wrist break in the swing

[andyhiggins]

Hi Everyone,

After a series of lessons with a good pro he has told me that my shoulder turn is good but I am lacking power as my wrists do not get near to a full break at the end of the backswing. He suggested a swingsetter to get me to break my wrists but I wondered if anyone had any good drills for doing this simple thing which i find really hard? Very often I will hit balls at the range convinced that i am getting a good wrist break only to find, when i ask someone that I am back to normal with hardly any at all????? Help.

Andy

[keiko]

Re: wrist break in the swing

Without knowing your physical makeup, I will assume you are normal in physical ability.
Try keeping your grip/hands and arms relaxed on the club. To feel this, take your grip and swing the club out in front of you like a baseball bat allowing your wrists to hinge. when you can do this, relax the hands more and do it again, feel the wrists hinge and unhinge as you swing back and forth.
Now with your feet together, try hitting a ball using the same relaxed hands and wrists with half swings. You should notice a big difference.

Hi Everyone,

After a series of lessons with a good pro he has told me that my shoulder turn is good but I am lacking power as my wrists do not get near to a full break at the end of the backswing. He suggested a swingsetter to get me to break my wrists but I wondered if anyone had any good drills for doing this simple thing which i find really hard? Very often I will hit balls at the range convinced that i am getting a good wrist break only to find, when i ask someone that I am back to normal with hardly any at all????? Help.

Andy

[andyhiggins]

Re: wrist break in the swing

Many thanks Keiko, will try that today!

Andy

[keiko]

Re: wrist break in the swing

It is better to have too light a grip than too tight. You will have to experiment with this by going to extremes first, like extremely light where the club almost flys out of your hands to just a tad tighter than that etc.
What you want is to have the club whipping through impact zone and if you allow your hands and wrists to work on their own, you will have impact with hands first and clubhead lagging behind.
At the top of your swing, you should "FEEL" the wrists hinge; if you can't feel that action, you are holding on too tight. What works best is to stand with the feet together and just take half swings with a very light grip, allow your weight to shift to the right then to the left while swinging the club. Position the ball about the middle of your stance. Think nice and easy while just swinging back and forth.
You will be amazed at how crisp and far you hit your shots.

Many thanks Keiko, will try that today!

Andy

[Paraneva]

Re: wrist break in the swing

I fully agree with the combination of a light grip and relaxed wrists. My advise to anyone wanting to hit further is to try to mimic a whip with the driver.
It is actually the same with any club (maybe not chipping or putting) but only a long 2H or driver really "kicks" the same way as a whip. Actually
I believe the real big-hitters are able to have relaxed wrists with tighter grip, otherwise they would be throwing the driver after the ball every time.
It is a pity seeing physically really fit youngsters trying to drive with very high hand speeds but with rigid wrists: it simply does not work that way.

[andyhiggins]

Re: wrist break in the swing

My pro now tells me that my problem is psychological in that i can hit a 2 iron of the deck around 200-210 but my driver will not carry 200 very often. I never stress with irons and they keep me at 6 really as it has been said that my woods remind the pro of a 24 handicapper. My mate swings about 3/4 not much wrist break but still carries the ball around 240 - easy. Short of hypnotherapy I need some advice from someone as i have been like this for months and months now. Lots has been said re relaxed wrists etc and grip, I assume that the same holds true for other muscles (like the biceps) as i think that the more I struggle to get distance the more I try to add to it with muscular effort rather than timing.

Andy

[GregJWillis]

Re: wrist break in the swing

Are you hands truly in front of the ball at impact? Seems to me like you are racing the head ahead of the hands, and you are getting a weak glancing blow on the ball.
Try this:
Set the ball more in the middle of the stance. And close your trailing eye. Where are you hands in relation? Move them into a position where if you were to drop a ball from where you hands are setup, that the ball is hitting the ground slightly ahead of the ball position. Now move your ball position to the front (correct) position. Realign your hands again (they have to move forward). Closing the trailing eye will allow you to see your hand's position to the head a lot better (you should see your shoulder / arm / hands / shaft all in alignment straight...

[keiko]

Re: wrist break in the swing

see my other posts in this thread.
Most importantly, grip the club in the fingers and without a ball, just swing the club back and forth with relaxed wrists, feel the wrists hinging and unhinging, now feel the weight of the the club in your hands.
That's the feeling you are looking for.
The reason you are having trouble with driver and not irons is the driver is the lightest club in the bag and the irons are of course much heavier. Your wrists and hands must be relaxed to an extreme to feel the driver.
I also take swings with driver to the extent that I can see the clubhead at the top of my swing out of the corner of my left eye; just a glimpse of it but that insures for me that I have completed my swing.
I believe your only problem is in your grip.

