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This
is the Rick Smith signature video series, a presentation of Ford Electronics Audio Systems
available through your Ford or Lincoln Mercury dealer.
This is a Rick Smith signature video, Swing Foundations, how to build an efficient and
reputable golf swing.
This tape is going to give you what I would consider of your encyclopedia of golf, and
it's going to help you to understand that different things may give you trouble as you
practice or as you play, and a lot of times you don't have to go through every fundamental,
but you have to find out maybe, hey my body motion doesn't feel right, what should I do?
You can refer to that section.
My setup doesn't feel right, maybe I need to work on that.
It will be a good tape for you to have for a long time as you grow and try to improve
at any level.
Rick Smith is widely considered golf's renaissance man, award winning course architect, coach
to PGA Tour stars like Lee Jensen, director of golf at Treetop Sylvan Resort in Michigan,
and developer of his own high level golf academies.
In 1989, Smith asked Henry Young to join him as a senior instructor at his golf schools.
They are now considered one of the world's most formidable and dynamic teaching teams.
In this tape, Henry and Rick concentrate their energies on improving the play of all golfers
by providing the essential fundamentals of a great golf swing.
We tell our students that the golf swings are very dynamic in the sense that they're
always getting better or getting worse, and if they're just constantly looking for the
one quick fix, quick tip, band-aid type of thing in order for their swings to get better,
they're never going to accomplish what they're after.
So fundamentally, they need to start looking at their golf swings from a sound standpoint
and doing the right things to get them back on track.
You know what?
Do you really want a good golf swing?
You go to the practice tee.
You make a bunch of backswings.
You make good turns back.
You work on your footwork.
You work on your release, everything else.
But you know what?
Chances are, nine times out of ten, you've forgotten one of the five pre-swing fundamentals.
You know, Henry, we work with so many players, and it's amazing how their pre-swing fundamentals
are really bad.
Well, it's interesting that even the very good players, even the professionals that
we work with, ultimately their swing problems are attributable to a pre-swing fundamental,
whether it be posture or alignment, even a grip sometimes, and certainly that situation
is even magnified with the average player.
You know, there's no doubt that when you practice, you have to have good things to practice before
that club starts in motion.
Major influence of the golf swing is with the five pre-swing fundamentals, and we want
to go over those with you today.
You know, Henry, the first thing that we know is one of the most important influences of
the club face and the swinging of the golf club would be the grip.
And sometimes, you know, with the viewer, you say, oh, the grip, the grip's not exciting.
I don't want to, the grip's not exciting at all.
But you know, without a good grip, something bad's going to happen.
One way to say it would be, what would happen if you had a perfect golf swing with a poor
grip?
The golf ball's not going to go where you want it to go, and if you don't realize you've
got a poor grip, you're going to start manipulating your swing somehow to correct for that.
And there we have that classic example of correcting one fault with another.
And we see that all the time.
You know, the old adage, Harvey Penick, one of the great old teachers that has worked
with a lot of great players, bad grip, bad swing, good grip, good swing.
A lot can be said about that comment, you know.
And I think what that means is, you know, you look at Freddie Couples, you look at Paul
Aizinger, they've got a grip that's a little bit unorthodox.
But their golf swing accommodates the grip.
We would like to go over some very, very important positions.
And in terms of commonalities that we see with all great players, hand action, club
face control, you see grip that looks like this.
If my arms are hanging down from my sides like this, you'll notice that, just naturally
speaking, the palms are facing my body.
You know, we've seen a lot of things like this.
Palms face each other.
But you know, actually, if I come down into this position, I feel tight in my arms.
And if I relax my arms, you can see the position is not palms face each other.
In fact, if I take this club right now, and this is a great way to start, you'll notice
my palm facing my body opposed to this position.
This is a rotational action of my left arm, which would very much hurt my backswing in
terms of the average player.
And I think it's important to let the arm hang and relax.
Now from here, I'm going to take the toe of the club and let it point up to the sky.
And I'm just going to slide it into my fingers.
Notice that my thumb is just to the right of center.
And the club is running through the center of my index finger into my palm.
Now from here, I'm going to go ahead and center the club to my body.
Now you'll notice this gap here.
There isn't a gap, is there?
Notice that my thumb is just to the right of center.
I'm going to take this tee, and I'm going to put it right into this position.
Notice it's secure enough or it won't fall out, plus the position of it's going to my
right shoulder, which is very important.
A lot of times, if your hand is turned to the left, you'll see this position, and the
tee is obviously going towards the left side of my body.
And from here, I'm in trouble.
This is going to make me have a bad backswing and a poor impact position.
Face is going to be open all the time, and I won't have any club head speed either.
Now as far as the gap, a lot of times if your thumb gets too far apart, then all of a sudden
the tee falls out.
So that's a tremendous reference point for your left hand.
As far as your right hand position, let's go ahead and let the right hand sneak in from
the hip.
I'm going to let it sneak in from here.
You can see now basically the position of my right hand mirrors my left hand, and you'll
notice that the V is pointing to my right shoulder.
In terms of where this finger is, the index finger, a lot of people get it in there and
they grip it real tight, and the index finger is tucked in too close to the middle finger
of the right hand.
Go ahead and let the index finger right here, it's right about, I call this the pistol part
of the hand, of the right hand, let it be equal to the end of my thumb.
That's a good reference point.
You'll notice this, position of my palm, lifeline of the right hand presses down a little bit
onto the thumb.
If I take this tee, I almost feel like I can cover that tee right up.
You can't see it, and you can't see my thumb coming out either from my right hand.
Now from this position, where do we grip it in terms of the pinky finger?
For smaller hands, it's nice to go into the interlock grip.
Jack Nicholas has this grip where you're basically interlocking the little finger of your right
hand with the left index finger of the left, and they lock like this.
If you're kind of a beginner or you don't have a lot of strength, I don't mind you going
to a ten finger grip, that's fine.
But most of us really like to get you into an overlap grip.
This is the best unification of hands to club.
So in terms of that, the position of your hands is very important in influencing the
club face throughout.
Now one other area is grip pressure.
You know, Henry, we talk a lot about the pressure of our hands to the club, and we try to use
the analogy of a tube of toothpaste in terms of squeezing.
