Once You Learn This Move, The Golf Swing Feels Effortless

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Transcript Summary -

In this video, Danny Maude explains how understanding one simple concept can transform your golf swing, improve your strike and help you hit the ball straighter. Rather than giving golfers lots of different positions to think about, Danny believes that finding the right concept allows the body to organise itself naturally, creating a more consistent and effortless swing.

Danny introduces an idea he learned from one of the world’s leading coaches, Andy Plummer, who described the golf swing as being similar to a ten-pin bowler throwing a ball underarm down an alleyway. Danny explains that this underarm throwing action is a much better representation of how the golf swing should work than a sidearm throwing motion, which can encourage golfers to come over the top and create problems with their strike and accuracy.

He demonstrates how this concept can help both slicers and hookers. Slicers often struggle because they move the club outwards and across the ball, whereas golfers who hook the ball may compensate by dropping the club behind them and flipping their wrists. By focusing on an underarm throwing action, golfers can deliver the club more naturally along the correct path without having to consciously manipulate their swing.

Danny also explains how this movement helps generate speed through the clubhead. By allowing the clubhead to be thrown naturally through impact, golfers can create plenty of speed without trying to force positions or hold artificial angles. He demonstrates how the concept can improve compression and ball striking, particularly for golfers who struggle with hitting the ground too early or catching the ball thin. The key is to maintain the underarm throwing action while ensuring the chest and pelvis are positioned slightly further towards the target when necessary.

To practise this, Danny recommends starting with small, gentle shots and imagining yourself throwing a ball underarm down an alleyway towards the target. This helps develop a better understanding of the club’s path and face control, allowing golfers to improve their consistency without overthinking their technique. He encourages golfers to experiment with the movement, paying attention to where the ball starts and finishes, and gradually building confidence in their ability to control the clubface.

Finally, Danny recommends his Swing Coach app, which offers personalised drills and immediate feedback to help golfers understand their swings and improve their technique. He encourages viewers to practise the underarm throwing concept, share their experiences in the comments and check out his related bowler exercise video to reinforce the movement.

Full Transcript- So, I don't know why you're here, whether it's to improve the quality of your strike with your irons, or maybe you just want to hit driver a little bit longer and a bit straighter. Um but what I would say is this, I have a lot of um people that come and see me every single week, and they have very different faults. Some struggle with striking, some are hooking the ball, some are slicing the golf ball, but they have one thing in common. They all have a pretty poor concept of what the golf swing is supposed to be doing, and that ruins their entire golf swing. Often, I don't know if you feel the same, but I don't like giving my students lots of positions to think about, because for me it's unbelievably overwhelming, it gets me thinking too much, and it's same often for my students. What I tend to do though, is I give them the right concept, and once they get the right concept, everything else starts to fall into position without them having to think about a lot of things. So, in this video, I think you're going to get something that will be probably mind-blowing for you, right? It's unbelievably simple, and you'll be amazed at how it can start to create some consistency in your ball striking and your accuracy. Now, I was aware um a few weeks ago, and I I met one of the best coaches in the world, Andy Plummer. And he gave me a fantastic image of what a golf swing really is, and he described it as almost like somebody bowling a ball down an alleyway, like a tenpin bowler bowling a ball down the alleyway. And I was like, what does that look like? What does that mean? Well, look at my arm. It's working, it's bowling, and it's like an underarm throw. Can you see this? It's an underarm throw. Now, that's really important to understand, because that is the concept of a golf swing. Compare that to this. There are different ways to throw, right? We could throw sidearm, right? The problem is if you throw sidearm, what the people What's the biggest fault in golf? Over the top. So, what does the over the tops do? They are turning this way. Has that got any relationship to throwing under arm? No. What do we often want if you're slicing a golf ball you used to do? We want you to come down naturally on this line. Well, if you are here and you're throwing a ball under arm, where would your arm go? This way. Without thinking, you won't have to think about necessarily coming down. You would throw it beautifully down the line as you should, yeah? But how does this relate to hookers? Well, I'm in that family, too. I get to the top sometimes and I would turn. Now I turn just like a slicer, but the difference is is I know that that would slice. Sometimes I would then drop the club behind me and then I would flip. Compare that to this. No, we want to throw under arm. So, notice here my my body at this stage is actually very close to the target and I am naturally throwing this way in an under arm throw. See the subtle difference in the concept? So, I want you to imagine now you could grab some balls and just imagine rolling them. That trail arm, under arm. You might be playing golf right-handed, but left-handed you could do the same thing. Look, just throw that arm this way, under arm here. Now, notice as I do this, as I'm here and I'm throwing under arm, there's no attempt to come over the top cuz it doesn't make any sense. But at the same time, I'm not trying not to come over the top because again, why would I? It makes no sense to throwing a ball under arm. Why else is this useful? Well, you've often taught or heard me talk about catapulting the club so that we're generating speed. Look at this. Catapulting the club. Well, look at this here, look. If I'm throwing the ball under arm here, what's happening? The club look, head is getting thrown. The grip is in a sense slowing down here. I am throwing the club head. Now, one of my students this week, Cameron, was struggling to strike his irons. And I was mentioned the throwing action to him. But he was hitting the ground a little bit behind the golf ball and he was catching the ball a little bit thin, which you kind of would do if you are too far behind the ball. You're becoming upwards, right? So I said to him, "Don't change anything. Still keep swinging underarm. The difference is, look, make sure that your body your chest and your your pelvis is just more on this side of the golf ball. But I'm still, look, throwing underarm. Most of the time what I see with golfers, and certainly in our app, hundreds of thousands of swings, by the way, what do they look like? This. Why? Maybe this is a sidearm throw, yeah? When golf should be more of a underarm throw. Now we start to look more like a golf swing. Can you see this? As we go underarm, our bodies stay more in line as we throw the club versus when we go throw on a sidearm. Can you see how I'm almost wanting to go this way? [snorts] So can you see how just a very simple changing concept can make a massive difference to the way your body moves? So the way you work on this, first of all, is just picture that in your mind, maybe even just with one hand. Throw the ball down an alleyway. Literally imagine, by the way, you we've still got target. Imagine the ball being thrown down the alleyway. Now if you notice the club striking the ground a little bit too early, just make sure that you're over on this side of the golf ball when you're throwing it, yeah? Notice this, I'm not holding any angles. But if you actually look, for instance, from this camera here, you'll see that I've gotten more than enough lag as I'm throwing this club underarm. The difference is, I've got complete control. So let's have a look at this in action. And I start off with my students to start with just really, really slowly playing some gentle shots back and throwing that club down an alleyway underarm.

