When You Understand This, The Golf Swing Becomes Effortless

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Transcript Summary-

If you want to improve the consistency of your ball striking or hit your driver straighter, one of the first things I focus on with my students is understanding how the right arm works throughout the golf swing. Getting this movement right can help you develop a much smoother, more effortless swing without overcomplicating things. I often demonstrate this by hitting shots one-handed, showing just how efficiently the club can work when the right arm moves correctly.

Think of the golf swing as bowling a ball underarm down an alleyway. Rather than throwing the club over the top or forcing it into position, we want to allow it to swing naturally back and then work underneath through impact. One of the biggest problems I see is golfers restricting their shoulder movement during the backswing. This creates a blockage, forcing the elbow behind the body and making it much harder to deliver the club consistently.

To improve this, start by setting up your right arm correctly. Imagine you’re giving blood, allowing the arm to sit naturally before gripping the club. As you swing back, let your right shoulder blade retract naturally to create space for the arm to work. From there, practise swinging the club back and imagining you’re bowling a ball underarm down an alleyway. This simple feeling helps the club stay balanced and encourages a much more natural movement through impact.

For golfers who struggle with pulling the ball left or slicing it to the right, I introduce an exaggerated drill to help them feel this movement. Set up with your hips slightly closed, your shoulders reasonably square and a little more weight on your lead side. From here, practise swinging the club back and throwing it underarm through the ball, imagining the shot starting just right of the target and drawing gently back towards it. This encourages the club to approach the ball more from the inside rather than cutting across it.

The lead-side weight position also helps you strike the ball before the ground. If your weight hangs too far back, you’re more likely to hit the ground behind the ball, whereas getting your weight forward helps encourage a cleaner strike. Once you’ve developed a feel for the movement, gradually transition from the exaggerated drill into your normal stance, keeping the same underarm throwing sensation.

Ultimately, rather than worrying about lots of different positions in your swing, focus on whether your body is allowing your right arm to move freely. Picture yourself bowling a ball down an alleyway, with the club swinging back naturally and then working underneath through impact. If you’d like additional support, the Swing Coach app can analyse your swing and provide feedback within seconds, helping you practise these movements more effectively.

Full Transcript- So, when you're looking at improving the consistency of your ball striking or maybe you're looking at trying to hit driver a little bit straighter, it's difficult to know where to start sometimes, isn't it? Well, for my students when they come and see me, I'll often start with teaching them how the right arm is supposed to work from the start into your back swing and through into the swing. Just show you how it works during the golf swing because for me, it's one of the simplest ways to start to groove a very, very smooth and effortless swing. Now, this is what I do with every one of them. Let me show you. It can be a little bit annoying when they see this, but I'm going to swing one-handed, okay? Not to show off, but to show you what's possible when you move this correctly.

So, apart from I mean, I closed the face probably a little bit too much there on that one, but apart from going, Danny, you've just hit it further with one arm than I can do with two. That is super super annoying. And I do not do that to show off, but I do it to show you the efficiency of how this arm works can make a massive difference to your game. So, what you'll see with a lot of the consistent players is is they make it look easy because this the club's just swinging back over here like this and then it seems to fall beautifully back where it came from. Throws underneath. It's almost like an underarm throw beautifully through the impact area and then they pick it up on the way through and hey presto, they've got a golf swing. So the the golf swing is almost feels like very much like we're bowling a ball down an alleyway. A friend of mine, Andy Plumbing, gave me that image. Like you're bowling a ball. You're throwing a ball underarm rolling it down an alleyway here. We're not sidearm throwing it. We're not swinging over the top. We're simply throwing it underneath. So understanding how this arm works and how you can get work effectively and efficiently is super super important. Now for many of my students, they just make it more complicated than it needs to be. And I'll give you a quick example. You know, with one of my students, Mark, this week, you know, one of the things is is where in a sense this shoulders position here, his shoulder was really kind of rotated inwards too much as he took as he took the club back. Now, the problem is, look, I want this club to just beautifully throw back, but this shoulder's blocking me. So, what Mark would do now is this. This elbow would start to pop behind him just to take the club behind. Now, he's out of position. The club's not balanced. I mean a whole host of things can happen from there. Some people come over the top, some people drop it around here. It's not balanced. So how do we in a sense allow this arm to work effectively? Well, it starts with the starting position. So when you're here, look, we want this arm to freely flow on this arc here. Well, all we do, we imagine myself giving blood to start with. Okay, here. Why? Because look, if I turn the door open here, then I can create room on this side. So I'm giving blood. Then I hold my hand in this position and grip the golf club. Now the second thing we're going to do here is when we swing back now I'm going to this is what Mark wasn't doing. We're going to make sure look if you look at my shoulder blade I am going to now allow that blade shoulder blade here to just simply just retract backwards and provide space. Look for me to continue working this around. Now what Mark did was this shoulder was more like this. So the problem is is he needs complete swing. So now would bring his arm back like this. Does it make sense? But he wouldn't need to do that if he just allowed that shoulder just to sit down and retract naturally backwards. And why is that important? Well, it means that we can look after the balance of this golf club. And if I if I'm allowed just to keep this in a sense on the rail here, then look, I can continue throwing it beautifully under arm down the alleyway here. Does that make sense? But if suddenly I get to a point here, then there's a blockage and then I start to lift the ball in a different direction. Now suddenly it's out of position. I'm in here. I then might have to try and for get it to fall back where it needs to get to. That can make my body move all over the place. And you can see here it gets very very complicated very very fast. So understanding how this works is super simple. Yeah. Hold in place here. Then just practice what we've got Mark to do. Just practice first of all with your right hand. Just practice working that club around and really sensing that shoulder going backwards here. And then from here, just imagine, like I said, you're coming through and you're going to bowl the ball down the alleyway here. Through. That's all we got Matt to do to start with. Just this back here. Open it up. Bowl the ball down the alleyway. So, pretty simple, isn't it? Okay. Very different to I mean, there's different ways to throw a ball. We could throw a ballside down. We could throw a ball downwards. But I think golf is very much and plumb gave me this example of just throwing a ball underarm is like bowling a ball down an alleyway. I love that an image and it creates so many wonderful things. But you do need your right arm in place to support that length of action all the way back. Now I can throw it underneath. So that's the first thing to start with is set your arm in place. Swing it back. No, there we go. All the way back. And then just imagine here, look, we're throwing the club under under arm down the alleyway here.

