In this video, Clay demonstrates the essential drill for mastering control over the driver’s clubface. This foundational drill emphasizes learning to close the face to produce hooks and draws, and to open the face to create fades and slices. Key techniques include adjusting the grip strength and understanding the relationship between hand motion and clubface direction. The goal is to exaggerate these movements to fully comprehend the necessary mechanics, which facilitates hitting straight shots eventually. The drill includes specific steps and positions, crucial checkpoints, and addresses common pitfalls, ensuring golfers at any skill level can achieve proficiency.
What's Covered: Drill on learning to intentionally hook and slice the ball by manipulating grip and clubface position at impact.
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Video Transcription:
Hi, so it's great to have here today in this first drill. What we're gonna do is we're gonna control this club face. You have to control the club face first and be able to get it to close, to draw or hook and open to fade or slice to be able to eventually get to where you're hitting it straight. Let me recap a little bit on where we're gonna be heading with this course.
What I found that the pros are doing is they're hitting it incredibly straight. To hit it straight, it just means that my C club has to be moving squarely through the ball. That's the direction the club is moving. Or if you just imagine a round ball on the end of this club, if that's moving squarely through the ball.
When I hit the ball and my face is square, meaning my face is pointing in the same direction, that ball's gonna fly dead straight. If my face is closed or pointed to the left of the direction that I'm swinging, or if I grab this giant club head here so you can kind of see where the face is pointing. If my club head is.
Swinging straight, or my head is moving straight toward my target, but the face itself is closed or pointed to the left. That ball's gonna draw. If it's closed a lot, it's gonna hook. If my club is moving straight through the ball and the face is open, it's gonna fade. Or if it's way open, it's gonna slice.
Doesn't matter which direction you're swinging. So if I'm swinging way to the left. If my club head is square to the direction that I'm swinging, that ball's gonna go dead straight to the left. If it's closed or my club face is closed to the direction I'm swinging, it's gonna go, it's gonna draw. If it's a lot closed, it's gonna hook.
If it's open, it's gonna fade. If it's a lot open, it's gonna slice. Opposite is true when I'm swinging inside out. So basically what I'm saying here is whatever direction you're swinging, whatever direction your club is moving through impact. If the face is closed to that, it draws. If it's open to that, it fades.
That's the number one thing to get down, and we have to do this in order. It doesn't work well if we go outta order. The number thing, one thing we have to get control of is to really learn to close the face a lot, open the face a lot. Once we have that full picture, it's really easy to dial it in and to start to hit it straight from there.
I wanna give you a couple techniques here to do that and a And a kind of two part drill that we're gonna do before we move forward. We have to get this right before we move on to anything else. Once we learn to really close the face and really open the face, now it's easy to get it straight because we know if the face is a little open, we already have the feelings to get a little more closed and squared up.
If the face is too closed, we have the feelings to get it more open and squared up. So once you have the full picture, you just find the middle and you learn it really quickly. If I've sliced my whole life, and I've always seen the ball turn over from left to right, if I'm a right-handed player and I'm used to always having the face open, open, open, I don't really have the feeling of how to get the face to close a lot.
By the end of this drill, you'll be able to have the face close a ton. As much as you want it to close, I guarantee it, as long as you follow this drill to the tee. So let's go ahead and actually start with this giant club and let's talk about what we're gonna feel to make this happen. Piece number one is we're gonna close the heck out of it.
We're gonna get this ball to curve, not just go to the left, but it has to curve to the left. To be successful with this drill, you have to get the ball curving in the air and turning over from right to left where I wanna get a ton of hook on it. The only way to do that is to close the heck out of the face.
Let me give you something here that's gonna be incredibly important. I'll touch on it and then we'll elaborate on it after the drill. If I feel like I'm dragging the club through and I'm holding off on it, or I feel like I'm pulling my hands toward the target. In other words, if I take these two fingers on the club so I'm not manipulating the face at all and I pull it toward the target, look what happens to the club face.
It's wide open. So the more I try to drag this club through the ball and pull my hands toward the target, it's almost impossible to get that face to release and turn on over. What the opposite of that would be? So if I imagine I take these two fingers, I drag it forward, the face wants to open. The opposite would be if I'm swinging this club down.
