Squaring The Club Face Explained
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Swing Extender for Shaft Rotation
A classic drill for helping you train a release that uses more shaft rotation instead of in-plane shaft movement to square the club face.
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In this video, we're going to use a swing extender to work on shaft rotation.
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So there are, as you know from some of my other videos, there are a couple major ways
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to square the face.
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One being in plain shaft movement that kind of looks like this, and the other being shaft
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rotation or the motorcycle movement, getting the club face to twist compared to the direction
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that it's swinging.
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As the more that you want to have kind of leg and and shaft lean, the more you need shaft
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rotation to square the club face.
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So one way to eliminate using in-plane movement as a way of squaring the club face is to use
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a shaft extender.
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Now there are commercial models available that kind of stick in the end of the club, or you
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can take an old club and kind of cut a hole so you can stick an alignment stick right
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through the bottom, or you can take an old shaft and stick it in.
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I've used that.
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Since I don't use a ton of training aids for a high volume of reps, I kind of like to
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use it to get a sensation and then move away from it.
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I like to make my own, I don't like to buy it a whole lot.
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So to make your own shaft extender, you're just going to take an alignment stick and you're
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going to put it along the bottom of the grip.
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It'll feel almost like one of those ribbed grips that has kind of more of a triangular
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bottom as opposed to a real round grip.
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So what this does is it forces the club to stay outside my body.
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So if I was to use that shaft rotation to try to square the club face, I'm going to hit
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myself on the side.
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Now eventually I'm going to hit myself on the side, somewhere if we keep the club outside
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the hands, somewhere right around shaft parallel we're going to hit ourselves on the
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side.
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It really depends on what length of swing you're taking as to if you're going to not
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touch yourself at all or if you're going to just kind of barely hit yourself on the
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side.
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So you can using that little shaft extender so the alignment stick you take your grip
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and we're going to do just a little 9 to 3 movement and trying to get the golf ball to
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start straight or left while keeping my upper body in good tilt and behind the golf
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ball.
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Because if I want to use the shaft in plain shaft movement in order to get the club face
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to square, you saw on that one I hit myself pretty good.
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It would look kind of like that.
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As opposed to if I'm using more of the shaft rotation to get it to start straight it
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will look kind of like that and I can actually do these shots where it never completely
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hits me into my side.
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Now you see I have another version over there where if you find that this is very beneficial
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for you you can make one that's a little bit more permanent by taking the O alignment
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thick and hopefully the the smaller and the lighter you can find the better and then stick
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it so that it's about a foot down below the grip and then put tape at two different places.
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So now it's just going to be a little bit more permanent and stable so that if I was
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to hit it I don't have to like you know it's not going to come out of my hands or anything
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like that.
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So again I'm working on getting that face to rotate so that I can hit the straight while
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still kind of having my body rotate in good position like that as opposed to what a lot
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of people do is use that in plain shaft movement with their body standing up.
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So they've used these shaft extenders for a long period of time to solve this club
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face as it relates to the release problem.
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The main issue I have is you can't take really big swings because as you come through
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eventually that is going to hit me when I get past right around here this is going to
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hit my side so unless I can take a bigger swing and really just stop like that then I'm
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going to have a hard time putting a whole lot of speed and power but for some golfers this
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can be really helpful for getting kind of a feeling and then you can take that feeling
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and now I know exactly kind of what that feels like I can kind of use that visual and
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imagine that shaft sticking out of the bottom of the grip as I work on some of those release
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movement.
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So now I can go trying to get that same feeling working on that same kind of release
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pattern.
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That was a little better.
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So then if I want to try to get it to start even more to the left I can really rotate that
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club instead of using the in-plane shaft movement.
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So if you're struggling with your release and you tend to have more of a look of this
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through impact you can see if I had that shaft sticking out here that would have to go
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through me.
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This forces you to keep that shaft on the outside and then your goal is to figure out how
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to make it so that the ball doesn't go right and you'll do that by using a good release
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and rotating the shaft.
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If you find that you do this and you hit a lot of fat shots then it means that you probably
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need to work on the wipe and low point control not so much the face rotation aspect.
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So from the face on you're going to grip it so that the alignment sticks out about
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a foot lower than the grip kind of like this and pretty close to in line with the bottom
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of the grip.
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That way you can see that if I took a swing and if I released it it's going to hit me.
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So a good one would look kind of more like this where it didn't hit me until the club
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was at least parallel and a bad one would look kind of like this where I felt it really
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hit my side right at impact.
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So you can either use kind of the handheld version that way you can quickly switch in and
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out or you could have your training aid kind of already set up and you can switch clubs
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pretty quickly.
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So again taped about in a foot below the grip just like so and then trying to make these
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movements where it doesn't hit you until pretty close to that follow through position
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and that's why you'll see if I was to take a bigger swing it's going to hit me just
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because I'm going to make it pass that point.
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So this is really only good for doing impact training really working on kind of that feeling
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of the bottom of the swing right through there.
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Doesn't do too well when you're working it into transition.