If we don't have any pressure at all, we can't squeeze the tube of toothpaste and get anything
out of it, or if you do it too tight, it just comes flying out.
So just enough to get it to come out.
And I think that's a nice analogy to grip pressure, because we see people grip it very
tight for the most part.
We see that a lot, and when the grip pressure gets tight, tension runs up the arms, we see
a lot of short backswings and a lot of swings with not enough wrist cock in the backswing
from that.
So a lot of relationships here from grip to swing.
You know, and another thing, what I do, it's a nice little test to figure out how much
pressure I've got.
If I'm gripping it real tight, I can't make a very big circle here.
You can see that.
Now if I tried to make a big circle, you can see how rigid that looks.
If I'm gripping the club just at the right pressure, I can make a nice flowing circle
with the club head.
And this is a nice little test for your grip pressure.
If it's obviously too loose, then all of a sudden it kind of just falls out of your hands.
So positioning of the hands, the grip pressure, Henry, it influences the golf swing more than
anything, doesn't it?
It's the number one pre-swing fundamental, there's no doubt about it.
A good grip means a good golf swing.
Alignment, absolutely critical.
Club face to target, body, in terms of body lines, you have to understand that there's
parallel lines.
You have to understand also that there are adjustments that can be made to hit different
golf shots.
So you have to understand where a parallel square is, and you have to also understand
that your shoulder alignment, your hip alignment, your arm alignment, your toe alignment, knee
alignment, those things are very important and establishes the correct swing path.
And there's no doubt that alignment influences your direction tremendously, and frankly it
influences your power, because if you're out of line, you're not going to hit a good solid
golf shot.
The second of the pre-swing fundamentals is aim.
You know, this may seem to you right now that we're getting into some things like aim.
Aim, what's the big deal about aim?
Well, aim is everything.
If you understand aim, that would be aim of the club face and aim of the body, and you
know, Henry, we've got a lot of players that come up and we work with them, and they're
so into their golf swings, and they really don't know that much about aiming, do they?
Well, no, they really don't, and again, getting back to good players that we work with, many
of them have a swing fault that's attributable to poor alignment, and you would think that
the average player would think that the good player, the professional player, the tour
player would never have a problem with that, but unbelievably they do.
So it's not that easy of a thing to do correctly, although it is very, very important.
So we get into alignment, and we say the first thing that you want to do is set the club
face to the golf ball correctly, which would be aim, and the thing that we see a lot of
people doing incorrectly is really paying attention to the wrong part of the club, and
looking primarily at the top of the club instead of the bottom, and of course I'm speaking
of an iron here.
The top of the club actually veers off to the right.
The bottom of the club is what we want to look at, because that's what we want to set
on the ground at right angles to the target line, so that then we can go ahead and have
a reference point for placing the body.
You know, it seems like so many times that misdirected shots influence the club face.
They turn the club face in, a slicer will try to hood the face, and then all of a sudden
we'll make a compensation with our body.
I'd like you to go over our body lines so that people understand that we're dealing
with parallel lines here.
Well, getting into the positioning of the body, again, it's also a fallacy that the
foot line would aim to the target, and again, we're talking about maybe what would seem
to be a minute discrepancy here, but a very important discrepancy.
The stance line actually never points to the target, but it points slightly left of the
target because the target line would point to the target, and the target line is a line
that would extend from behind the ball through it, and then continuing out to your target,
which would be obviously the center of the fairway or the green or whatever.
If my body line is inside or to the left of the target line, then this line obviously
could not point to the same place.
Parallel lines would never meet, so for the right-handed golfer, we encourage them to
get into a position that we would call parallel left.
The stance line, the knee line, the hip line, the forearms, and most importantly, the shoulder
line would be parallel left of the target line, not too far left and not too far right.
You know, it's amazing.
I've seen so many players come up to the golf ball, and they'll address the golf ball like
this, and when they do that, they're going to go like this, and they go, oh, let's see.
I'll put the club right on the target.
That's what I read.
I should do that.
Now, that's exactly what we see, don't we?
Then all of a sudden, the swing changes, and it's really affected, isn't it?
The other thing, too, is that people get so involved with the positioning of their feet,
they really forget the shoulder line, and it's very, very possible from a physical standpoint
to put the feet in the right position but still have the shoulders closed or open, and
obviously more often than not, misalignment, we see shoulders that are open even if the
feet are in the correct position, and even sometimes we see cases of where the feet are
to the right because the golfer's trying to stop his slice and swing inside out, but maybe
because he's got the ball too far forward or just because he gets into a poor body position,
the shoulders are still open anyway, so the arms connected to the shoulders, that's what
controls the direction of movement of the club.
Foot position really is not having much of an influence in where they're swinging the
club, and they still slice it.
So really we're dealing with our toe line, knee line, hip line, arm line, shoulder line,
and even more importantly is eye line.
It's a discussion, people don't talk about eye line very much, they think, oh eye line,
what's that matter?
Well, we know that if the eyes are not lined up correctly, all of a sudden the whole mind
is really totally out of, it doesn't know where it is, does it?
You get fooled with your eye line sometimes, and a lot of times when your head is moving,
you're not really aware of it, it moves out of position, your eyes are still focused on
the golf ball, you don't even realize your head is moving, and as you know, you've been
helping me with this, I have a tendency to turn my head to the right as I start my backswing,
my eye line gets to this position where it's actually out to the right, and that encourages
me to take the club back too far to the inside.
So eye line is not an issue that people pay enough attention to either.
It's the signal, it's the signal of where you are in terms of reference points which
are on the ground.
I mean, I think it's another point to bring up is that if you address a golf ball and
you get into a situation where your club face is square to the target, one thing, a very
simple thing that I really enjoy in terms of taking it to the golf course, I always
say chest to the ball, belt buckle to the ball, and this more specifically for the iron
because the iron is more in the center of the stance.
If the ball gets forward, obviously we don't want to take that concept that way because
then you'd get opened up.
But the fact is, the golf swing is a tilted circle, and based on that fact, your chest
must face the golf ball because it influences your swing plane, doesn't it?
We simply want the golfer to get into the best position possible that will allow or
encourage a good golf swing, a fundamentally sound golf swing, and unfortunately we see
too many people that put themselves in a starting position that disallows for any chance to
make a good golf swing, and again, a lot of times people are in a poor starting position
with aim or alignment because of a faulty swing, and they're trying to make adjustments,
but they don't really realize it's kind of a shortcut.
