your wrists set naturally. And you'll note again. So I've made a big shoulder turn here to move that golf club. Then as I start down, you can see my pressure. My lead hip starts to move back first and then that helps bring the arms down. Of course. Now we want to make sure that we've got a nice flat left wrist at this point, which we do. And the other thing that you're gonna note that I failed to mention in the video is that when I'm talking about shoulders being square, that's only at impact. After impact your shoulders will of course start to open a little bit. You don't wanna be ripping your chest open. You'll see that as my arms begin to rotate that my chest opens, but my hands are staying more or less in front of the chest. And so then when we, if we were to stop at the perfect three o'clock position, when the club shaft is parallel on the other side, your chest will be a little bit more open.
Mind you, my neck is fused at C one, two and three. So my head is kind of stuck with my chest. So really your head would probably be looking down here just a little, a little bit more, as long as you don't have any restricted mobility like I do, but everything else you can see here looks standard. I've pressure's on my lead side. My left leg is straight. Clearly my hips are open. My right foot is rolled to the inside and I've done the best I can to keep my head down with my physical limitations. And again, the momentum's gonna carry me up here just a little bit further toward the lead arms parallel because now I'm releasing the club. I'm not trying to hold everything off. I'm wanting everything to just free will through. And this will be the position the end in about when you're hitting about a 50 yard shot.
So this is what you're looking for. So it's gonna be very simple to get this movement, to get the release down, just using your body, to turn, use your lower body, to shift and bring you back through and let that club release and start feeling some effortless power.
Mark
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