Imagine my right arm is a fan blade and my club's just tied onto this fan blade and it's swinging like this. If I was to come down and stop that fan blade, watch what happens to the club face, it's gonna sling past and it's gonna close. So the more I let my hands slow down and I let that shaft release.
That's gonna be the number one determining factor of how you re how much you release the club. If I yank the club toward the target, it's gonna stay. The face is gonna be open. I'm gonna slice. If I slow down my hands and let my forearms roll over each other and get this face to close on down, it's gonna draw more.
I'm gonna elaborate on that throughout this course. We're gonna give some drills on how to learn that. I just want you to be aware that most people aren't aware of that. What's going on? I'm sure you have a lot of questions with it. I don't wanna answer those right now in the middle of this drill, but I'll make sure I answer every single common question that you could have over that throughout the period of this course.
Here's the technique I'm gonna do to make that happen. If you imagine there's a swing plane like a plane of glass like this, I'm gonna swing down to where my hands are in front of my right leg, where I'd be. My club shaft would be kind of parallel to the ground like we talked about earlier, and I'm gonna pause here now if I'm looking from down the line.
This will be roughly square or kinda lined up where that alignment stick is toward my target. It's easier to get this club face to close the more it gets to the inside. So I'm gonna pause, and instead of the face, the club shaft being square, I'm gonna set it to the inside like this. So now the butt end of the club is pointing way out to the right.
The reason it's easier to square up a face back here is when my hands are going from the inside and my club shaft is from the inside. It's easier to get that shaft to release and turn on over. Remember before we talked about how if we drag the hands forward, it leaves the face open? The more I get to the inside, the easier it is to get those hands to roll on over the more space it creates to make that happen.
So it's a lot easier to swing and get the face to turn on over. If my club head, my club shaft is to the inside, that's piece number one. So go to kind of halfway down pause with your hands in front of your right leg shafts parallel to the ground. From this angle, I'm just gonna set that well to the inside.
That's piece number one. I wanna pause there, kinda get a feeling of what it would be like to swing through the ball. If I was gonna move through that position, you'll notice that my shoulders are more tilted to the right when that's happening. I'm looking from this direction. My shoulders are more this way, so I'm kind of up and to the right, or if I had my shoulders, they'd be kind of pointing up into the right to get that club to set there.
Piece number two, I'm now gonna take this club. Close the face down a ton and I'm gonna feel, what would it feel like for me to move through this position as I make my normal swing? How would I move through that position? The third position is the only one that matters. That's what's the club face doing at Impact.
So I'm gonna take piece number one. I set the club shaft to the inside piece. Number two, I close the face down a ton. And then piece number three, I want to keep closing the face down. I don't wanna hold this face square from there, or you'll see that it's still wide open. I wanna close it down and keep closing it down until the face is pointing dead to the left.
So if I'm looking from face on here, I'm seeing this club face pointing, like it's almost pointing to my left shin. It's going directly to the left. So no matter which way I swing as lot club face is closed like that, that ball goes dead to the left. That's the third piece. And then finally, I wanna keep on closing it all the way through.
So piece number one inside. Piece number two, close the face down. Piece number three, keep closing the face down at impact until the face is dead, left. And then piece number four, I'm gonna keep the face closing down even more until when I finish. So if I imagine I'm swinging on this plane of glass again, I'm swinging inside out and I'm finishing with the club face pointing directly to the ground.
This is crazy extreme with a real driver. This is gonna hit the ball directly into the ground to the left. If it gets up in the air at all, it's gonna snap, hook a ton. If I'm hitting this shot lined up to this target in the distance, there's a lake over there. I'm trying to hit the ball on that lake. I'm trying to snap hook the biggest snap hook I've ever hit here.
That's the goal of this one. Once we learn to do that, we can dial back on it and I'll teach you how to do this. No matter if you're shooting 130 or if you're a tour player, I'm gonna show you how to dial back on this the right amount. So piece number one, let's recap it again. Club shaft is parallel. I'm gonna set it to the inside piece.