It's not going to get them anywhere.
They're correcting one fault with another.
Which we know is the most lethal thing in the world of golf, you know?
So if you felt that alignment was not really that interesting, that was a big mistake because
alignment is everything.
It starts here, and it'll go all the way through the rest of your swing, so understand it.
You know, the third of the pre-swing fundamentals is stance, and you know, Henry, we've worked
with a lot of players, and you get varieties of stances, but I think we've seen what we
would consider a commonality in stances, and I really want to go over that right now.
It would be basically the width of the stance, the positioning of the feet, and then it would
be in relationship to the line and where your feet are relative to the line.
Exactly.
Another pre-swing fundamental that doesn't excite a lot of people, but nevertheless a
very important aspect to setting up to the golf ball correctly.
As we know, the width of the stance determines the body motion, but I want to show you where
you should be, and this is a good reference point when you practice.
If you take an iron swing, and this is again for a full swing, not a chip shot or a pitch
shot, I will say in full swing reference to an iron, I would say that just to get a good
feel for where you should be, take your shoulder line, measure it off right here at the shoulder
line, bring it down to your feet, and you can put two tees in the ground, and then go
ahead and try to feel like your heels are going to be measured to that same shoulder
width stance.
So go ahead and try to find out where your heels are and let it refer to your shoulder
line.
Those should be the same.
With a driver, you're going to get a little bit wider.
Now in terms of the position of your feet, you're going to see that if your right toe,
big toe goes right to the line, it's perpendicular to the line, and the left foot is positioned
somewhat a little open to perpendicular.
The reason that we do this is because this left foot position, if it's open, it helps
rotate the hip, because a great impact position would be the hip turning out of the way, and
you can see that this is going to help promote that.
So many times we see, Henry, you know, they turn the left foot in, they think that their
toe line, just because somebody said parallel left, that they think that their toe lines
should be directly at it, and we know that's not the case at all, do we?
No, it's not the case, and yes, we can get into variations of the positioning of the
feet, but we want to have a basic standard from which to start from, and then depending
on the person's swing tendencies and so forth, then we can get into variations of stance.
So you know what's really important, it's to determine, you know, how do you measure
yourself off to find out what the stance you need, and basically, you look at the great
players that play, you don't want to be so narrow that you're moving all over the place
back and forth and losing your balance, and you don't want to get so wide where you feel
like you're very restricted in all arms, because the wider you get, the more you have to move
laterally, and a lot of lateral motion isn't good in the golf swing.
We would much rather see you start to play with your feet fairly close together, and
that helps train your arms and body to rotate back and through.
As you start to go ahead and increase your swing, you go ahead and get into a little
wider stance, for example, like a driver, I don't mind for the insides of the heels
to be a little bit wider than your shoulder line, because now you're swinging a driver,
and a driver's a longer club, and it's a very flat arc at the bottom, a very U-shaped type
of arc, and you want a sweeping motion, so if you get a little bit wider, then your extension
can accommodate the width of your stance.
If you're wide with your stance, you can't pick the club head up abruptly, because those
things just aren't, those things just don't go hand in hand.
And again, getting back to positioning of the feet, if you're a person that has too
much hip rotation, check out your right foot position, it may be opened up too much, because
then your right hip's opened up, the club gets too much to the inside.
Or the opposite end would be as if all of a sudden your swing feels short and quick,
you may be a little bit pigeon-toed here, and again, I feel like my right hip isn't
really turning out of the way, so it's important to just find out, you know, where your golf
swing is, and then go ahead and make the adjustment with your feet.
Left toe position, it's nice to keep it open to perpendicular, and more so than the right
foot, because again, you're unwinding and turning out of the way.
The last area to really discuss would be the difference between aiming to the right or
being closed.
Basically, Henry, you know, we see with a closed position to hit a draw, that this left
foot never really changed in relationship to the target line, did it?
Or in terms of the body line, did it?
Correct, no, it doesn't.
So many times we see the player who is trying to stop slicing the golf ball and trying to
hit a draw, and he knows he should have a closed stance, and he ends up pulling the
right foot back, but gradually moving the left foot, and now he's actually, he's not
really closed, he's aiming right, and that's going to encourage a swing over the top and
exactly opposite to what he's trying to do.
Exactly.
So what it means is, in terms of the position in your feet relative to your lines here,
we have our target line and our body line, if you want to hit a draw, drop your right
foot back.
Don't take both feet and move them over to the right, because before you know it, you're
going to be slicing worse, and this seems to be the thing we see most times.
In terms of hitting a fade, let this right foot stay in position and just bring the left
foot back to the line, and then from there, you're in an open stance, which means that
you're ready to hit a nice little fade or a cut shot, especially for the better player.
You don't want to take both feet and aim them off to the left, because now your lines are
getting off.
So I think it's important that you understand that, and I think if you understand the stance,
the stance is going to help you move on to some of the more significant things in your
mind, and that's going to make a difference in your golf swing.
You know, when you look at great posture, that's something that you see all the great
players work on.
You know, I'd like to see more people really work on posture, because it influences everything.
It influences solid contact, it influences balance.
If you don't start in balance, and you don't start from a strength position, we call this
power of strength, or position of strength, and it all starts with your posture.
That's what posture is.
Not getting comfortable, but getting your body athletically ready to create a motion.
Your arms must be hanging freely and soft and relaxed, and your grip pressure must be
right, but your body posture is absolutely critical in hitting solid golf shots and being
consistent with your shots.
You know, of the pre-swing fundamentals, posture seems to be the most common disaster.
When people come to our golf schools, they come in with some of the worst posture in
the world, and we know, Henry, that posture influences the golf swing more than any one
thing in terms of a static position, doesn't it?
It really does, and I like to say that your posture influences three prime areas to your
golf swing.
Number one, good posture sets you up in a really strong athletic position, which is
very important.
Number two, posture relates to the plane of the golf swing, or swinging the club on the
proper inclined circle that we talk about.
And thirdly, we want to have good posture so that the body is turning correctly, and
more precisely, what we do in good posturing is we kind of separate the upper body from
the lower, so when we turn back, we always try to turn the upper body more than the lower,
and we try to put our bodies in a starting position that would encourage that.