[andyhiggins]

Re: wrist break in the swing

Thanks guys for your patience, imagine what my partner feels like . I know I may be a bit dim Greg but i understand the idea of not being in front at impact but do i not want to be level at impact with a driver? I am a little confused by the dropping of the ball, moving the teed ball position forward then resetting hands. I am assuming that you reposition the hands by closing the trailing eye again?
Thanks Keiko for your help once again, I had never thought of the weight of the club really but it makes perfect sense. Once again I shall hit the practice area and try to put these excellent tips into practice, seeing if you guys can do what no one round here can do and improve my driving.

thanks again,

Andy

[Paraneva]

Re: wrist break in the swing

There are at least a dozen Pros regularly visiting this forum so I leave the detailed technical analysis of your case to them.

I can only tell you my story and my experience and hope that you can ask the right questions about your case and solve them – either alone or with a friend on the range or with a Pro. And ooops, this became a novel. But here it comes:

I am a quite bulky and not so athletic 50 years old (6 feets / 200 pounds). I started to play golf in summer 2005 and I am now at 14 (putting is OK but my short game below 100 sucks) so there is lot of space for improvement. As the golf season is only from May to October up here, I am quite happy so far.

As usual I started with a slice problem which changed to a terrible hook problem in about a year. The balls had a nice speed off the tee but quickly fell down. It took a while to figure out there was too much forward spin in the ball. If you have ever seen really good “falling” shots in tennis, my drives looked exactly like those + they hooked. The club head was moving upwards at the impact with a speed that was not compensated with the loft 12 of the driver. As I hardly ever sliced any more (except with near misses) my unorthodox solution was to start to play with an open driver. That helped against the hooks and gave decent but still too high (and short) trajectories. My next move was to a new 9.5 driver (with a stiffer shaft) which I continue to play “open”. That was just the background but I think the spin(s) that you cause on the ball are really important factors on the length. I will come back to this later.

My so far last adjustment was a learn the "whip swing" for driver and long hybrids. It is quite different to the swing that I use with irons. Now I hit constantly over 200 meters (+15% fairway run) with the driver and the best ones (in "flow" mode) have been around 250 meters (+15% fairway run). I have never eagled so far but I have managed to reach the green on 440 meter par5 and once on dog-leg 250 meter par4 with water just before the green. The best part is that the drives also fly to the wanted direction.

It is not easy to explain how to "make a whip sing" but once you find it, it is easy to repeat. If you do not have a unflexible whip, try with a flexible shaft or a 50" flexible wooden stick (maybe from the garden). Take a 2-3 finger overlapping grip and try to whip it back and worth using mostly just your wrists with only a small arm movement (1/4 swing). Once you get the other end of the whip to higher speeds you should hear it whistle, preferable in the forward swing! The higher the sound ( at the lowest point of you swing ) is, the higher is the speed of the tip of you “whip”. That is how the head of your driver should be singing just a few milliseconds before the impact. When you can make it whistle, take your driver and repeat the same thing (no tee, no ball, only the driver through the air). You should notice that you start the forward swing by pulling your hands down while the club head is following way beyond. The speed of your arms starts slow, accelerates towards the impact BUT is again quite slow at the lowest point of the swing when a big part of rotational energy of your whole body should be in the head of the club!

As Keiko ( http://www.golf-tuition-online.com/b...log&p=10574348 )wrote “Most importantly, grip the club in the fingers and without a ball, just swing the club back and forth with relaxed wrists, feel the wrists hinging and unhinging, now feel the weight of the club in your hands.” That is exactly the short reminder exercise that I repeat just before each drive to make my brains remember how to do it. The feeling at the impact is exactly what Keiko says: if feels like the club is pulling itself away from your hands. That is the weight caused by the centrifugal force caused by the rotational speed of the club at the impact moment. I don’t play with other woods (I have hybrids) but I am sure the feeling is similar with them (yes, it feels the same with hybrids).

And then to the spin(s) that you cause on the ball: I am not 100% sure about this (never seen any literature on it) but I believe in an optimal drive there should initially have no vertical spin around the vertical axis (you don’t need this spin for the draw/fade but you can easily create a hook/slice with even a small one) and there are two horizontal spins supporting each other: a) first stronger spin around the horizontal axis (in 90 degrees angle against the flight) should be a reverse spin keeping the ball in the air on a low trajectory (similar to “flyer” serves in valley ball or “stop” balls in tennis) and b) second weaker spin around the other horizontal axis (parallel to the flight) causing the reverse spin to slowly change to a sidewise spin (vertical axis) creating the needed draw/fade and finally causing a forward spin giving a good fairway run. The loft (your driver + ball position etc) causes (most of) the first spin and the swing (in>out / out>in) and the openness of the club cause (most of) the second spin. I have a strong in>out swing which I don’t alter at all in the “whip swing”. What I change is the openness of the club head. And the results are nice draws or fades.

