AXIOM Lag in the Golf Swing
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Producing incredible lag has never been this easy - or fast
If you're watching this video, you're probably like most golfers who think that lag is some elusive black art in the golf swing. And you're either born with it or you just don't have it. And you're never going to have it. It's not true. I promise you. But for many lag is like they define their golf swings. By in fact, I've seen golfers on internet forums, change their username to have something to do with this issue. They call themselves club Castro, 64 club head throw away guy, or, you know, fly fishing castor guy or whatever it might be. But the truth is lag is incredibly simple and anyone can create lag. That's the easy part. The hard part about lag for most golfers is understanding how and when to release it. And with rotary swing, just like everything else you've learned, it's actually incredibly simple. But before we talk about how to release lag at the right time, let's talk about this common misconception.
That's circling around out there. That lag is a, an illusion. It doesn't really exist. That's nonsense, but let's talk about why that illusion is going around and what's really going on in the swing. First of all, Paul, what is lag? Well, lag ag is nothing more than the clubhead lagging behind your hands as it comes into the impact area. So you can see here, I would have lag the club heads lagging about six or eight inches behind my hands. And here I would be flipping scooping, chunking, probably coming into impact because now the club that is overtaking my hands, that's the opposite. That's scooping it. We want lag in the swing, but we only want so much and we need to release that lag. So the moment you do anything from setup where the hands and club are perfectly in line and you set that club behind your hands, it is now officially lagging behind.
See, look, you can have lag. Anybody can create lag. That's easy. So as soon as you do anything like this, the clubs now, now lagging, you have lag. That's not the important part. The important part is getting rid of it at the right time. As I mentioned, lag by itself is useless. It's all about what lag really is. So rather than thinking about lag as some elusive thing, perhaps we should read it fine. What lag really is and what it really is, is leverage and leverage. I think more than potential energy. It's stored energy. My hands are like this. I really can't do much to make the club go anywhere with my wrists. But as soon as I set my wrist, now there's potential energy because I've created an angle that I can then release to get the club to accelerate. So think of lag rather than some elusive thing.
Think of it. Like it's like an atomic bomb. It's got tons of potential energy, but Intel it's detonated. It's completely useless. It's just wasting a bunch of space. Lag is much the same way in the golf swing. If you have lag and you get rid of it at the wrong time, it's like exploding a nuclear bomb way up in space. Sure. It'll still have some destructive force, but it's nowhere near as potentially damaging as when you explode it on. The lag is exactly the same way. If you have lag in your swing, which we all do at one point or another, and you get rid of it up here in the atmosphere, it doesn't do a darn bit of good because by the time you come into impact, the club is actually decelerating through hitting air. You want that lag to be released close to the target.
And in golf, the target for us is the ball. That's where we're directing all of our energy. All of that stored up energy. All of that potential leverage is being directed to be released at the back of the ball. In fact, that's really your number one priority in the swing is to create, maintain, and release this leverage that you've created at the right time and timing in the golf swing such as in life is everything. So let's first understand what causes us to have bad timing when we released the club at the wrong time, which is typically for most golfers way too soon. So first of all, what are some common causes that cause you to cause cast the club and lose lag too soon? Well, for the lead arm, typically what happens is people are pushing against the shaft with their thumb. If you see a wear spot on your grip, right underneath your thumb pad, no, that's exactly what you're doing.
You're trying to force the club to release with your thumb. And not only are you casting the club, but you're putting yourself at risk for an injury. The other way that people cast the club is that when our trail arm is loaded up in the swing, we've got a lot of tension. What does your body want to do with that tension? It wants to get rid of it. So if you go to the top of your swing tight, you can't breathe. Like we see all the time in our golf schools. I'm like, whoa, relax, breathe, go to the top and relax. Cause the more tension you create early in the swing, the more it's going to predispose you to want to be pushing against that shaft with your right hand or your trail hand. And that's also, if I take my left hand off what I'm going to do.
So if this arm's all loaded up, the only thing I'm going to do is release that club too soon. And that's going to cause me to cast the club as well. The last thing is taking my shoulders and trying to rotate them hard from the top. This again comes from a common misconception that that's what you're supposed to do in the swing. Go to the top and then rip your shoulders through as hard as you can. That's not going to produce speed. That's going to cause you to create a lot of centripetal force very early as you create rotation, which will create centrifical force, that will act on the club and cause you to throw it away. That's a complicated way of saying don't spend your shoulders. You create a lot of rotation. Soon. All of that force is going to act on that club, wanting you to make it throw away too soon.