There's no doubt that when we see people come to our schools, we see over-flexed knees and
spines that are very straight, which basically equates to an even rotation of the upper and
the lower.
So, anatomically, the shoulders turn 90 degrees to the spine angle, so if I go with the phrase
sit down to the ball or bend my knees, which is probably wrong to start with and then gets
misperceived by people who hear that terminology, but if I bend too much or lower my rear end
too much or sit down to the golf ball, in essence, I'm putting my spine in too vertical
a position, and then when my arms and shoulders start swinging and turning, my swing gets
too flat or too much around behind me, and then what I might do is just lift the club
up in compensation for that, both things being wrong.
So, really, the posture influences the arm swing tremendously as well, doesn't it?
Well, that's really probably the prime area of those three things that I mentioned.
So, number one, posturing, we want to say that you have just a slight knee flex with
your rear end out, and one thing that happens when you do this is you feel very balanced
and very springy on the balls of your feet, and again, say in an athletic position, this
is very much like a swimmer at the edge of a pool or a linebacker getting ready to make
a tackle or even a second baseman getting ready to field a very fast hot ground ball,
so getting athletic on the balls of the feet, rear end out, upper body over, center of gravity
is still down on the balls of the feet.
With the back end out, it helps create some inclination in the spine, and I know we've
got a great exercise that really helps people understand it so that they can practice this
at home.
Well, the second thing, then, again, would be to incline the spine over so that when
the shoulders begin to turn and the arms swing, that they're swinging on an inclined plane,
so we can start from a standard starting position of being what we call the attention position
or being very vertical in the spine, chin up, arms kind of soft to the side, shaft in
front of us, shaft vertical, really representing the spine angle.
And now, as I incline over, really tilting forward at the hip joint, my spine is inclined
forward, and I'm really looking at my spine angle right here in front of me.
And I go to a certain point which, over a period of time, you just gradually relate
to, and I know I'm in about the right position here for the club to go ahead and move down
to the ground, chin up, rear end out, knees slightly flexed, not bent.
You can again see as I bend my knees, my rear end goes down and my spine moves into a more
vertical position.
You know, posture during the golf swing, there's a term I know I've tried to give a lot of
the great players I've worked with, and I know Lee Jansen, the last seven, eight months
when he really started playing well and won the U.S. Open, we said a very simple thing.
I said, Lee, I want you to get into posture, maintain it throughout your entire golf swing.
Get into your posture, work on your posture.
So he did that, and just that key of maintaining his posture took out a lot of his motion that
was an up and down motion that I really started to see creep into his swing.
And you know, we see a lot of you out there move your spines up and down, and you know,
your playing partner or your friend says to you, you know, you're moving your head all
over the place.
But chances are your spine is changing positions, and when you do that, all of a sudden your
golf swing gets very wild, and mishits start to occur.
Well, we want to set up in a position that's correct, maintain that position, not have
excessive motion or changing of that angle during the swing.
A lot of excess motion leads to a lot of inconsistencies.
You know, Henry, we know that the golf swing is a circular motion that's tilted, and I'd
like for you to demonstrate, you know, how that's true.
Well, we have one drill to help people understand the importance of posture that I think is
a very good visual, and that would be to say that if you stand in the attention position
with the spine vertical, and again, the shoulders would turn naturally level or 90 degrees to
the spine angle, if I hold my arms out and just get my arms swinging, I've got just a
basic horizontal swinging motion, which is a baseball swing, and people say, well, you
know, a baseball swing is not good for golf, and I would say, well, the baseball swing
is really the same thing as a golf swing.
It's only that the golf swing is on a tilted plane, and if I go and if I keep my arms in
motion and then just start tilting my upper body or spine at the hip joint, you can see
how the club starts lowering onto the golf plane, and now I have my same arm swinging
motion only on a tilted plane, so again, showing the importance of putting the spine on the
proper angle of inclination so that when the arms do start swinging and the shoulders do
start turning, they are moving in a manner that's conducive to swinging a golf club correctly.
Posture is an extremely important aspect of the golf swing.
It influences your ready position before you even pull the club back.
It influences your body turn.
It influences solid contact.
So whenever you're trying to work on your golf swing, you're working on your takeaway
top of swing, you're working on all those other things, why don't you pay a little bit
more attention to posture?
It's going to make a big difference in all of your different aspects of ball striking.
Give that a try.
Of the pre-swing fundamentals, ball position is a very, very important aspect in understanding
solid contact and a good swing path.
What I've got here, I've got a golf ball on the ground and I have a shaft that's laying
down and I'm going to find out where I should play this ball.
With most iron shots, and I'll say I've got a five iron right here, we have to go ahead
and say that if I were to make the perfect swing, this golf ball should be just forward
of center in my stance, right here.
So many people get set up to it that we find and they play the ball too far forward, so
with an iron, let's encourage ball back, basically back of the left heel, which would be just
forward of center in the stance.
Look at your heels as a reference point of where that ball is.
Don't pay attention to your toe line, that will mislead you.
Look at the heels if you can and then say, okay, that's center of stance, let's just
bring it forward of center slightly.
From there, this is going to ensure a nice downward action of the iron.
From here, I can hit down on the golf ball, which is going to make the ball go up and
that's solid contact and that's the right angle that we want.
If the ball gets too far forward, it's difficult to hit the golf shot.
Same thing though, if the ball is too far back, I may have a tendency from here to swing
too in to out and maybe hit down on the golf ball too much.
That could be a good ball position for a punch shot into the wind or a chip shot, but not
for a golf swing.
Let's go ahead and go into the driver.
From here, I'm going to say that this driver head, you can see that the bottom of the club
is designed to be swept and it's built this way for a reason.
I want to go ahead and move this ball just inside my left heel.
From here, my body faces the target line, the ball is inside the heel and again, I'm
using a club as a reference point.
From here, you can see when I make my turn back and I start to come through, the club
head starts coming down the line.
Now notice how by having the ball forward in the stance, that actually this golf club
is bottoming out here and then it starts to come back into an ascending action, which
means that it's more of a sweeping action.
So by positioning the ball a little forward in the stance, that ensures that type of action
to occur.
If you play it too far back in your stance, some good things can happen, but also some
bad things.