Number two, I close that face. Piece number three, I close the face at impact a ton. And then piece number four, I have the face pointed all the way down to the ground as my club shaft is parallel to the ground in the fall through. So I am just closing, closing, closing the whole way. Let me hit a shot and I'll go over the two most common questions I get when we're doing this.
If I do this correctly, every degree, you close the face. Also takes a degree of loft off the club. So if I close this face at Impact, see that's square. If I close at 30 degrees, I've taken this nine degree lofted driver and turned it to a negative 21 degree Lofted Club. When I hit this shot, it's probably gonna hit directly into the ground and go directly to the left.
That's actually good for when we're first doing this. Lemme go recap my points again here, and then I'll get into the common questions that I get. So I pause here. I set the clubs after the inside. I take the face and I turn it way down, so it's super closed here. I close it even more at impact, so now I can see my face is pointing way over there, and then I close it even more in my release to now the face is pointing down to the ground.
So I've just taken the most snap hook swing that I could possibly get, and I'm ingraining that. Let me try to do one where I get that feeling and show you what that would look like, so that ball hooked dead, left straight into the ground. If I would've swung harder, it would've gone on that lake over there.
One question that I get is, a lot of times when players are back here, they say, well, I can't really get the face very closed. I feel like I closed it a lot. This club face closed a lot and it's just barely turning down. One thing you can do to help with that is to get a stronger grip. So if I take my normal grip here and I imagine my hands are kind of at this angle, I can turn my hands way to the right to where my right palm is almost underneath the club.
My left palm is on top of the club and now I have this really strong grip. Kinda like what you'd see with Paul Ainger, uh, Matt Fitzpatrick. Dustin Johnson has a little bit of that in there too. The more I turn my hands under, look how it's really easy now to close this face a ton so when I just close the face, I can really close it down.
If I have a really weak grip where my hands are more to the left or on top of it. This way, if I close the face as much as I can, it barely goes any. So I'm closing as much as I can. It's just a little tiny bit closed. If I take my grip and go way under now, when I close it as much as I can, it turns all the way.
So if you're struggling to get this face to close enough, do the same draw recommended, get a little stronger grip and hook the heck out of it. I mean, I want this ball to turn directly over to the left piece number two, or is another question that I get is. I get the face closed into the inside here, but when I come to impact, it doesn't, I can't get the face pointed to the left like you're talking about.
I can't get this face pointed way over there. That has to do with the shaft. The number one thing that's gonna determine how much you can close this face is if I'm dragging the hands forward and my shaft is back, the face is gonna be open. So if I take it to the inside. I close my face and then I drag my hands forward.
Look where that face is pointing. It's still pointing out to the right watch. What happens when I take this shaft and instead of being leaning way in front, I point it more back to my leg like that. So this would be holding it open and dragging the hands in front. This would be taking that shaft back and closing the face like that.
That's the feeling you should have. So I go close here from the inside, then I'm releasing the shaft. I feel like my. Forearms are rolling over each other. I'm getting the butt end the club to face back to me at impact, and now the face is really closed as I go up here and the face is to the ground. Look how the shaft is pointing back toward the camera that way, right?
So if I really wanted to close this face down a ton, I would have to have the, the club shaft pointed back this way if I drug my hands forward and now all of a sudden my shaft is still pointing over here, that face is still gonna be wide open. So that's the two most common faults I see with this. Number one, if you can't close the face enough, take a little stronger grip.
And number two, if I wanna close the face a lot, I have to get the shaft to release. I can't drag the shaft through. The face is open. I have to get the shaft. Release an exaggeration, pure exaggeration. I would never do this in a real swing, but if I went from this position, I said I gotta snap, hook it the most as possible.
I'd almost wanna have the shaft leaning backwards. With pros, you're not gonna see that with irons. The shaft's gonna be leaning forward with driver because the ball's up in your stance as you get to the ball. The shaft is almost straight up and down. That's part of what allows it to square. If I'm dragging and holding on, that face's gonna be open every single time.
