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Hogan Towel Drill

Hogan and Jimmy Ballard used this towel drill to work on "connection". It can be used to create a feel of the upper body rotation, but be careful with placement of the towel and how it affects the movements of the arms during the release.

Tags: Member Question, Drill, Intermediate

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This is the Hogan towel drill.

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So, I had a member question about putting a towel underneath your armpits.

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And I've heard others discuss it.

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It was a drill used by Ben Hogan and Jimmy Ballard has used it.

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So there's got to be some merit to it.

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What it can do, and I'll go through some of the details of it.

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And when I like it and when I don't like it.

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So what it does is it kind of forces a connection between the arms and the upper body.

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So I'm not going to be able to really disconnect from the shoulders or also the towel

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is going to come loose.

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So as a result, it forces me to stay connected and really turn my thoracic spine or my hips.

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Now one thing that you want to be careful with is attaching it too low.

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So if you have it underneath your elbows, this is going to cause a lot of problems.

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My elbows being stuck to my sides like so is really going to impact my release.

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So when you're setting this up, you want to make sure that you set it up high as high

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up in the armpit as you can.

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So that your arm still has a little bit of wiggle room.

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It's not totally locked to your side.

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And the wiggle room you'll need is to be able to execute a little bit of that white movement.

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On the left side, the tendency is to lock it on the side of your body, kind of like

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so.

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You want to pin it a little bit more kind of in the front of your body.

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Now there are some really good golfers who would struggle with this drill and it would

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become disconnected.

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And so I don't think that it's one that everybody should try.

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But if you're working on trying to get your upper body to continue rotating through the

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shot, I do believe that this has some merit and it can give you some feelings of that

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connection.

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Now one word of caution, I personally don't like doing it any bigger than really

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drills or nine to three shots.

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I don't like doing it above waist height.

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And the reason being, there should be some lift in, especially that trail shoulder and

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having this towel under your armpit is going to prevent that.

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So it tends to kind of suck the club a little bit more inside and really upset your position

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at the top of the swing, the way you organize the ultimately the path or the combination

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of move is the produce the good path.

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So have it high enough so that you can still execute a little bit of wipe and use it

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primarily with nine to three style drills and use it primarily so that you can get the

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feeling of your body rotating on the way through or being kind of connected through there.

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But you'll see is in order to do that, I'll have to keep the handle moving similar to

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kind of a hit my arms kind of model as opposed to if I were to stall and flip the space

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of how I would square the club with my trail shoulder, coming off my body will tend

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to cause this to drop and frequently that left arm sliding around my body and more of

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a chicken wing model with tend to cause it to drop.

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So it can be helpful for kind of connecting and getting the feeling during the release

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of the body continuing to rotate but be careful using it on full swings.

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I know it worked well for Ben Hogan and Jimmy Valor but I have seen it kind of cause the

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arms to get stuck cause that trail arm to go into more of an internal rotation style

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of release.

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So be careful with this one but if you need a good feeling of your upper body continuing

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rotating on the way through this can be very helpful in release training.

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