If you put it too far back in your stance, from this position here, you may swing back
and chop down on the golf ball.
That would create that descending action.
But you know what?
Chances are, if you're a slicer, which 85% of all the players we work with are, you've
got the ball too far forward.
In fact, even the tour players that I work with, when they're playing bad, their ball
gets too far forward in the stance.
And what you're going to see here is if it gets forward, all of a sudden, it has everything
to do with your swing line.
You can see the bottom of my arc here of a perfect golf swing is curved on both sides.
And by looking at this curved angle here, it really establishes where the swing should
be at the bottom of the arc.
So if the ball's forward in my stance, you can see that right here, that would put it
at this part of the swing line, which is to the left, which means if you already swing
to the left of your target line, why do you want the ball up here?
You're just going to slice even more.
But yes, I would say that that ball position pretty much is compatible to your swing path,
but to fix your swing, let's do this.
Let's move it back on the inside of the line a little bit more.
And of course, if I were making swings, that would be more back to the center.
Look what that promotes.
It promotes more of an inside path from the club head to the golf ball, which is really
the most important thing you can do.
You know, ball position needs to be paid a lot more attention to.
And you're going to find out that when you hit golf shots, if you can't, if you're making
a golf swing and you're not really hitting solid shots, move the ball around and try
to find out where that ball position is relative to your swing.
You may find out a lot about your golf swing.
If you start to get that ball way up here and start getting good results, that means
you're more in slicing mode.
And on the other hand, I would rather see you get it back a little farther in the stance
and make that inside path from the club head to the golf ball.
It's really important to understand ball position because it has everything to do with solid
contact and swing path.
You know, as far as takeaway, the takeaway establishes your entire arc and where the
club's going to be moving.
If it's moving in the wrong direction, you're going to make a compensation.
If you lift it outside, you've got to reroute the club back underneath.
Take it way inside.
You've got to work over.
Well, the minute you start to work over, that action starts to get worse and worse.
And before you know it, you're chopping.
So understanding the relationship between the club head and the handle and what takes
the club back.
It's the hands.
It's the arms.
It's the shoulder.
It's the torso that works the club back into a parallel inside position.
From there, it just makes the golf swing a lot more easily accomplished.
Also, you have to get some extension when you do that.
You know, it's time to get into the golf swing a little bit and hopefully your pre-swing
fundamentals are in order.
Your grip, your posture, your stance.
You've got those things in line.
Now it's time to move into the more important things in terms of the motion of the swing
and the setup that takes you right into a takeaway position.
You know, a takeaway, what does that mean?
Well, it means that the club head is moving away from the ball.
Well, how does that happen?
You know, you've heard terms like take the club inside.
You know, Henry, we've seen people come to our schools and we've seen some of the most
faulty takeaways ever.
Takeaways, poor takeaways occur from poor setup and also misconceptions.
You know, we see not only the very good players and professional players with faulty takeaways,
but the higher handicapper too tends to take the club way too much to the inside in an
effort to swing inside out on the downswing and ironically it creates the very opposite
of what he's after.
You know, Henry, we've seen that.
Let's keep the elbow in.
It's been a real bad thought, hasn't it?
It really has.
The elbow is to move away from the side as you swing back.
It's to have some freedom of movement.
The only time we want the elbow in close to the side is really on the downswing and people
try to shortcut and keep that elbow in too close going back.
They really do.
The shortcut is a good point because the player thinks elbow in, they suck it right into their
body.
There is no arc and there's really no room to swing down the line at all.
Usually they come right over the top of it and they're in deep trouble.
The face is left open and there's no power there.
So really what the width of arc here, you're trying to establish a width so that you can
develop a little bit of power and basically you're just making a bigger circle to your
swing, aren't you?
Back swing, important.
Take away, important to help establish the direction of movement coming down and though
it's not a direct relationship, there is a very, very large relationship between how
you swing the club back and how you swing it down.
You know, there's no doubt in the take away position, I feel like I've created a triangle
between my hands, wrists, arms and shoulders and torso and basically if I did not have
my club, I would move back like this with the hands, arms and torso with the thumbs
up and from this position, that's a very good position in the take away and I want to feel
that with the club.
So when I go back, I'm going to feel the club head, the shaft, the handle, everything's
going back together.
Notice that the golf swing is not a straight line.
We don't want it traveling this way because based on the fact that, you know, Henry, it's
a tilted circle, the club must have an inside path but notice that when I get back to a
halfway back position, it's inside parallel, isn't it?
Club head is inside the target line with the shaft parallel to your stance and target lines
and maybe a few inches but two and a half inches inside your toe line.
So basically, you don't want to swing the club back on your toe line.
You can see your arms are too far away from your body and you don't want to take the club
straight back.
The thing to focus on here is this, that the handle and the club head move together.
You can see that the hands, the arms, the shoulders work back in unison to this point.
We don't want to take the shoulders and turn the club back.
You know, so many times we hear terms like make a good turn so all of a sudden the player
again Henry, you know that shortcut turn means to turn.
Well I've turned but I've lost my path because the bottom of my arc is going to be very affected
by that type of takeaway.
So make sure when you go back that it's nice to put a club down about three inches inside
your toe line.
If you can get a shaft or a broken shaft, put it in the ground like so, three inches
inside the toe line and make sure as a reference point, just take your triangle back.
Your head stays fairly still at this point to try to find out where that hosel is.
You can see that the hosel meets this and from here now the wrists and hands can work
up.
I can make that full turn and yes Henry, now I can feel that elbow staying into the side.
Without a good takeaway it's almost impossible to make a good golf swing.
It's going to take away the importance of it and your whole golf swing is going to change.
You know if the golf swing is an athletic action and you look at all the great sports
you see coiling and you see weight distribution occurring.
In the golf swing the lower body doesn't move as much as the upper.
In fact it's half of that and the right hip has got to be turning back and you've got
to feel like your upper body is loaded into the right side.
In terms of your top of swing you've got to have your wrist cocked at some point.
Now your arc is important too and you want to get your hands into a good solid position
on plane.
The left arm is angled back, the right arm is in what I call a tray position or L position
and that's what top of swing is all about.
Without a good top of swing it's very difficult to achieve solid contact and power.
More importantly it's position.
