The Addictive Way Of Striking The Golf Ball That Gives Crazy Compression 

Chris, you never cease to amaze me! This tutorial and the one on bowing the wrist at the top and hold it through the ball have changed my golf swing entirely. I finally “GET IT” after watching thousands of videos on the golf backswing, transition and downswing. U the man! Thanks 🙏 for your lessons! Pete

Hey Chris, glad I stumbled on this one, for the life of me I couldn't figure out why I was flipping at the bottom. That right elbow insight really helped. Thank you.

i have listened to hundreds of hours of golf instruction on youtube...the word stuck is used often! Never though has anyone ever explained what it means! Thankyou!

Never tire of watching your lessons Chris, great work and thank you 👍

Very good thoughts when playing and practicing. I have also been able to feel my elbow position change according to the length of club I am swinging during my practice swing and it helps me find the swing plane with each club. If you find the proper, right elbow position the swing will feel smooth. A great piece of advice. Best video I have seen in a long time.

Great, practical stuff we can practice. Invaluable, thanks Chris.

Great video!

Cheers Chris… my oldest golf mate and myself have often discussed CFR… compression free round… we got it round 18holes and nothing felt good !! This looks great, and will def try it. Mike.

Brilliant, Chris. This exactly captures the 2 problems I currently experience with my irons right now. Collapsing wrists because I can't get back to the ball, and other consequences. Thank you. This will really help 👍

Taking up golf in my 30s working as a process control manager I looked at the golf swing as a mechanical system based on leverage and physics. What are the variables controlling outcome? Which of them effect outcome the most? Which of them can be made constants? In that context compressing a golf ball is about generating striking force in the club head and since it’s mass is constant the variable to accomplish that is increasing velocity. Here’s were knowing a bit of physics in helpful. Kinetic Energy in the club head which produces the striking force is exponential, which is to say if the velocity is doubled the kinetic energy quadruples. Raise the velocity 10x and there is a 100x increase. So swinging the club head fast is part of solution for generation compression. But the thing most don’t understand is that the degree of compression alone does on predict ball speed as it leaves the face. That is a function of the rate of rebound off the face and again the physics is counter intuitive. Conventional wisdom in the golf swing is to keep the club head acceleration through impact. That is a good strategy for maximum compression but not for creating the highest rate of rebound off the face. By way analogy if you are a passenger in a car driving 100kph and just as you try to lean forward in your seat the driver hits the gas the acceleration of the car will pin you back into the seat. That’s compression but your velocity relative to the car is actually slowed down by the degree the increase in kinetic energy of the car mass has pushed you back into the seat. But not imagine if you would happen to the passenger driving 100kph slammed in the brakes or hit a brick wall… the mass of the car stops abruptly and the unrestrained passenger flies off the seat and through the windscreen, why seat belts are now mandatory in cars. But they were not in 1948 when Ben Hogan hit a Greyhound Bus head-on one foggy night and discovered that cause and effect of Newtonian physics affecting mass and motion. This cause and effect of stopping one mass to accelerate another much faster occurs at several points in a golf swing. The first is the takeaway extension where the club head mass whips up around the hands in reacting to being prevented from moving backwards. The more forcefully a golfer sweeps the club head back in a wide arc and then stops it, the faster it will whip up around the hands with club head increasing in kinetic energy and ability to do work, like lift the mass of the arms against the force of gravity and pull shoulders around stuck hips stretching leg and torso like a torsion bar until that absorbs all the club head energy and the club head mass stops at the top. Golfers with slower swing speeds do not do this first important step - loading the torsion bar that fires hips and shoulders in the downswing - very well because they try to lift the club and cock the wrists to get it to the top instead of extending it and letting it react. In the downswing the initial acceleration of body, arm and club head mass together comes from firing the hips. Hogan’s technique to maximize that was squaring the back foot and putting an extra metal spike in the back shoe so it would not twist which generates maximum torque in the back leg and buttock. Try adjusting the angle of your back foot, even turning in a bit and you’’ll understand how this affects how fast the hips ACCELERATE all the masses at the start of the swing. Because of his technique Hogan could fire his hips at the start of a 1/4 swing chip shot nearly as much as a full swing and as a result wind up with more club head velocity at impact than someone with no torque created in their legs or less. This is why pro golfers hated giving up the metal spikes which allowed them to generate maximum torque in the legs. The next place you see acceleration is when the hands drop to hip level, shaft swings to horizontal and club head is free to whip around the hands. This is where the golfer needs to keep the car crash analogy in mind and find a way to SLOW DOWN the hands to cause the club head to whip around the hands faster. The technique is simply to keep the back heel on the ground until the club head starts around the hands because keeping the foot down arrests the hip turn when the hips reach 45° open in the downswing. That combined with a lateral shift of BODY MASS AT THE TARGET is referred to in golf instruction as ‘hitting the wall’ and lifting the back heel is what allows the hips to move again and produces the feeling of ‘breaking through the wall’. Golfers with poor swings never experience either feeling because they reflexively lift and turn their back foot too soon and too quickly to avoid falling off balance due to unbalanced over the top club head paths. Hogan’s final technique to generate club head velocity before impact was his famous ‘waggle action’ which has the POTENTIAL to accelerate the club head mass at a higher rate than both the hip /shoulder turn or it whipping down around the hands. Try moving nothing except wrists and snap the club down like cracking a whip into a ball. It will take off like a rocket! You will also feel your hands and arms lock up. The club head accelerates at the fastest rate in the entire swing then stops dead because the Vardon grip creates such efficient LEVERAGE when hands are pulled all the way down into maxed out ulnar deviation, something 99.9% of golfers today have never felt BEFORE impact because they’ve never tried to snap a club down at the ball like cracking a whip BEFORE impact. Hogan did, so did Moe Norman and trick shot artist Count Yogi. It isn’t just the added acceleration of the waggle action just before impact that resulting in those three being legendary ball strikers it was how as the ball released off the face the leverage created by their grips through impact - all three different - abruptly slowed the club head just as the compressed ball was ready to release off the face - which dramatically increases the RATE OF RESTITUTION and ball speed and why ball speed is always faster than club head speed, i.e, smash faster. It is counter-intuitive but at higher club head speeds which compress the golf ball as much as the USGA allows with robot testing on Iron Bryron a deceleration of club head as ball flies off generates more ball speed than a club head that continues to accelerate through impact and release. The edge that elite golfer who can do that have over the USGA and its ball testing protocol that controls max distance at 317 yards +3 variance (320 max) is that Iron Bryon used to test the balls that why does accelerate the club head through impact. The guys on the long drive tour like Bryson understand this and use the technique but Catch-22 is that the waggle action whips the club face closed and that’s difficult to control resulting in snap hooks if the timing is off and the ball come off the face late - exactly how Hogan was known to miss.

