Improve Your Follow Through with the Net Touch Drill

The Net Touch Drill gives you immediate feedback on one of the most misunderstood parts of the swing: the follow-through just after impact. If you tend to chicken wing, scoop the club, stall your body, or fake a good finish after a poor release, this drill helps you clean that up. Instead of guessing whether your arms stayed extended and your body kept turning, you use the net as a fixed reference. That external checkpoint makes it much easier to train a connected, extended release through the ball rather than a bent-arm, pull-in motion that only looks good after the fact.

How the Drill Works

The idea is simple: you position yourself so that a correct follow-through would cause the club to just barely touch the net. If your release pattern breaks down, the club will miss that reference or contact it in the wrong way. That tells you immediately that something in your motion changed.

This is especially useful because many golfers are not very aware of what happens in the few inches after impact. You may think your lead arm stayed straight because it looks straight in the finish, but often the arm bent through the strike and only straightened later. That is the classic “fake finish” problem. The net exposes it.

To set it up, take your normal address and then move into a sound follow-through position with:

• Weight on your lead side
• Body turned through
• Arms extended
• Club reaching out in front of you

From there, adjust your distance from the net so the clubhead would barely brush it when you arrive in that position. That “just touching” point becomes your built-in checkpoint.

Once the setup is right, make short swings—usually nine-to-three length—and monitor whether you can reach the net correctly. If you pull your arms in, stand up, or stop turning, you will lose that contact.

This drill works best on a mat, because you can mark your ball position and stance location. On grass, divots can gradually change your spacing and make the feedback less reliable.

Step-by-Step

1. Set up your station. Stand in front of your practice net with enough room to make short swings safely. This drill is designed for home practice and works best when the net is stable and easy to reference.

2. Build your ideal follow-through position first. Without making a backswing, move the club into a correct post-impact position. Your chest should be turning through, your pressure should be on your lead foot, and your arms should be extended rather than folding in.

3. Adjust your distance from the net. Move yourself until the clubhead would just barely touch the net in that follow-through position. You do not want to jam the club into the net—just a light brush.

4. Mark your setup. Put down a tee or another reference on your mat so you know exactly where the ball position and stance should be. This matters because golfers often creep closer to the net over time and think they are improving when they are really just changing the setup.

5. Start with slow practice swings. Make short, controlled motions and rehearse reaching the club into the net. Focus on arriving in the same extended follow-through every time.

6. Hit short nine-to-three shots. Once the motion feels comfortable, begin hitting soft shots. Keep the swing compact. For most golfers, this drill is most effective with shorter swings because the feedback is clearer and you are less likely to instinctively pull away from the net.

7. Hold the finish briefly. If your ball hits a hanging net, the net may move on contact. Hold your follow-through for a moment and let the net settle so you can see whether your club really reached the intended spot.

8. Gradually add speed, not length. If you want more challenge, keep the swing around nine-to-three but add a little more intent. That lets you test whether you can maintain extension under speed without avoiding the net.

What You Should Feel

The biggest value of this drill is that it gives you the right external feel. Rather than thinking only about body positions, you are trying to send the club into a specific place in space.

Reach the Club Away From You

You should feel as if the club is being reached outward through the shot, not flung past your body and then yanked inward. This does not mean your shoulders lunge toward the target. It means the club continues traveling outward with your arms extending through the release.

A useful image is to feel that the club is reaching toward the lower part of the net in front of you rather than whipping up and around too soon.

Pressure Moving Into the Lead Side

At the touch point, your weight should be favoring your lead foot. If you hang back, it becomes much harder to extend properly through the strike. Staying centered and moving pressure forward helps the club travel into the net from a solid, stable base.

Body Turn Supporting the Release

You should feel your hips and torso continuing to turn. A lot of chicken-wing patterns happen because the body stalls and the arms have nowhere to go. When your pivot keeps moving, the arms can extend naturally instead of collapsing.

Soft Enough Arms to Extend

If your arms are too tense, they often pull inward and the club gets thrown past you. You want enough structure to control the club, but not so much tension that your arms become rigid and retract through impact. Many golfers benefit from feeling softer arm tension so the club and arms can move together.

Stay Down Through the Strike

You should also feel that your posture remains intact. If you stand up or “pull up” through impact, the club moves away from the intended touch point and you will miss the net even if the swing felt decent. Staying in your posture allows the club to travel on the proper path into the checkpoint.

A Slow-Motion, Almost Tai Chi Tempo

If you struggle badly with a pull-in release, start in exaggerated slow motion. The correct motion often feels much more deliberate than you expect. A smooth, almost Tai Chi-like pace can help you sense the club extending through the ball instead of snapping inward immediately.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Starting too close to the net. If you creep forward during practice, the drill becomes meaningless. Mark your setup so you know you are using the same reference every time.

• Using too long of a swing. Full swings often make golfers instinctively pull away from the net because contact feels jarring. Keep the drill mostly in the nine-to-three range.

• Faking the finish. Do not let the arms bend through impact and then straighten after the fact. The point is to train what happens during the release, not just how the final pose looks.

• Stopping your body turn. If your lower body and torso stall, your arms will usually fold. Keep turning so the club can extend into the checkpoint.

• Standing up through the shot. Losing posture raises the handle and moves the club away from the net. Stay in your inclination as you rotate through.

• Pulling the arms inward. This is the classic chicken-wing pattern. You may still hit a decent shot, but the club will not reach the net correctly.

• Trying to throw the clubhead past your hands. That usually creates a scooping action rather than true extension. Feel the arms and club moving through together.

• Rushing the drill. If the feedback is not clear, slow it down. This drill is about awareness and precision, not speed for its own sake.

How This Fits Your Swing

The Net Touch Drill is not just about producing a prettier finish. It helps train several important pieces of an efficient release pattern.

First, it teaches you that a good follow-through is usually the result of good motion through impact—not a pose you add afterward. If your arms stay extended, your body keeps turning, and your posture remains stable, the follow-through tends to organize itself.

Second, it helps you connect the release to the pivot. Many golfers treat arm structure and body rotation as separate issues, but this drill shows how dependent they are on each other. If you do not turn, the club will not reach the net correctly. If you stand up, the geometry changes. If the arms pull in, extension disappears. All three pieces have to work together.

Third, it gives you a practical way to improve a common downswing fault without relying only on internal swing thoughts. For players who struggle with a bent lead arm, trapped trail arm, or scooping release, external feedback is often far more effective than trying to “feel straight arms.” The net gives you a simple yes-or-no answer.

It also fits especially well into at-home training because you do not need a full-speed ball-striking session to improve. Short, controlled reps can build better awareness quickly. In fact, that is often the best way to retrain a release pattern. You do not need a long swing to improve the section of the swing that matters most here.

If your typical miss comes from a stalled pivot, a chicken-wing follow-through, or a tendency to stand up through impact, this drill can become one of your best maintenance tools. Use it to build a release where:

• Your body continues turning
• Your arms extend instead of collapse
• Your posture stays intact
• Your club exits through the shot with structure

Keep it short, precise, and honest. If you can repeatedly brush the net from a balanced, extended follow-through, you are training a much stronger impact interval—and that will show up in both the quality of your strike and the shape of your finish.