You've got to be on plane or coming down in the right path to hit a good golf shot.
Most people are not in position but it really all stems from being in a bad backswing.
You know you've gotten the club back to here pretty good Henry you know but we've got to
go back to the top of swing position.
You know a great top of swing position is a necessity.
Without a good backswing and without a complete backswing you cannot play good golf.
You can't expect to ever hit solid golf shots if you can't get her back to the top.
You know Henry let's go ahead and take that all the way to the top from there and let's
point out a couple things.
You know I'm noticing a couple things and it reminds me of standing on the lesson team
saying turn the chest back to me.
You know I can see that your buttons are pointing to me.
I notice that your hips are half turned of your shoulders, your right arm positioned.
I can see that the bottom of your arm is parallel to the ground.
I can see that the shaft is all the way to parallel.
Club face is very square.
You know I've just said a lot of things right there and it's tough to go out and play and
think about shoulders and hips and everything else.
So we've got some good top of swing drills that are going to make a big difference for
the player.
Do you want to show it to us?
Sometimes it's hard for the golfer to swing back and get into that position so we've devised
a couple of drills that will help them do that.
First one would be going back to our vertical hinge drill where we just cock the wrists
up fully.
We've got again a 90 degree angle between arm and shaft.
Now I've got my wrist cocked for my backswing.
Now I'm going to just turn my shoulders 90 degrees.
Now I've got my turn or my pivot and now I'm just going to swing my arms up and I'm going
to get pretty much into that good solid position that I want to be in.
If I have a mirror here I can look and check myself and check all those points that you
just identified.
Shaft position, face position, arm position and so on.
You know the vertical hinge drill is very good especially for feeling where the club
is in your hands.
The club seems to work up into a great position and you've got a blending of turning there
and that's very important.
From a side angle I think it's important that the people see where the body is at the top
of the swing.
You know it's an athletic motion.
We want to coil into our right leg and it's very important that we do that.
I'd like you to go ahead and go into that power position exercise where you swing back
to the top and then lift the foot off the ground hand.
Great extension.
Full wrist cock to the top.
Full turn.
So what I like about this Henry and we always say this to the student, hold your turn back.
Now go ahead and lift your left foot right off the ground.
Notice how he's going to try to lift the foot off the ground and stay fully coiled.
Usually you know we see Henry when they do this drill they're coiled and then all of
a sudden as they lift the foot they come back around and they lose that coil.
So it's important when you do that power position exercise with the left foot coming off the
ground it gives you that sensation of feeling coiled into the right side which is very important.
It really does and so many times we have people who are turning but their weight's really
not shifting back into the right leg so this is a good checkpoint for them too.
You're looking at the arms, you're checking the arm position but feeling that the coil
has moved your weight properly into the right side just feeling that left foot coming off
the ground a little bit it's a good checkpoint.
It helps trigger the downswing almost naturally.
A lot of people say to us you know a downswing what do you start it with?
Well if you don't get back right how are you going to have a natural motion coming down
which is the movement back to the ball, the unwinding and the release of the arms, hands
and club to the golf ball.
You know another great drill that we've got is the shaft to the shoulder drill and it
really does a combination of great things.
Very similar to the vertical hinge drill some people like this one or prefer this one more
instead of just hinging my wrist I'm going to hinge my wrist but fold my arms also and
then just put the shaft on my right shoulder.
From this position I might say that as I do this I'm not going to be lifting my body up
I'm staying in my golfing postured position shaft on the shoulder now again I turn and
now I stretch.
I want to get my left arm nice and extended I want to let my right elbow move away from
the side and I want to ensure the fact that my shaft is parallel to my stance and target
lines not across the line which we see from players who get the elbow up too high or what
would be called a laid off position for people that might fan the club face and have the
right elbow down too low.
It's interesting how many bad positions golfers can get into at the top of the backswing.
You know so that really pretty much shows that you've got to have some exercises and
drills that help you feel all those things we talked about.
We talked about 15 different things that relate to the backswing.
How are you going to go out on that golf course and make a swing and think about all those
things?
You've got to have exercises and drills such as these to make your backswing more understood
and so you can feel it and take it with you to the golf course.
That's really what it's all about anyway.
Based on the fact that if you're at a good top of swing position at 90% of your weight
coiled into your right side in a full cocking of the wrist where the club's either just
above parallel to the ground or at horizontal or parallel to the ground, you would find
that you're now ready to make a downswing and you have to now start to move the left
knee and the left hip to the left.
That transfers the weight to the left side which allows the arms to drop down on plane.
Most of the time we see the downswing sequence get off where first of all they're not in
a good backswing position but even so, say you're in a great backswing position, the
sequence is usually club head first, hands, wrists, always moving out above the plane
in most cases or under for the good player and then from there the hips and body respond
and they spin.
They either hang back and spin as the club gets way out away from them on the downswing
or the good player over slides the hips, gets way too much weight outside of his left foot,
the club drops way in underneath and now a compensation must occur.
You have to have a good understanding of a good downswing and we've got some good exercises
to prove those points.
You know there's a great adage that says and states that if a good backswing occurs an
improved downswing will be the result.
Well you know Henry, there's no doubt that a great top of swing position is going to
help us get into the correct impact and we know that impact, the moment of truth is when
it all happens and we better be in position.
Well absolutely, you've got to achieve a good impact position and the better your top of
backswing position is, the better the chance you're going to have coming down to impact
correctly but again there's no guarantee so there's some things that we need to know and
work on to train ourselves to swing down from the top correctly.
You know I think it's really important to understand we've got some nice little obstacles
here that I would call these intimidators you know.
One is a club shaft that represents my shaft line here and here is again, this is kind
of a nice device that represents where my swing should be coming down and a couple things.
You know once you extend the club head back and you work it back into a parallel position
and coil, you'll notice that I've got almost 90% of my weight on my right side.
I'm coiled into my right, the club's to parallel, my left arm is not vertical, it's angled back
somewhat, right arm, bottom of the arm is parallel to the ground.
From here, I do this for a reason now, you know Henry they say sequence of motion, we
talk about how the average player, typical situation, the arms, the right shoulder moves
outside the toe line, a lot of the weight from the lower body hangs back and the club
comes over the top and into that slicing position and it gets back to sequence of motion doesn't
it?