You may find that you have one of these issues or perhaps a combination of all three, but until you address them, you will always, always cast the club because you can't overcome physics. So if you start spinning early, as you know, with the Axiom, we're not trying to do much of anything with our shoulders. So if you find that you're still trying to motor the swing with power from your upper body rotation, go back to the Axiom, go back to the compression drill and shorten and slow down your swing. Go back to the compression drill where you're making little half swing so you can get the feeling of not being so loaded up and tight because what happens lot of times, as people just try to make this huge, powerful turn, they build up so much tension. They just can't overcome the urge to fire from the top for a lot of golfers, they ha that's what is a hit instinct for them.
They create a lot of tension and they load and unload way too soon. And at the wrong time, if you're the golfer that's tending to push against the shaft with the trail arm, then you've missed a really important part of the Axiom. That's the exact wrong direction of force that you're trying to create in the swing with the Axiom. What are you doing with your trail arm? Well, it's not doing this right. I didn't say anything about this. What did I say about you? Trell arm? What is it doing to rotating clockwise? All right. My shoulder, my elbow, my wrist, my this rotation, the club, it's all rotating clockwise, right? As soon as I do this, why would I ever do this? That's not a motion that is in the Axiom at all. I'm just rotating this wrist, clockwise, rotating my elbow clockwise. And now all of a sudden I've got all the lag in the world that I know what to do with.
If you're pushing with the lead thumb, then all you need to do is take it off. Now. I don't mean cut your thumb off or anesthetize it. I mean, actually take the thumb off for a moment and simply Smick swings without it on the club. Then Hogan used to talk about doing this all the time. He would take his thumb and forefinger off so he could get the feeling of letting the club release naturally rather than getting the tendency to push against the shaft with the thumb. So again, check that were spot on your grips. So how do we start putting this all together in order to get the feeling of maintaining lag and then releasing it at the right time? Well, the first thing as I mentioned a moment ago is you have to get the feeling of this clockwise motion with your wrist.
This is the opposite of caching the club, this pushing against it with my hand and my arm. Cause my elbows loaded up is casting, but this, how would I ever cast the club? If the whole motion of my swing is clockwise rotation, I couldn't has nothing to do with each other. And what's really cool for those of you who have really struggled with casting the club, a couple simple, fun things that you can do. As I mentioned earlier, take the thumb off and you'll see immediately look how much lag I can create. Now combine this with that clockwise rotation. And now all of a sudden you can see as I go up, I can have a very wide wrist angle at the top. It doesn't really matter. Then as I start down, as I let my wrist set and this clockwise rotation happen, look at how much lag it looks like I have.
Now this clockwise rotation, here's the shaft angle. And now as I rotate it, it looks like I have more lag. This is where that misconception of lag is an illusion it's down cocking an extreme amount is really what the illusion is. But the truth of the matter is y'all have lag. You just getting rid of it at the wrong time. So as you combine getting this clockwise rotation with your forearm, when we look at it from down the line, it's very easy to see as I'm going up, he can see my takeaway move, and then I'm going to exaggerate this. So it's easy to see that clockwise rotation creates a falling motion of the shaft that you see in all the pros. Most amateurs go like this and pros go like this and you want to take an extreme example of that. Take a look at Matthew Wolf.
He makes this clockwise circle really big. Ryan Palmer does the same thing, but you can see how the club naturally shallows again. It's just this clockwise action. It's the opposite of casting the club. So take heart club Castro, 64. You don't have to cast the club anymore. So how do you then get rid of it? We've already understood what the release feels like in the quick-start section. As you're going through this motion now that you know how to create lag and stop getting rid of it. You now know what it feels like to release the club. So now that you know, the three most common causes of casting the club and how to get rid of that and combine that with the Axiom and the release, you're off to the races. Now let's take a look at some tour pros to see how they create lag, maintain, lag, and release it in the downswing. Let's
Look at a fun one to start Lucas Glover, let's see this guy produces lag like nobody's business. So it'll be a fun one to study. So let's first look at just a quick reminder. Look at the takeaway here from down the line note, how he's doing what we've talked about, keeping those hands in the club out. You can see the lead arm kind of angled in a little bit more toward the body. He's not breaking that imaginary plane line. So the club's looking great there. And this is key. If you set your wrists early in the swing, then the only place that they have to go is out. So what you'll see most better players do is they set their risks very, very late. And you can see at this point still got a very wide angle in his arms. And then as he starts down, you're going to see the massive flattening of the shaft and that rotation.
