This video revisits a previous drill and addresses common patterns seen in golf swings, particularly when players mishit the ball. Clay explains how to identify patterns such as pull-draws and block slices, and emphasizes the importance of solid contact. By paying attention to where the ball strikes the clubface, players can determine if they need to adjust their swing path or face angle. The video also provides advice on practicing opposite patterns to correct these issues and underscores the importance of consistent practice. Lastly, it highlights key techniques like body tilt, lag, release, and weight shift to improve driving performance.
What's Covered: Drill on recognizing and correcting common mishit patterns like pull-draws and block slices through opposite-pattern practice and solid contact focus.
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Video Transcription:
It's great to have you back here today. In this video, we're gonna repeat the same drill that we did last time, but I'm gonna go over the two most common patterns that I see when players are miss hitting the ball, when they misread what they're doing, or whether they're a little confused on what's going on.
Let's start out first with the fade or slice player, and I'll see this a lot. So a player will be cutting some shots, but then every once in a while they hit some shots. I'll move this over just a little bit. Every once in a while they hit some shots that are just straight pulls or maybe even draws to the left.
So look, something like this again, I'm gonna hit toward my target in the distance. I'm gonna hit a straight pull that maybe draws a little tiny bit when they're hitting it. Oh, lemme my face before you get started.
Get this to dry up so it shows on the face here. So this should be a pull draw if I'm doing this correctly.
There we go. So that ball went left and drew, when I'm reading that, remember I'm looking at what's happening on my face. A lot of times players will be swinging to the left. The face will be open. Sometimes they hit it way off a toe and it makes it draw though. 'cause remember the more I hit it off a toe, it's gonna make it curve from right to left.
That can throw you off. So you start to think, well, I'm hooking some of these, but then I'm slicing other ones. So then I, they hit the next shot and it looks kinda like this. So this would be my three to five shots to kind of identify the pattern. So that one was a hook to the left. And then they had another one that's a sliced to the right that looks more like this.
There you go. And I hit the start of that ball, left sliced a good 30 or 40 yards, and you'll notice that the strike was in the middle of the face or a little toward the heel. That can get super confusing for players because I say, well, I don't know if I'm closing or open to the face. I hooked one and I sliced the other one.
I don't know if my path is left or right, you know, I'm all over. If you, if every single shot that you draw is off the toe, you're probably not closing the face. If every time you hit on the center of the face or the heel, it always slices. So if I hit three or four golf balls and every time I hit one near the middle of the face, it slices and every time I hit one toward the toe, it may draw a little bit.
You're swinging to the left and your face is open. So when I go to practice, I'm gonna work on swinging to the right and closing the face. You'll also notice what'll straighten a lot of this out for you is you'll notice a lot of those are off the toe, the draws. Again, I'm gonna work on hitting to the heel, and as soon as you get on the heel side, you're gonna start seeing that slice really start to move.
'cause you are swinging left with the face open. So that's the first common mistake I see here. It'll be kind of pull draws or some draws, but then big old slices and you think, well, well, there's no pattern here. In reality, there is a pattern, but it's being masked because I'm hitting some of 'em so far off the toe.
Now, the other one that I get is the exact opposite. I'll have players that when they hit it solid, they play a big swinging draw. So let me go ahead and try to hit one fairly solid and hit a big draw here if I can.
Oh, that was a great example. Actually, I did the opposite of what I was trying to do. So that ball started to the right. And it went straight or faded a little bit. I was trying to draw it, but what happened is I hit it off the heel so that that's the common mistake. I'll see players, they'll either hit big swinging draws that are on the center or the toe, or they'll hit a straight shot or a little bit of a fade that starts right and is off the heel.
That can be misunderstood again, the same way the other one was to where I feel like I'm fading some, so I'm like, oh, my face must be open. And then I feel like I'm hooking some, so I feel like there's no pattern. But in reality, when I pay attention to my strikes, if the only time I cut it is when I hit it off the heel, when I hook it or I hit it off the center of the toe, they all hook.
Or, or let me hit one more here so that ball faded like three yards. When I hook it or I hit it off the center of the sweet spot, it's gonna, it's gonna hook maybe 30, 40 yards. Let's try it out here again.
