Zach Johnson - 2 steps to better ball striking
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If you're like me, you probably hate to mishit the golf ball and probably find yourself saying "I just want to hit the ball solid like the guys on T.V" In this video, I'll show you 2 key points in Zach's swing that allow him to be a consistent ball striker week after week. I'll show you how to use your trail foot and your lead eye in the swing for perfect ball striking.
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Keep your trail heel down in the downswing.
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Role to the inside part of the trail foot to make sure your weight is fully shifted.
- Lead eye on the back of the ball during the downswing and release for as long as you can.
Hey, hey, what's up everyone?
This is RST instructor Chris Tyler, and we are back again with this week's tour analysis on the 2015 British Open champion, Zach Johnson.
So congratulations to Zach.
I've had the luxury of playing a lot of golf with Zach in the past, and he's a phenomenal guy and an extraordinary talent on the golf course.
If you found yourself struggling with hitting the golf ball solid or in the center of the club, face every single time, and you want to pay close attention to today's review, I'm going to show you two key moves in Zach's golf swing that allow him to not only hit the center of the club face, but become a very consistent ball striker week in and week out.
And I'm going to show you a great drill towards the end of this video.
That's going to talk about your lead eye and how to focus it in the proper spot in your downswing.
Let's go ahead and get started.
All right, guys.
So if you're anything like me, you know how frustrating it is to miss hit golf shots, either hitting them fat or thin or out towards the toe or in the heel.
And I want to focus in on two areas of Zach's golf swing that allow him to hit the golf ball very solidly and in the center of the club.
Face every single time so that you can use these particular drills and start to hit more solid golf shots more frequently.
And then we're all in this very happy world of ball striking.
So looking at things from a down the line perspective, we're going to focus in on the trail foot in Zach's golf swing.
That's going to be our primary focus point for the first part.
Now, let's talk about some of the common faults that lead to miss hits.
The first one that we'll see, or we'll talk about, is going to be the angle of the spine changing throughout the golf swing, throughout the downswing, or even in the backswing.
So if you've noticed that your spine angle from where you were at address starts to change, you see that it's more vertical, then we need to figure out what the problem is, what caused that to happen.
And chances are it's your trail foot.
And what do I mean there, We tend to try to drive too hard off of our trail foot and that brings the hips forward in your downswing.
That's going to cause your spine to actually start to move more vertically.
So that's where our focus point is going to be, is going to be in that trail.
Foot and we've got a great video on the website called The Role of the right Foot.
And that's going to be over to the recommended videos tab to the right hand side of the video player here.
So just click that tab that these videos will populate.
So again, we're going to focus on the trail foot.
You see Zach's golf swing here, it's a little bit shut going back, it's a little bit flat, just a fraction deep.
And then in the downward move, he does a really good job of controlling his lower body here with the trail foot.
So notice how the trail foot is staying pretty well close to the ground here.
Now, the trail foot is actually can act like a break for the rotation of the body.
So that we can start to release the club through the hitting area.
That's a great tool for a lot of you guys that have been prone to spinning your body through the hitting area.
So you want to use that right foot as a break so you can start to release the club and in turn, you'll have a lot more speed in it.
Now Zach does release the golf club, but he does work hard with his body post impact here.
You'll see that his shoulder plane does steepen quite a bit and that can put a lot of sheer force on the spine.
But in turn, again, he's a great ball striker and it's a good key move to understand in your own game.
So watch what your trail foot is doing in your downswing.
If you see that it's coming up off the ground, then nine times out of 10, that's probably the culprit that's bringing your hips forward or spinning your body open.
Now to the second fix here, the second part is that we see a lot of movement from the head.
And there is a very, Very well-known person within the game of golf named Jack Nicklaus, who actually used to use his dominant eye as a focus point in his downswing.
And what I mean there is, is most right-handed golfers are right-eye dominant, I should say.
Most.
Now I'm actually a right -handed golfer and I'm left-eye dominant, and Jack Nicklaus was left-eye dominant as well.
And if, what our tendency is, and I'm going to show you this in the end of this video, I'm going to show you where some of the faults come in with this focus point.
But I want you guys to see it firsthand with what Zach does from a reverse angle.
So pay close attention to the brim of his hat right here.
You see that little tiny bit of black showing there?
Okay, so we're going to start the move and you're going to see his hat start to tilt.
See the head tilt right there, okay, now that's what he's doing there.
He's actually shifting his focus, his lead eye right there to the back of the golf ball.
And you're going to see how important this little move is for not only rotation, but you're going to see how it can create a lot of consistency down in the hitting area.
So let's go ahead and take a look at this drill now.
Okay guys, So if you've had a really hard time hitting the golf ball solidly in the center of the clubface, where it counts the most, I'm going to go ahead and show you guys a very simple and effective drill that's going to help solve a lot of your problems in your golf swing, believe it or not.
And it has a lot of the way, it has a lot to do with the way we focus on the golf ball.
Okay, Some of the common issues that we see from a lot of amateur golfers, or just students of the game in general, is we see a lot of head movement through the hitting area.
Whether it be a lot of tilt from the head, or we see a lot of rotation from the head, or, in turn, we see the head moving out in front of the golf shot.
Now what's the real big cause of that?
Well, if you look at right-handed golfers, most of them are right-eye dominant aside from Jack Nicklaus.
Jack Nicklaus is actually left-eye dominant.
I also am left-eye dominant and I'm going to get into the drill here in a moment.
But the problem is that when you're right-eye dominant, your tendency is to start to let the eyes want to see what's going on.
It's the way that we process information in our downswing.
It's part of the vestibular process.
And if you want to start to see what's going on early, chances are that's going to make your eyes move, which in turn can make your head move, which in turn can make your shoulders move, and then so on and down the line.
So if you've noticed that your body is really spinning open, or if you've noticed a lot of secondary axis tilt, this is a great drill to help you eliminate both of those issues.
All right, and I want you to try it out.
So when you take your address position, your setup position here, What I want you to do is I want you to now focus your left eye right on the back of the ball through the entire swing.
So you're going to focus your left eye on the back of the ball all the way through the release.
And what you're going to notice is that it's going to actually take a lot of the rotation out and a lot of that secondary axis tilt.
That's causing you to get hung back.
This is a great way to hit the golf ball more solidly, more frequently.
Try it out.
Left eye on the back of the ball and you'll be on your way to playing some great golf.
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Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
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