So look at how much the shaft drops from where he is at the top and look out shallows out with that clockwise rotation. You can very clearly envision this in your head. Watch that club I'd make this clockwise loop as he starts down. And then when you look at it from face-on look at how that shaft looks because he's flattened it like he's got, and he does have an insane amount of lag, but it looks even more compared to where he was during the backswing because of how much rotation he's put in there. So now you can see this in action. He's got tons and tons and tons of lag. And so at this point, his primary job is just getting rid of it. He's got to get rid of all of that angle in there in order to get the club face squared, back up and release all that energy.
But he's a great exaggerated example of seeing this motion, where the club is going up and then shallowing and rotating as he creates lag rather than pushing against the shaft. Like so many golfers do, you can see that he's definitely a no hurry to start casting that club or throwing it away from the top. He's just showing you the exact motions you just learned. He's not pushing against the shaft of his left thumb. He's not clearly not pushing against it with his right arm. Look at how it's still got this nearly the same angle that it did at the top of the swing. He's just rotated at, which creates this crazy look of tons of lag here. And then he's just got to get rid of it. All right. Let's take a look at Justin Rose here. So on the right I've drawn a line that represents his hand path.
The yellow line is going up through the center of his hands during his backswing and see there he's tracing that pretty much what the glove tan the whole time. And then the red line represents his hand path on the way down. It's very clear that he has made a clockwise circle there, right? There's no question that his hands have shallowed out. What's interesting about this is that if he didn't rotate his body, they would shallow out much more. But of course, as he begins turning his shoulders back to the left, using his hips, then that is going to pull his hands further forward toward the ball. But yet his hands are still tracing a shallower path on the downswing that they did on the backswing. So this is really clearly indicating how much clockwise rotation there is in that hand movement. And again, if he didn't rotate his body at all, you would see his hands drop way down here.
But of course that rotation pulls them forward out toward the ball. Now, as we see this, so we know that that clockwise motion is happening, but it's not happening just in the arc. That is hands and elbow and shoulders and arm are traveling on. But that rotation in his wrist is also doing that. So now when we look at him from face on, you can see just how much of an angle he has created, not just by setting his risk, but by that shallowing by the club, rotating flattening as his right wrist, left wrist, both are working together to shallow out that club, which is why he has the appearance. As I showed you of having a lot of lag as he flattens the shafting. Well, you can see that as he starts down. Notice how much further the club ahead is back here behind him.
This is a flattening motion. So as he goes back and then his shoulders begin to turn, which should pull the club forward. The club is still much shallower coming in on a much flatter plane. And again, this is just showing that the idea when you have lag and you're creating lag is not to try and do something with your wrist to hold the angle. You never ever want to try and hold lag. You're simply just not doing anything that would cause you to get rid of it. And that is rotation. As you add that rotation in that right wrist, you're going to see that club shallow out. So go in the mirror and check this out for yourself, go to the top of your swing. And then simply don't push against the shaft to try and widen the angle. Simply rotate your wrist clockwise as a right-handed golfer and watch what happens.
You'll see that club shaft look like you have tons and tons of lag because you're just not getting rid of it at the wrong time. And then as you, as your speed builds and everything starts to release that lag will release at the right time, every time automatically for all right now, let's take a look at a student of mine to see this done an action. As you start to understand the feeling of letting that club fall away from you due to that clockwise motion, you can see it in his swing watch as the club sets at the top. And the how as the club head now begins to move essentially back toward the house, back behind him, rather than being pushed out away from him in this direction, like most golfers do they feel that, you know, you need to push against the shaft to try and get a lot of speed, but the truth is you need to release the speed at the right time.
And you also don't need crazy amounts of lag to hit the ball a long ways. But this is how you start to create that feeling. Let that club shallow outlet, that rotation of your right arm continue. And then you can see my suit now has more lag than he knows what to do with, and then he's able to release it in time and get into a nice, beautiful follow-through at the same point, as I mentioned, you don't need insane amounts of lag. This is my swing on the right from face-on and you'll see, I'm not shallowing out the club radically. I'm not trying to create crazy amounts of lag, but again, you know, I hit the ball very, very long ways for my size. You don't have to create insane amounts of lag in order to hit the ball a long ways. The more important thing is using the lag that you have effectively in order to get it released at the right time, so that you get the clubs squared up and have proper power.
That's the goal and the swing. So don't think that you need to go out and create crazy amounts of lag. You can see in my swing, I definitely don't try to create crazy amounts of lag, but I have tons and tons of power to swing well over 120 miles an hour with my driver lag is something that you need to understand the feeling of how to create it, rather than get rid of it at the wrong time and understand how to release it properly, to get it, to get the club to square up and release all that energy in
