Getting the Golf Ball in the Air on a Downswing

Video Transcript

"Hello! On behalf of expertvillage.com, my name is Bryan Pemberton from the Reserve at Spanos Park and we are talking about the golf swing today and one of the things we want to talk about here is actually what a player tries to do when we actually swing the golf club to hit this ball. A lot of times in golf you are going to find that players will actually try to lift the ball up or help the ball up by getting this club underneath his ball. If his ball is on the ground, this putt can never go lower than the ball. So again one of the things you want to talk about is how do we get the ball in the air. One of the things that always happens and I've given lessons where people are actually trying to lift the ball is they don't understand in golf. The only thing that we really want to do is swing on a descending blow. The only way that this ball gets off the ground is by hitting down on it. If you have divots laying back here, you know that you are not trapping the ball or hitting the ball first. I think the player wants to think about taking this ball and trapping the ball between this club and the ground. When you do that, you are going to find that a divot doesn't start right here but a good divot will actually start on this side of the golf ball so we are going to leave this ball here as a reference and you are going to see a ball that you hit properly is actually hit on a down swing. The ball leaves and the club continues down and starts a divot right here on this side and continues out here. That is kind of what you want to do just for trapping and striking a golf ball. Let's hit one here and see. Again you will see the divot is well on this side of the golf ball that we just hit and again you know that I trapped the ball and again that is what gets the ball in the air. Okay we are talking about the down swing of the golf swing. Again what we are going to find is this motion right here is the most important part, is the engine and this is what we call a release. A release is simply when a club gets from this side of your hands to that side of your hands. On the down swing you are going to cock your wrists and release the club in this position and that is what gets the club looking like this in this position. When you talk about release, y you hear someone talk about release this is the component that they are talking about. If you are having trouble hitting the ball straight, a lot of times what you are going to find is people will actually drive their arms down really fast or really hard and there's not enough time to release the golf club. Let's take the club back to right here and work on just releasing the club. Releasing the club just means releasing your hands, not your arm. So we are going down, we are going to release it. You will find that the golf club looks more in this position rather than this position. Again a lot of times you will find players having trouble hitting the ball solid or hitting it right. We are going to be in this position instead of that position. "