Sequence of motion and people's anxiety, don't want to hit the ball too soon, too hard, also
the premature uncocking of the wrist, all of those things can cause the club to go out
or a combination of those things, right shoulder, right arm, premature uncocking and the bottom
line is lower body is going to respond incorrectly and then by the time you get back to impact,
everything is just out of position.
I think it's important to make a note too that the good player slides his hips too much
and the club drops way under and then he flip hooks, that's just the opposite but you know
we only see fifteen percent of you do that, the rest of the players hit that slice and
we want to address that but more importantly it's what happens in the down swing?
Well, once you're at the top, you can see that I'm loaded up ninety percent of my weight
on my right side, from here my left knee and my left hip start to slide to the left and
as that occurs the arms are coming down, take a look at this downward position of the club
my right, my shoulder never gets outside the toe line, I feel very balanced and very much
to the center of my feet.
So I went from ninety percent of my weight on my right side at the top, now more into
a fifty-fifty position, Henry and you know that's given me room for my arms to drop down
where they belong.
Very interesting too and as you look at the shaft, we see the shaft assuming the same
parallel to your toe line position as you get halfway down as it was when you went back
so we like to say we want to hit that point twice going back and coming down, many golfers
are inside that point going back and outside it coming down or whatever other variation
that they can get into but it's interesting to know when your sequence is correct coming
down the shaft drops down into the slot and assumes that parallel position again.
You know it's nice to feel this and I think a good drill that I like a lot and I see Corey
Pavin, I see a lot of good players do this, I take a driver and I put my palm on the grip
and once I get to the top of my swing what you're starting to see is that the left shoulder
stays up high, it stays, it's not working this way so much but it's just staying up
the right shoulder is working down here with the right arm, you can see that my lower body
is shifting to the left, this is a tremendous exercise to feel your right downswing position.
From here I go ahead and rotate my right forearm underneath and through as my body turns through
but you know a thought that has killed people is when you get to the top of the swing to
turn the hips can sometimes create this, turning of the hips creates the outward action, we
would rather if you're in a slicing mode learn to feel like you're loaded up 90% of your
weight to your right, go ahead and feel like your arms are dropping, your left hip and
left knee are moving left, that's a powerful position, remember that you don't want the
club back in here but you sure as heck don't want the club out above the plane so if you
do this little exercise here it's going to help you feel a downswing position, also it's
nice to take a broken shaft, put it outside the line by about a foot and angle it down
a little bit but make sure that you've got a little alley here, chances are that you
would hit that on the way down and that would scare the daylights out of you but it's a
nice practice swing exercise to help you rehearse the right downswing and also you can see this,
I'd like to put this on the ground right about at 3 inches inside my toe line and mirror
the backswing and the downswing, try to practice this here, top of swing, weight shifting here,
I'm here, I'm here, what a great downswing drill, you know you've got to have these types
of exercise to better understand where your downswing should be because the more you understand
it the better you're going to be.
You know sometimes you get tied up, you're working on all these different mechanics and
you don't understand the most important thing in the world in golf and that's the impact
position, there are a lot of misconceptions Henry about impact and we've got to make some
points about it.
A lot of misconceptions and just people really never think about the impact position, they
get so caught up in some of the other positions and sometimes forget that they're all means
to an end, a dress position, top of backswing, half way back, half way down, it's all for
the moment of truth which is when the club is actually contacting the golf ball.
You know I think one of the most important things to visualize in terms of your images
should be this, once you set up to the golf ball you must say to yourself ok this is my
address position, this is going to help me work the club back in a good position, now
in terms of returning back to this point many people have responded to us and they've said
once asked where's impact, oh their comment is basically well isn't it right here, you
know that's not the right answer is it Henry, you know people think that this is it, I'll
show you something, in slow speed we've taken all the great players that have played the
game and this is the position you're going to see not where you are when you start, take
a look at this, right at impact the hips rotate in turn, the right foot is rolled inward,
knee working in towards the target, the left hip is back here, notice the right shoulder
is not above the target or the toe line here, it's back right here, the shoulders are both
very square or parallel to the line, now this is important to understand because now I've
got some support for the swinging of the club head at impact, notice also that my hands
have come just slightly forward and upward at impact and that's just the fact that centrifugal
force of the club head is going to bend the club this way a little bit but you must understand
something, the position of the body is supporting an aggressive arm swing, your body moves a
very small distance in the swing relative to the club head and your arm swing so you
have to understand that if I were to turn back and erase my arms to the golf ball and
if I were stuck here the club face would shut down abruptly, I may even change the bottom
of my arc hitting way behind the golf ball hitting it fat because at this point the club's
got nowhere to go, you've got to be able to support that action, now on the other hand
understand this, when you get to the top you don't want to race your body out because now
your arms are way behind and that's going to create this type of impact so you've got
to have some exercises to help you understand impact and Henry we've got a great one if
I can just borrow your club and I'm going to hit a few shots out this way to really
show the people where impact is and this is really good for you, I'm going to go ahead
and set up to it, you'll see this club pretty much resembles this shaft that's in the ground
and again understanding impact is here, I'm going to do this a few times and then I'm
going to make a backswing and then I'm going to try to move through that position, notice
the sequence of motion it really looks a lot like this, that type of action it's not this
way nor is it this way, okay so understand that if here's your set up there's impact
let's stay here a few times swing the club back in miniature form have the club come
down on the inside path and hit some solid shots just extending through that point because
if you start making full swings and you know that impact is here my goodness you should
be able to swing back to this point we know that's a loaded backswing let's go through
that impact into a good finish and you're going to know that all of a sudden you're
going to start hitting the ball more solid your inside path is going to be more accomplished
that way your sequence of motion is going to improve and the understanding of impact
is going to help you hit the ball a lot farther it's going to give you the chance to be aggressive
with your arms swing and that's what we want for distance and just better golf shots.