Let's have a look at this. Super super simple. Yeah, super super simple. Just nice and gently to start off with. Now, with Mark to really exaggerate this feeling, and this is this is an absolutely brilliant drill. And we're talking about in a sense bowling a ball. You'll see with some of the better players, you know, Scott Chef is probably the most extreme example of this that when they are swinging this golf club, you'll notice that that foot is almost in a sense going backwards. Okay? This is them bowling a ball. We don't spin out like this. We don't throw a ball this way. We are throwing a ball like this. And this is a very natural reaction of the body that I don't want you to think about for a second. Okay. Now with Mark, I needed him to exaggerate this. So what we wanted to do is I got him almost into the bowler finish position. The bowler stance here where his hip everything here was in a sense closed off. Why? Because I wanted him to he wasn't used to this experience of this everything the freedom of this right arm to work in this pattern of motion. Does that make sense? This underarm motion. He would be more here this way and then sometimes drop here. Look, we've closed everything off. We opened not on his shoulder, but his hip. Now, suddenly, look at this. This is the motion. And the goal here for him, because he was a um often somebody who pull the balls left or slice it to the right, the goal was to get the ball setting off to the right of target with a soft little draw. And when we do this, and we set this up with a bit more weight over on our lead side here, okay, closing off the hips, shoulders stay reasonably square. And what we did is the same principle. We've got him to really sense that club working around that right arm working around here. And then from here, look, all I said like throw that throw it now under arm. And all we're doing, look, is throwing it under arm. And imagine that ball setting off slightly to the right of target and it coming back with a little draw.

Let's have a look at this. What's happened? Probably exaggerated a little bit there. sets off slightly to the right target with possibly a little bit too much draw, but this is me exaggerating. That's the shape he wanted. He would be normally setting it off over here, either going straight there or slicing it over in this direction. But you can see now as an exaggeration to feel this, allowing that club to kind of continue. And then look, throwing it here, you can already see the path of that golf club where it's taking more outwards towards the ball rather than across. More outwards and more power because the club's being thrown underneath rather than chopped on top. Okay, so let's one more time at that. So close that off back, right shoulder behind. There we go. And then throw it underarm down the alleyway.

Let's have a look at this one. Hey, Presto. This is me really exaggerating it. And there we go. Look at that big motion. And the strike you see there, I'm still hitting the ball than the ground. That's already been built in because I've put my weight more here. This is only a drill. Much more here. So, I'm always ahead of the golf ball, which is super super important. Whenever you're throwing a ball under arm like this, your body location will determine whether you're going to strike it. If I'm way back here, I'm going to strike the ground behind the golf ball. If I'm over here, I'm more like to strike the ball in the ground. So, simply setting that there just kind of presets that. Does that make sense? Everything else, though, remains the same. The way that right arm works in the way back and on the way through, you can see here, has a real bearing on what you naturally do in the golf swing. So, as opposed to thinking of all these different positions, just take the picture of rolling a ball down there. Then ask yourself, is my body helping me to do that all the way back and all the way through, or am I putting blockages in the way, which is going to prevent me from effectively rolling that ball down that alleyway. Make sense? That's all we're really, really trying to do. Set that right arm up at the start. allow it to track back all the way here and throw away. Okay, that's where I would start. Do the drill. Get the ball setting off to the right target with a lovely strike and then start to gradually move that back and that take that into kind of a normal stance. Now, if you'd love some support with this, remember you there's my Swing Coach app which will kind of analyze exactly what you're doing right now in your golf swing and give you feedback every swing within two seconds you're making a swing. that will give you instant feedback which is super valuable when you're working on stuff like this. I'll put a QR code somewhere around here or pin a link to the the app and you can try it out for 14 days completely for free in the top comment below this video. If you liked the concept of throwing underarm and that's fairly new to you and you be and you're struggling with direction, check this video out right here. I go into it in a little bit more depth and give you a wonderful drill to practice. So, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, give it a thumbs up, share it with a friend who you know needs a bit of help. But until next week, have a wonderful golfing week.