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  • - Hi Adam Bazalgette here founder of Scratch Golf Academy

  • here at the beautiful Club at Mediterra.

  • Golf swing drills to stop early release,

  • this is a problem that just plagues people,

  • I think it's perfectly fixable.

  • I'll show you some ideas, the ones that I find work

  • for me in teaching.

  • Give you three reasons,

  • show you how the pros do it differently

  • by giving you three reasons

  • or three things you have to do to stop this

  • and some drills to help you out with it.

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  • Let's have some fun with these early release drills.

  • So this whole business of lag getting the club

  • past the ball, hitting but the ball before the ground.

  • Listen a lot of people find this really, really,

  • challenging, I don't think it needs to be that challenging,

  • hopefully I can help you in this video.

  • Not all pros do it the same, they don't all look like

  • they have the same amount of lag,

  • but there's one thing that they all do.

  • Let's have a quick look at a couple of players

  • and see what this critical, critical, variable is.

  • So Davis Love on the Left, Tom Watson on the right

  • both major championship winners.

  • Tom Watson eight majors for that matter,

  • Davis Love great lagger at the club.

  • You can see he's got more lag than Tom Watson there,

  • and certainly if we take them right around when they're

  • getting ready to hit it he certainly has a little bit

  • more than Watson, and some have even more

  • and some have even a little bit less.

  • what they all do though regardless,

  • they all get the handle of the golf club

  • right around the end of the glove there,

  • pass that golf ball before

  • the club head goes down to vertical

  • and meets the ground so the club handle must pass

  • the golf ball before the club reaches the ground.

  • Of course Davis does that with plenty of room to spare,

  • just look at that, what a great look there.

  • I have a free three-part detailed course

  • solid strike formula really will help you

  • with hit your iron solidly,

  • just go down the description box and pick it up.

  • Okay so when I give golf lessons,

  • I've been doing that for 30 years,

  • I'm pretty used to how people going about,

  • or the kinds of experiences they have when they try

  • to improve their golf swing.

  • I really don't see people have much success trying

  • to tuck their elbow in or just hold lag,

  • to me it's not that athletic,

  • it doesn't really work that well.

  • All the great players and I mean all of them,

  • to differing degrees,

  • just showed you a couple of players on

  • the video a minute ago all increase lag and store energy.

  • Now one of the little things I'll do during a golf lesson,

  • little drills if you like I'll have a student stand here

  • and I'll come around the front,

  • kind of hold the club with them

  • and we'll hit some little chip shots 15 yards

  • or something like that.

  • It's amazing how much tension you feel

  • with a lot of people, stiff solid wrists.

  • Listen you've got to have some grip pressure,

  • but that should not and cannot,

  • if you're gonna be good at this,

  • translate into stiff wrists,

  • so play around with this factor,

  • this is our number one soft wrists.

  • And just get it to where you can feel

  • the club bounce a little bit

  • and feel it react a bit.

  • You may not hit solid shots at the beginning.

  • I'll try a small one here,

  • I'm gonna go for a little more softness

  • than I probably want to have,

  • so in other words a little more bounce.

  • Now it wasn't quite as much bounce as I wanted,

  • I could feel some, solid hit though,

  • that was a good thing to get these things loose.

  • Again you can have grip pressure

  • and still have loose wrists,

  • if you're stiff and you're hitting at the ball

  • the kind of thing I feel with people,

  • so often students when I stand there

  • you're in trouble right away

  • so learn to let the lag store, that's number one.

  • So here's the next one,

  • can you get the handle passed the ball?

  • We showed you that at the beginning of the video,

  • here's a great mental picture.

  • Picture a light beam, you could extend it up above

  • the golf club but from this view

  • what you're trying to do is,

  • it won't hurt your light beam,

  • break that imaginary beam,

  • get the handle passed the ball

  • before you go down and hit the ball.

  • It really isn't difficult to do,

  • as we said in the previous segment though,

  • if you're excessively bound to trying

  • to make solid hits not look like a fool out,

  • then miss hitting a few balls,

  • you'll hamper yourself.

  • So get the handle past the imaginary beam of light

  • and give yourself a little time

  • to try to arrange solid contact and sort it out.

  • All right, now as we talk about lagging the club

  • or adding lag and getting the handle past the ball,

  • certainly the body plays a role in that,

  • this video isn't primarily about that

  • but let's just give it a brief touch.

  • I think a good image for instance,

  • if this was a five-pound lead bar with no club head on it,

  • but it had a handle on it, heavy in other words

  • and I had to toss this 15 or 20 yards,

  • you can bet I would recruit the ground

  • and use my core and my glutes to try

  • to create some energy there,

  • in a really natural spontaneous sort of way.

  • That's all we're gonna say

  • for this video regards body motion, it does have a roll.

  • Just for the sake of what we're working on though,

  • just let it show up as it would

  • if you're really playing to a target out there

  • with a heavy Club,

  • not just trying to strike something underneath you.

  • So I said earlier in the video,

  • it doesn't work too well to try

  • to stick your arm in or hold angle,

  • I mean it might work for you,

  • but I haven't seen experientially teaching people golf

  • that it works out well.

  • What would be a better thing?

  • Well that's our third thing,

  • when you release, release it hard,

  • don't try to hold angle, try to release with energy,

  • let's look at that.

  • So release head just means to me,

  • transferring energy to the golf club,

  • going from bent wrists to straight wrists

  • and it really comes more through the wrists

  • then it does if you like from the wrist.

  • So, a good mental image I use in golf lessons a lot,

  • is if you had a wet leaf stuck to the club

  • and you had to flick it off,

  • what would that look like?

  • You decelerate, you'd feel some pop in the golf club there.

  • So, let's try that on a small scale to start with

  • and by the way I'm going to do it

  • on a miniature scale here,

  • you just see how easily you could pop

  • there or there or there.

  • Human beings can do this,

  • we get so tied into the ball

  • and looking at it and trying to hit it,

  • it's hard for us to make any adjustments.

  • So let's try it out here,

  • I'm gonna give it a good hard smack here,