You know impact is the moment of truth you know in our golf schools all we ever emphasize
is the fact that the golf ball only cares about one thing and it's impact you know where's
the club coming from well if the club is coming down on the outside coming into the golf ball
your impact is not going to be very good if your club face is coming in real shut that's
not a good impact condition you know so many people tell us let's get set up for the golf
ball where is impact and they think it's the address position and that's not right at all
the club face is square the hands are ahead the body is turned open the weight is on the
left the shoulders are fairly square and depending on what kind of a player you are if you don't
understand that where your impact condition is when you're hitting bad shots you know
how are you ever going to fix that you have to pay attention to your impact understand
that your ball flight is going to respond to your impact condition pay attention to
the golf ball that's going to tell you where you are at impact and then understand where
the correct position is and learn to move through that correct impact position it's
a moment of truth that's where everything occurs you know the finish position needs
to be understood very simply we work on the backswing but we must work also on the forward
circle which is post impact after the golf ball it's a continuous motion the golf swing
is not a static position you must know where you have to move through and to the to position
would be the finish position clubs the club is resting on the back the arms are soft the
body is pivoted forward rotated the spine angles intact if you can learn to move into
this position it's going to improve your swinging technique it's not a hitting motion it's
a swinging motion in a finished position is where it's at post impact arms are extended
and then from that point the face is rotating to a square position the wrists are basically
re cocking and then going into a soft finish you've got to know where finish is and you've
got to practice that just like you would your backswing you know the golf swing is not a
hitting action it's a swinging motion and we like to put the golf swing into a complete
motion but you know we have to sometimes break down the golf swing into segments so people
can work on those individual areas they need to have an understanding of all aspects of
the golf swing Rick and going from impact into the finishing position is part of the
swing that sometimes gets neglected often times we have to talk to our students about
completing the golf swing not only with their arms but also with their bodies so obviously
an important aspect of the swing a result of things that have come before but sometimes
something that you need to address specifically you know I know we always work on this side
of the circle or that side of the golf ball which is absolutely critical but it's nice
to finish the circle isn't it it is nice to finish the circle and so we look at it from
two standpoints one saying that if you achieve a good impact position because of a lot of
good things that have happened prior to that then the consequence should be a good finish
on the other hand by working on a finish sometimes we can improve somebody's swing kind of in
reverse other things that happen prior to the finish will get better in their effort
to strive to a good finishing position you know we've got a couple really good exercises
for you and the first one is what we call the impact to finish exercise which is really
good for not only the average player but really good for the good player because the good
player we know gets very out of sequence where the body gets ahead the arms are behind and
then they're either playing catch up or they're starting to slap and they hit the ball to
the right the impact exercise to finish seems to help the average player as well because
they're not used to feeling that at all either not at all and so and then we get back to
it isn't it a nice blending of body motion and arm swing and the release of the hands
it's a blending of these things happening somewhat naturally in unison in good sequence
of motion not over emphasizing one at the expense of the other and then we kind of get
out of kilter which boils down to our whole philosophy and teaching is that we've got
our areas to work with we've got our arm swing shape we've got our body motion we've
got the cocking and uncocking of the wrist and we've got our setup we've got our sequence
and we say hey those are a lot of things to think about but we've segmented things for
you so that you can better understand them Henry go ahead and let's go ahead and show
them the impact to finish exercise and then the start to finish exercise they're reassuming
the impact position then we look to the motion from this point on what happens and obviously
that the golf swing would be a dynamic situation the arms would be swinging through fairly
forcefully we've got momentum and centrifugal force created at this point which would result
in an arm swing extending and rotating of the arms the body is shifting and rotating
as well and it results in what we call this completed finish you know try that again I'm
going to make a point to the people here is you come forward your triangle is intact with
your arms and hands and club and it's amazing how the forward side of the circle naturally
came back to the inside because your body turned and the club was right along with that
it's not like you turned your body and left the club back nor did you swing the club to
the left and not move your body I like that look through the golf ball and the extended
position then all the way to a soft finish is very nice looking that looks like all the
great players that you see on the tube that are making all that money go ahead and do
that again here tremendous impact tremendous extension into a finish it's very soft armed
notice I like to Henry's that your buttons on your shirt and your belt buckle are facing
me your right knee is worked in close to your left you can almost take a newspaper and you
can almost pinch that closed right there and that's a good position notice also the spikes
of your right foot are all they're now visible to the viewer with the laces going down the
middle of the fairway and the club as we know is now resting against the back instead of
being in that old high finish position which leads us to this other drill doesn't it it
does and it's also good for the average player to be aware of the fact that the right shoulder
is slightly lower than the than the left so many poor players or people who swing over
the plane down end up with a very high right shoulder and they're really not aware of where
they should be at the finish and by concentrating on the proper upper body position as they
finish the swing will help improve their whole downswing your muscles are being rehearsed
you know your mind and your muscles are working together it's nice to do these things in front
of the mirror it's nice to do these in the backyard you can do them in the basement you
can do them a lot of different places even without hitting golf balls isn't that right
well we encourage our students to spend more time doing drills and really working in front
of a mirror than hitting balls we feel like hitting balls ball after ball after ball and
really not being aware of the positions as accurately as being in front of a mirror it's
really not good for most people they can get much more done working in front of a mirror
most of the time you know there's no doubt that if you can do that then you can get get
out to the range tee some golf balls up create a swinging motion and the ball seems to get
in the way doesn't it just gets in the way you've got to be able to work on these things
and better understand the impact to finish exercise as well as the start to finish exercise
you're going to see a difference in your entire game and your rhythm is going to change it's
going to be a lot smoother you're going to feel more coordinated and you're not going
to be chopping anymore you're going to be making some good golf swings whenever you
have problems in your golf swing you're going to be able to go back to this tape you're
going to be able to refer to the different categories that are involved in making a sound
swing there are good foundations in this tape that will last you forever this is a game
of a lifetime and this this can help your junior player this can help the most advanced
player and understanding maybe getting back to simplicity and yet is it simple it's just
to say it's very fundamental and it's very important the rick smith signature video swing
foundations was a presentation of ford electronics it's technology with a purpose in all ford
lincoln and mercury vehicles if you find you can't get enough of rick smith then please
go to your local supplier or call 1-800-637-3557 to get more private video lessons available
now on rick's other signature videos look for 95 minutes of great instruction on rick's
range tips video and another one hour for the advanced or tour player reaching the highest
level that's 1-800-637-3557 the hottest instructor in golf has more great instruction available
on his two other videos range tips and reaching the highest level see your local supplier
or call 1-800-637-3557 rick smith signature videos have been produced by prime time two
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