There you go. So that one slung in probably had more like 10, 15 yards of draw on it. That was more on the sweet spot. Again, I'm low on the face today, but, but that's a very common pattern. So they'll hit like draw, draw, draw, and then it'll be block slice. Block slice. That's an inside out path. That's over closing the face.
And then the ones you off the heel cause you to block it out to the right and it slices a little bit. So here's a good rule of thumb if you're, if you're still not quite sure if you're doing this correct, only count the ones that you hit solid. So I've sprayed the face when I hit it solid. Does it cut?
If so, I need to work on my draw, swing and releasing the face when I hit it solid. Does it draw? If so, I need to work on my left path and keeping the face more open. If you're ever confused to which pattern you're falling in, wait until you hit one solid or try to hit one solid and see what the ball flight does.
Then if you hitting it solid, the, your natural tendency is gonna show you which way it's curving and you'll know what to work on. So, again, if I hit another one here and I hit four or five off the heel and they're cutting, but I. Can't quite tell. There's no pattern 'cause I draw some hit 'em off the toe and I'm just not sure what I'm doing.
Wait until you hit one solid or try to hit one solid and see what the ball flight does. Then again, the same time I'd be training the face strikes. So if I hit a bunch of 'em off the heel, I'd go, I'd go the opposite. So the most common pattern I'm gonna see is a player that's coming over the top. They are spray the face here again, they're coming over the top and their only straight ones are when they hit off the toe.
So I'm gonna go ahead and try to hit my slice. Swing again. Hit off the toe, right. So that was actually a big slice, swing. The ball started left. I hit it way off the toe and it went dead straight. That can happen a lot. When you're swinging way across it, you're hitting, making a slice swing, but when you hit, it's that far off the toe.
It's like it. It goes straight. I'm gonna keep on doing it until I hit a solid one and I'm gonna see which one curve, how it curves then. So remember, if you're ever in doubt, wait till you hit a solid one. See which way it curves, that'll tell you the truth. So lemme make that exact same swing again, and this time I'll try to hit it in the center of the face.
We'll see how much it curves then.
Oops, hit it low in a little heel. I got the low shots today. That one's sliced big time though. Lemme go. One more to hit a good solid one here.
And that one was a little more square on the face. Still a little toe side, but it's still cut. Let that be the litmus test. Wait till you hit one around the center. If it's still cutting, when you hit it around the center, you're definitely swinging too far left and the face is too far open and practice the opposite of that.
So again, I'm gonna go through the same regimen. That I did in those last videos, I'm gonna make three to five swings. I'm gonna see what my pattern is. If I'm over the top and cutting it, I'm gonna practice the opposite. I'm gonna swing inside out, try to release it, my draw release. If I'm hitting off the heel, I'm gonna try to hit off the toe.
If I'm inside out and hook 'em, I'm gonna go over here and do my outside in cut release. If I'm hitting off a tow, I'm gonna try to hit off the heel when I do that. So I'm just basically, whatever my pattern is. Finding the opposite of that, getting two or three or four swings in with the opposite pattern, and then I'm coming back and repeating it over and over again until you hit it as good as you want to.
So you'll get great improvement off these in just a couple days of these couple drills that we're doing this week. But as you keep on repeating this, this is a proven recipe. I've never had any players that didn't continue to improve. The more they repeated this. If you're ever completely lost and you're like, I have no idea what to work on, it feels like the ball's going all over the place.
I just can't figure it out. Look at just face strikes and just work on that. Say, Hey, I don't know what my swing's doing. It seems to be going different directions all the time. Look and see where you're hitting on the face and just focus in on that. If I, if they're on the sweet spot or way off the heel or low, whatever it is, you just think about doing the opposite.
So for example, if my. Strike is low and off the toe. I'm gonna practice high and heel and keep on repeating that. Once you get a little better control of that, then worry about your facing path. If you're truly lost on it, once you start hitting the middle of the face relatively consistent, consistently, the ball flight will be pretty consistent.
The curve will go the consistent direction. Last little thing is, I know people are gonna have questions on this. This is one I get all the time. Again. Last week we worked a lot on hitting it more off the heel. Hitting it off the toe and all I'm gonna do there is set up to this tee. If I'm getting it too far off the heel, normally over here I'm gonna make some swings and try to just clip this tee with the very tip of the toe of the club and you'll know you can get off the toe no matter how many times I, even after I walk players through that drill, they say, well, clay.