So my simple advice is: teach your driver to sing and go to the driving range to hit 220 – 250 every time. Then try to feel and see how the ball is flying with slightly different swings and fine-tune your drives to make the ball first to hang in the air as long as possible and then to run on the fairway for 15 more yards/meters.

If you want to drive long, some of the questions that I would ask myself if I were you are these: a) what is the trajectory of my drives, are they high and come quickly down or do they “hang” in the air ? b) are hooks more common problems to me than slices? c) does the loft of my driver fit me? d) does the flexibility of the shaft fit me? The first ones you can go through yourself, Pros and club fitters are required for the latter.

I also believe that when you can really “whip” with the driver, the amount of the centrifugal force is so high that (unless you have terribly rigid wrists) the club will straighten itself upon the impact nearly automatically. That is why the direction of the drives is also really well regulated.

Dear Pros, please fill in! If I am totally biased or confused I am glad for assistance and guidance. Otherwise I hope this discussion can continue and if anyone finds my ideas worth trying, please let me know. Meanwhile I will continue my indoor exercises in short game and 3 finger overlapping grip (even for the driver) and wait for the next golf season …

[andyhiggins]

Re: wrist break in the swing

Wow Paraneva,

That is what i call a thorough post. Many thanks for that and to be fair having been to the range tonight I have mainly concentrated on light grip as per Keiko. Once I started to clear my hips through impact the ball seemed to take off on an altogether better trajectory with better penetration through the air. It would seem as though as well as gripping too tight i have only been shifting my weight to the front front then my bottom half stalls and the upper body takes over, if that makes sense? Anyway, will keep practising and will try to get that clubhead singing.

thanks guys,

Andy

[keiko]

Re: wrist break in the swing

Keeping the grip light, try overswinging, ie. taking the club back past parallel at the top of your swing; I do this to remind myself that I really can take a much fuller backswing than I sometimes give myself credit for. By overswinging and hitting the ball this way, it becomes a breeze to just swing normally full, all the while allowing the hands to do their work--which allows the arms and all else to do theirs in return. It's a chain reaction once you get the grip and hands relaxed; at 65, it's a beautiful thing for me to still hit the ball over 300 at least twice per nine holes and I still average 275 per hole.
I've been a single digit player for 15 years and it all occurred when I learned to:1. relax the grip and 2.just allow the left shoulder to turn under my chin while 3. staying centered over the ball.
You can do this, trust it.

Wow Paraneva,

That is what i call a thorough post. Many thanks for that and to be fair having been to the range tonight I have mainly concentrated on light grip as per Keiko. Once I started to clear my hips through impact the ball seemed to take off on an altogether better trajectory with better penetration through the air. It would seem as though as well as gripping too tight i have only been shifting my weight to the front front then my bottom half stalls and the upper body takes over, if that makes sense? Anyway, will keep practising and will try to get that clubhead singing.

thanks guys,

Andy

[Paraneva]

Re: wrist break in the swing

... It's a chain reaction once you get the grip and hands relaxed; at 65, it's a beautiful thing for me to still hit the ball over 300 at least twice per nine holes and I still average 275 per hole. I've been a single digit player for 15 years and it all occurred when I learned to:1. relax the grip and 2.just allow the left shoulder to turn under my chin while 3. staying centered over the ball.
You can do this, trust it.

That was nice to hear! Impressive!

The simple conqlusion is that if I manage to improve my game to single digits next summer then I am on perfect schedule to play like Keiko for another 15 years

Any comments on the spins (reverse => vertical => forward) for some more yards?
Has anyone else watched the trajectory and wondered why the ball flies as it flies?

Best Regards,

[andyhiggins]

Re: wrist break in the swing

Thanks for the advice Keiko, first impressions of relaxed grip and full turn are good, long may it continue!!

regards,

Andy

[keiko]

Re: wrist break in the swing

With driver, one should be hitting up on the ball, from low to high, which we call a positive angle of impact. There has been much debate over whether the pro's actually do this and some have measured some pro's actually having a negative angle of impact.
Look at long driver pro's, their right shoulder is lower than the left, the ball is moved up in their stance, and they are staying behind the ball at impact with the clubhead lagging way behind their hands. This imparts a positive angle at impact and coupled with teeing the ball high and hitting the ball with the top one third of the club face, the ball runs like crazy with top spin when it lands.
Now some prefer a closed face at impact and some open; the open guys generally hit high power fades and the closed guys will be hitting draws or hooks(which run further than fades).
My ball for instance will take off and quickly get to it's highest point of flight then hang there for a long time(due to the positive angle of attack), if I were to hit down with driver, the ball would gradually gain height and probably stick or not roll much when it lands.
Hope this helps.