If I leaned it backwards like this, I could really snap hook going, and I might be able to hit one over toward the pond this way. If I go ahead and really feel like I release the shaft back like that, let's give that a whirl. So I'm gonna go super strong grip, same feelings, and I'm gonna let that shaft really go right?
So I hit that ball in the pond literally that way. So I close the face in absolute massive amount to do this drill correctly. And I know this seems silly right now, you're thinking I didn't sign up for this. Last thing I wanna do is go snap hook shots on the driving range. The reason I'm telling you to do this is if we can't snap hook 'em, it's gonna take us six months to get the nice draws and nice straight shots.
If I can snap, hook 'em and get the face closed and learn how to close this face in a few weeks, I can have control of the ball flight. That's part of the motor learning skill you want to exaggerate. If you're not exaggerating the skill, it's gonna take you 3, 4, 5 times longer to learn it. If I can get you to exaggerate the heck out of it.
Snap hook these shots and get 10 in a row that hook. So to be successful in this drill, I'm gonna get these fillings I just went over. Watch this video, do 'em in your living room. Then go out to the course and try to recreate that. You can use the worksheets that you can take to the course and make sure you're hitting all the checkpoints.
But as long as I can exaggerate this and get 10 in a row, I'm ready to move on. The only way you can mess this up is by trying to hit it way too hard, way too fast. So if I'm trying to make full swings and rip through these, it may take me five or six or seven practice sessions to get this. I'm gonna prove to you now that anyone can do this in the first practice session by swinging a left-handed club, I'm not left-handed.
If I went out and played golf today, left-handed, I'd probably shoot 140. I'd probably hit 10 balls outta bounds. So I'm not well trained on this, but I'm gonna show you that I can. Learn to close the face no matter what skill level I'm at. Now, if you're a better player, let's say you're a scratch golfer and you're watching this, you may be able to hit those 10 draws in a row and not have to snap, hook 'em as much.
You might be able to hit 10 shots in a row that draw, and they only draw 10 or 15 yards. That's fine too. I'm giving you the most exaggerated drill here so that everybody watching this video can make sure that they hook 10 in a row. That's what you have to be able to do to move on. Until I get that, I don't wanna move on from this drill.
Once I can hook 10 in a row, I'm ready to move on. So if you're a scratch player and you're watching this and you say, I can hook 10 shots in a row right away, you can move straight on. If you're a player that's struggling to hook 10 in a row, I'm gonna show you how I would do this left-handed so that you can see that anybody can do it.
So, piece number one, I'm gonna take a little bit of a stronger grip that helps me just roll the face over a bit more. Eventually we'll find our neutral grip to hit it straight. We're gonna go overly strong at this point to learn to really hook it. So I've got my strong grip piece. Number two, I'm pausing kind of when the club's parallel at the ground.
My hands are in front of my trail leg, my left leg now, and I'm putting the club to the inside, so this will be straight. I'm bringing it to the inside piece. Number two, I'm turning the face down. Piece number three, I'm turning the face down at impact, my shaft is pointing back at me. And then piece number four.
I'm releasing it out inside, out, out, out to the left now, so the right and the face is pointing directly down to the ground. It feels like that ball's gonna go that way. When I do this, the only way I can not get this, I will get a, I'll get 10 in a row right left-handed here, even though I'm no good left-handed.
If I go slow, slow is smooth. Smooth is accurate, accurate is fast. What I mean by that is I've gotta be smooth when I'm doing this. I can't be muscling this with my hands, trying to close it down. As I'm hitting these points, I wanna feel like I'm taking my hands out of it. It's a big piece of this course that we'll continue to go over.
I have to feel like I'm fairly passive with my hands. Now, in reality, I know that from the physics, the hands are putting a lot of pressure in the club. If I swing 120 miles an hour with a driver, I'm putting almost 120 pounds of force into this grip, right at impact. If I'm swinging 70 miles an hour, it's almost 70 pounds of force.
So every swing has a lot of force in the hands. I'm not talking about hold the bird, like you're gonna not hurt it or squeeze the tooth piece of toothpaste. I know that with every swing when you swing it, if you had a a tube of toothpaste, that toothpaste is gonna shoot out of that tube no matter what.
