Stop Early Releases: Extend Your Arms for Better Impact

This drill is designed to clean up an early release pattern—when the clubhead passes your hands too soon, the lead arm folds, and the club rises out of the strike instead of moving through it. If you tend to scoop, flip, or finish with a chicken wing, this is a simple way to retrain impact. The goal is to teach your arms to extend through the hitting area so the club stays low to the ground longer, improving low point control and helping you strike the ball more solidly.

How the Drill Works

This is a nine-to-three drill, but with a very specific intention: down, not up. You are not just making a short swing. You are training the club to move through impact with extension rather than with a quick throw of the wrists and a folding of the arms.

In this drill, you swing from roughly belly-button high on the backswing to belly-button high on the follow-through. Through that short motion, your focus is on getting your arms to extend away from your body through impact. For many golfers, that will feel like the club is moving more down through the strike, even though in reality body rotation will still allow the hands to rise gradually after impact.

That distinction matters. If your body keeps rotating, the club will not literally drive straight into the ground. But if you are used to releasing too early, the correct motion often feels much lower and more extended than what you normally do. That exaggerated feel is exactly what helps you change the pattern.

The key checkpoint is simple: the club stays low to the turf through the hitting area. Golfers who flip the club often bottom out too early, and then the clubhead is already climbing a few inches above the ground just after impact. This drill teaches the opposite. You want the club traveling low and extended through the strike, supported by straighter arms and better body motion.

Step-by-Step

Set up for a short shot. Use a wedge or short iron and make a narrow, balanced setup. You are not trying to hit this hard. The purpose is to train the release pattern.
Make a backswing to about nine o’clock. Keep the motion compact—roughly to where the club is around waist or belly-button height. This keeps the drill simple and makes it easier to monitor the through-swing.
Swing through to about three o’clock. Again, stop around belly-button height on the follow-through. Do not let the club wrap around your body or race upward.
Feel your arms extending through impact. Your intention is not to pull the arms inward. Instead, feel them lengthening away from your torso as the club moves through the ball.
Keep the club low to the ground after impact. The clubhead should appear to travel along the turf for longer than you are used to. This is one of the best signs that you are reducing the flip.
Finish with width, not collapse. At the end of the drill, your arms should look more extended rather than bent and cramped. The lead arm should not immediately fold into a chicken wing.
Gradually build to bigger swings. Once the nine-to-three motion feels solid, move to a ten-to-two swing, then eventually to fuller swings. Keep the same release feel as the motion gets longer.

What You Should Feel

If you usually early release, the correct motion may feel unusual at first. That is normal. Here are the sensations you want:

The club feels lower through impact instead of bouncing upward right after contact.
Your arms feel longer through the strike rather than quickly bending and folding.
Your chest keeps turning so the arms can extend with rotation, not with a hand flip.
The strike feels more compressed because the club is reaching the ball before it starts climbing.
The follow-through feels wider, with the club moving out in front of you before it rises.

A good visual checkpoint is what happens just after impact. If the clubhead is already noticeably off the ground and your lead arm is bent, you likely reverted to the old pattern. If the club stays low and your arms are more extended, you are doing the drill correctly.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Letting the arms pull inward through impact. This is the classic chicken-wing pattern the drill is meant to fix.
Trying to help the ball into the air. Scooping adds loft and raises the club too early, hurting contact.
Making the swing too big too soon. If you jump to full speed before you own the short motion, the old release usually returns.
Confusing “down” with digging. The feel may be down, but you still need rotation and flow. Do not jam the club steeply into the turf.
Stopping body rotation. The arms should extend because your motion is organized, not because your body stalls and throws the club.
Over-folding the wrists through impact. A flip with the hands defeats the purpose of the drill.

How This Fits Your Swing

This drill addresses a major cause of inconsistent contact: a release that happens too early. When the club bottoms out before the ball and immediately starts rising, you tend to hit thin shots, heavy shots, weak high shots, and glancing contact. By learning to extend the arms through the strike and keep the club low to the ground longer, you improve the relationship between impact and low point.

It also helps your overall motion look and function better. A player who flips the club often has a cramped, folded follow-through. A player who extends through the strike creates more width, better shaft control, and a more stable clubface. That does not just improve short swings—it carries into your full swing as well.

As you progress from nine-to-three to ten-to-two and then to full swings, remember that the club will naturally continue upward on a bigger motion. You are not trying to hold it down forever. You are simply making sure it passes through the correct impact zone on its way up. If the shorter drill is solid, the full swing will have a much better chance of producing the same clean release.

In other words, start by owning the small motion. If you can train a low, extended, non-flipping release in a short swing, you give yourself the foundation for better contact and a stronger impact pattern in every club in the bag.