And look at that there, look. Just a real just tap down the middle. Nice and simple here. And what I said to Cameron, who was again just struggling with strike, I said to him,"Look, if your club are you struggling with strike and the club's just a bit back here and it's starting to come up with what do we want? We want that face, look, just sitting more on the ball with his handle slightly ahead. Do we want to try and force that head? Absolutely not, look. The handle in reality is we just want that club being thrown underarm. So, look at this. If that handle is slightly more ahead here, you're going to get that beautiful compression with speed, yeah? If I'm back over here, I'm the handle's still working the same way, but in the just too far behind the golf ball. So, I'm throwing it underarm, but now I'm throwing it over this side, so the club naturally starts strike slightly down on that golf ball, look, and through. The great thing about this, and and this was certainly one of my faults, I would sometimes in a sense get too sidearm. From here, look, I then have to force I have to my club is heading outwards too much here. I then have to roll my wrist to kind of catch up. I did a pretty good job of that, but it wasn't as consistent as I'd like. When I start to throw the club underarm, look at how naturally the club just doesn't have to kind of catch up. It's just floating beautifully on the arc, and I'm looking after the face. You'll even notice as I do this, notice how the back of my glove on the face is almost pointing towards you. I haven't kind of wrapped it around like this. I've got much more control over that club face. And all of these things are happening not because I'm actively trying, but because actually I'm just simply swinging underarm. Now, the beauty with this is your body is super smart. So, what will generally start to happen is this. You'll start when you start noticing you catch the ground a little bit too early, you'll start to force yourself to move a bit further forward here like this naturally this your body will organize itself around this very naturally. You'll start to see sometimes the ball maybe moving to the right, moving to the left. Well, now look with under arm, you've got control look over this trail hand. This would get my face closing. This would get it opening. Same thing. I'm just throwing just like an alleyway ball throwing a ball down an alleyway. I'm throwing it down there. I've got control over that club face. Again, no big shots to start with just picture that motion here and then look from there I'm throwing it that way very much underneath.

And that felt like it just tweaked to the right just a fraction but very very little. I've got complete control and even though I'm throwing it underneath look my bottom of my swing is 4.8 in after the golf ball. That's for me the secret there. So, that concept just play around with that concept. You can play around with it with small shots just the same thing look throwing that ball underneath all the time it's like an under arm throw. Take control of it. See my face is a a little bit shut on that one. So, what do I do? I've turned it round. So, now I've got in a sense control I build build some feel over this club face and where that club face is pointing. Make sense? And I keep throwing it and that should be now a little bit less. There you go look. Make sense? So, I'm building that sensation all the time but what I'm not doing is this motion. This is a is a throwing action but it's a different throwing action that creates a whole host of potential problems. This is what we're after. And if you want to have a learn a drill that kind of really cements this, check this video out right here where I Andy gave me the bowler exercise, okay? It's a brilliant, brilliant drill to kind of really sense this kind of motion and help with the strike. Now, you might be asking, "How do I get support with this?" Check out my new Swing Coach app. You get 14 days completely free. Test it out. It will basically monitor what you're doing. If you're doing a lot of these things here, it's going to start to suggest drills just like this one to help you get yourself back on track. More importantly, it will give you immediate feedback within 2 seconds of every swing exactly how you're getting on, which I think is super valuable. Check out the QR code somewhere around here. I'll pin a link to the top comment below this video. So, start bowling those balls down the alleyway like this underarm. Let's Let me know in the comments how you get on next time you're out on the golf course. Have a great week. All the best. Danny.