It's not the real thing that's going on to be able to hold the grip that's soft. What I'm saying is be smooth as you're doing it. Feel like you're very smooth to where I'm not jerking and pushing on this club to make it happen. There's no reason, even as a left-handed player where I have no business swinging from this side, I can take this club to the inside, close the face, close it more, and close it more, and I can do that drill and I can feel very smooth when I'm doing that.
I can feel like there's no hitch in there. I can feel like my hands are very. Relaxed and there's no jerking going on. Now, when I hit this golf ball trying to do that, I should be able to get one to hook big time if I do this correctly. Let's give it a, whoa,
there we go. And I just snap hooked it right into the ground. That would be perfect. I'm one for one. If I feel like I'm jerky with my hands at all, I'm gonna slow it down. I'm gonna feel smooth with my hands as I'm doing this. I'm gonna try to repeat it. I don't care how far this ball goes. I only hit that one about 70 or 80 yards.
Remember, slow is smooth, smooth is accurate. Accurate is fast. Once I get this moved down, I can swing as hard as I want, but lemme try it again. Here I'll go a little bit faster, right? So I felt like I swallow a little harder. I snap hooked it again. I'm two for two and I'm gonna keep on repeating that.
Like I said, if you're a better player and you're already a scratch golfer. You may be able to hit these shots 70% and still get 'em to snap hook. Whatever speed you need to go to get all of them to hook is the speed you should be going. If I have any of 'em, slice or fade, I have to start over again and get 10 in a row.
So go as slow as you need to to get these feelings and get 'em all to hook As you're doing this, lemme go one more. I'll try to speed it up a little bit and see if it can still. Get this ball to hook when I'm going left-handed.
There we go. So we're really hard at it. Again, what felt hard for me and I was still able to get it hook, so it shows you there if I'm really exaggerating enough, the only two ways you could mess this drill up is if I don't exaggerate enough. Notice all those shots were snap hooked right into the ground.
I didn't even get any of those. Airborne. I nailed 'em. That's exactly what you should be doing with this drill piece Number two. The only way I can mess it up is to, to not exaggerate enough or number two to try to hit it too far too fast. If I try to swing left-handed and hit it 300 yards, I may not have any feeling of what I'm doing with the club I gotta go to at a pace that where I can feel what's going on with the club.
Once I get 10 in a row doing that, all I'm gonna do is turn it around the other direction and get 10 in a row slicing them. So again. We don't wanna be hooking 'em or drawing 'em the long term. We don't wanna be fading 'em or slic 'em. We're gonna get 'em dead straight. The fastest way to learn to hit it dead straight is to learn to really have the face open, really have the face closed.
Then next week when we go over the path, when we want that ball to start a little right and draw back, if it's not drawing, I know how to release the face a little bit more. If it's drawing too much, I know how to keep the face a little more square. So the first drill is teaching you how to get it to draw more.
I'm exaggerating the heck out of that. The second drill where I flip everything in the opposite, is teaching me how to fade all of them and slice 'em. All I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna do the exact opposite of what I did last time. I'm gonna go back with my hands parallel to the ground. Instead of it being to the inside.
It's now gonna be the outside. So I'm here. Instead of the face being closed, it's gonna be open toward the sky. Piece number three, when I come to impact that face is gonna be wide open. Now look what happens here. If I get that shaft back this way at all, it closes the face when I'm trying to slice it. I want the hands leading the way.
If I get this face outside and open and then I lead the way with the hands, I can get this ball going that way. If I release the shaft, now, look, the face is already square, so I want my hands leading in front. I want my hands leading the way when I'm hitting these slices out to the right. Later on in this course, we'll talk a little bit about how that's slightly different with the irons, but not too different.
So piece number one, here's Square. I'm to the outside. Piece number two, I was closed. Now I'm open. Piece number three, my hands are in front and the faces even more open at impact. Piece number four, when I come on through now, instead of going out this way and letting the face turn down to the ground, I'm gonna go to the left and feel like my face is up toward the sky.