I get it. I can kind of control it, but I'm still all over the face. You're gonna have to practice this a decent amount to get control of the face. What I'm saying is if I'm consistently hitting the t, the heel, I know you can hit the toe, I can prove it in one swing. That doesn't mean it's gonna be in a little tiny dot on the toe.
You're just gonna hit one little dot every single time. It's gonna take a little bit of time to, to bring dispersion in. What I'm saying is you're able to move it toward the heel. You're able to move it toward the toe if you want. The more you do that, the more that'll tighten up. So your dispersion is really big.
Keep on practicing this and it'll get tighter and tighter. Those are the main things there. Now finally, as we end this, uh, practice session today, I wanna talk about one other big question that I know people still have in their minds, and that's technique. So we, a lot of players get really wrapped up in technique and they say, well.
I am not doing as good as I want to on this yet. I can see my improvement. It's getting better. I've tracked my scores. All of 'em are getting better, but I'm not as good as I want to be. I think it's 'cause of my elbow doing this, that or the other. Why didn't we cover more technique in this course? I actually snuck in pretty much every major technique that you need in this video.
So when I measure pro players, the consistent patterns that I see. To be able to have good driving technique number one, they were able to tilt their body behind the ball. Now you'll notice when we went to that draw side, we worked on tilting the body back like that. Most players end up having to do that more, and you probably already ingrained that as you're working on your draw.
Another one is players will cast the club out, so start to cast from the top and then they'll scoop or chicken wing as they come through the ball. Well, when we did our. Hook release. I trained you to release the club in a way that will get rid of this chicken wing. The chicken wing is from pushing the club through and look at my, look at my hands.
There's no release or rollover here at all when I roll this club over like I did in my hook release that eliminates the chicken wing. Another one we talked about there is that casting motion from the top. We did a ton of drills to where we worked on taking the can club down here to parallel with the ground.
Once my hands are in front of my right leg, the club head might be inside or outside, but we got reps in having, having lag late and then pairing that lag up with the proper release. When you put those two things together, that's training you how to have lag and release the club properly. So we worked on lag.
The only thing, those are the three main things that I see. Another one that we worked on was Shallowing. Lots of players wanna get this club shallower so they can stop coming up to the top every single week. We've worked on Shallowing other a little bit in week one, even. When we get this brick out and we put it in the shallowing stick, you've gotten a lot of reps in getting this club to shallow out below this stick and hit successful shots there when you're alternating, fades and draws.
So you've actually worked on Shallowing quite a bit in this course. The only thing I would say that we didn't touch on a lot that I have another course that really dives deep into this would be a weight shift. I'm gonna give you one drill here that we didn't touch on, 'cause I'd hate to leave you with one of the fundamentals.
That I didn't teach you in this course that comes, that is important for driving. When pro players are the best players at your local club swing, what's gonna you're gonna see is as they start their down swing, by the time their arm is parallel to the ground in the downswing, they've already shifted their weight to the left and then swung on through.
A best drill that I have for this is a little step drill. What I'm gonna do is start with my feet together. I'm gonna take a step in my back swing, get my weight over my left side, and then finish. To where I feel like my weight comes all the way on through, so it's just gonna look like this. That's getting all my weight to move forward through the ball.
Kinda like a Gary Player action there. That helps to get the momentum of the body pairing up with the release of the club. So I have to get my weight to the left and then release the club. That's the only piece of critical technique that we didn't cover in the course. Lag release, chicken wing casting shallowing.
All that without really talking about it a lot. I've got you probably a few hundred reps in as we're doing this course. So I built all the technique into this. I just didn't wanna go into that much depth in it 'cause I wanted to focus on what's making the ball fly correctly. I wanted to teach you the correct technique without having to really focus on it.
The step drill is the only piece that I left outta there. So if you wanna do a few of those and really get used to your weight, shifting forward through the ball and all the momentum of your body going through the shot. That's the best drill that does that. I hope you've enjoyed this. I hope when you do your post-course test, you knock it outta the park.
You see a major improvement. You've probably already seen really good improvement in the amount that the ball curves and how you hit it on the face, and I can't wait to hear about your results. Best of luck. I'll see you soon.