If I do this, I'll snap hook or I'll, I'll hit a banana slice on every single shot. So I'm gonna go slow here, try to recreate that same feeling right, and I hit a massive 50 60 yard slice. I found most people won't have to try too hard to 10 slices in a row, so don't overdo this one. If you can easily hit a slice again, if you're snap hooking the ball and you feel like you have to do this a ton, and the ball fades like two feet, by all means exaggerate this like I'm showing you here.
If you're already slicing it, you don't need to ingrain more of a slice. Just do 10 shots where it gets to slice and you know how to feel the face open, but at least once you to go through. Hit those 10 balls in a row where they all fade. The opposite would be true with the grip. If my grip is really strong, now all of a sudden it's tough to get that face super open.
If my grip is really weak, I can turn this face wide open. Eventually what we're gonna do is we're gonna find that neutral grip to where you can close it and open it equally, and you feel like when you swing naturally, it's straight. We're not quite there yet. So I'm gonna take a weaker grip here, club shaft out, face wide open, hands in front, face even, I feel like the face is even more open at impact.
And then as I come on through, I'm swinging more to the left. Notice how there's like an angle. So for example, when I release that big hook, I release the shaft this way, or if I'm facing you, the shaft would be like that. So in my downswing, I'll release the shaft. I let the face turn on over when that's happening.
That was my hook swing, right when I'm doing this. Slice swing club outside, face open, hands in front face. Even more open hands keep leading the way, and the face is more open. Look at where it's at there. So a slice swing is like this. The club shaft never releases and turns over. That's the number one thing that keeps the face either more open or more closed if I keep pulling my hands in front.
My club is gonna stay angled like this. That's the only way to hit a massive slice if I release my club and get it to turn on over. That's the only way to get the face to turn over that way. So I'm doing this slice. I'm gonna hit three shots in a row. I'll go left-hand and do the same thing again. I'm here club outside, face really open.
Again, this is a feeling it's never gonna be this exaggerated as I go to impact hands in front. My face is pointing that way, and as I go to the release. My face is straight up to the sky. My hands kept moving to the left here, so again, I'm just gonna hit these shots, right? That's a humongous slice. Half speed.
That was pretty impressive. I didn't hear that far to the right. I'm gonna do the same thing left-handed now just to show that anyone can do these drills again. I couldn't probably break 130 if I went out and played today. I haven't swung any left-handed shots. I can at least get the face in the correct general position.
So here, that'd be parallel. I'm outside, my face is open. As I come to contact, my hands lead the way, so the face stays more open. And as I go to the release, my hands keep pulling through and the faces to the sky. This feels like this is gonna be weak, but I'm gonna try it out here. I a little less strong grip.
I realized right away my left-handed grip is way too strong to, to get a massive slice. There we go. And I hit that one almost across the water. Oh, I got it across the water there. So it went so far open. There's a pond over here. It went over the pond. It's almost 150 yards offline. That way, again, if you're a good player and you can fade it on command.
The only thing I care care about is getting 10 in a row. You gotta get 10 in a row. Hooks first, or draws everything as a turnover from right to left. Once you get 10 in a row doing that, we gotta go 10 in a row, fades or slices. Once I get 10 in a row doing that, then I'm ready to move on from this drill.
Don't do anything else in this course. Don't move on to week two, any of that until you can get 10 in a row, hooks and slices, and then the rest of it's gonna come really easy. If I'm getting five and six in a row and I hit a couple bad ones, I'm like, ah, let me move on. I'm ready to get to some more new stuff.
Week two, week three, week four are gonna be hard to get down. Get this down first. Nail it, exaggerate it. Go slow. As long as you exaggerate enough and go slow enough. You'll nail this in the very first practice session. 10 in a row. Hooks 10 neuro slices. Then we're ready to move on from it. I can't wait to meet you with the next drill.
We're gonna start to learn to square this face up a little bit. And we're gonna do some regular practice to get used to this club shaft releasing and turning on over or, or accelerating the shaft, staying back and fading. And then we're gonna start to gradually dial that in as we go through the course.
I'm super excited to keep on working through this with you. I guarantee you you're gonna really like it. Week one's a little crazy. Bear with me as we get to week two and week three, you're gonna see massive, massive results.