Well done Chris 👏

Thank you. Yes, that makes perfect sense. Cheers!

I was given that drill 20 years ago as a young junior to stop me from "coming over the top" lol. Damn I feel OLD 😢 Great content as usual though, cheers Chris.

Great vid - great drills. I have that right elbow problem sometimes and it is a killer on the course. I can compress the ball most of the time but the flamingo drill is an excellent way to be more consistent with the strike. I think I'll include it in my warm up! Tx CR - best instruction site I've been able to find - always straightforward and easy to follow.

Gold.

Super clear basics for compression! I have yet to master #3 :-) But it's true, the other 2 already provide that addictive feel.

very good and it's gonna help, thnx.

OMG! Thank you!!!

My ball striking had gotten progressively worse over time. And I didn't realize how bad it was until one day I punched out with my 3 iron on a par 5 and not only did it go about 220 yards with so little effort but it felt like I hit a cotton ball. That one situation where I had to change so much with my "normal" swing to get the ball down the fairway and back in play actually showed how important proper compression is. It was such an aha moment on the course and really got me excited to fix what I never even thought was broken.

Hi Chris .. thanks for a great video. Recently I have started compressing the occasional shot which flies straighter and spins more so I’ve made progress. Having tried many different things over the past two years I have discovered that the action of the right arm is vital. I have found that hitting ball first then turf won’t always give compression. If we don’t intentionally extend the right arm down towards the ground at impact there won’t be compression. This action also causes a proper extension after the ball and nice full follow through. You might make a video on the action of the right arm through impact, might be an idea for an video in my opinion, thanks.

Fantastic drill, thank you 👍

I have been trying to work my right elbow more in front forever. And I always start shanking the ball when I do. I don’t think it’s the club face. I just think I am pushing my hands further from my body. I’ll try to feel the butt of the club moving towards me at release. Good video. 👍🏻

Love this

Great drills that are easily performed/practiced at the driving range. Question would both drills be applicable for using pitching or sand wedges for those 50-80 yd shots? Happy Canada 🇨🇦 Day long weekend ahead to my fellow Canadians!

Thank you for this clip, It shown me what I did wrong. I hope that my i7 will be 150-160 yards again. Thank you.

Another great video. Just curious on your previous videos with striking the impact bag when it is placed behind you to avoid over the top swings. Do we not need an exaggerated weight shift anymore? Can we just set up with the weight more forward?

Would love to see more golf swinging in this video

Would this elbow advice also work for Driver? I ask because 90% of my drives are going out 50% to the right of target and not because of slice but because I fail to square the face no matter how I try... yet my misses are consistent, 90% of all Driver shots are 50% to the right of target while having great flight and distance... Thx.

Chris, is there a way to minimize shaft droop? I keep hitting my 7 iron off the toe and I think droop is causing it. Is there a fool-proof way to prevent that from happening or do I need stiffer shafts for my irons? Or maybe a lie angle adjustment? Mine are at -2, should I have them bent to 0 or +1? Or go the other way to -4?

Always heard of getting stuck on the downswing but never tied the problem to not enough room for the right elbow. Is that what getting stuck means?

Does that hands position apply to driver swing just the same??

Hi Chris, I see in the video you seem to indicate that face bends the ball, which I assume means you hold to the idea that path sends and Face bends. I thought that was proved to be incorrect these days? I thought the concepts are that Face sends and patch bends now? Could you share your thoughts..

Where is the alignment stick located in the second drill. Is it midway between the toe line and the ball?

Does this drill work with the driver?

i’m still scared shitless of shanking it. as soon as it starts i just can’t shake it… it’s not worth the stress to me and i’ve only just got back over them 😂

How much distance would you guess I would lose while playing off one leg ? I would definitely sacrifice some distance for better contact.

Seems like you’re advocating the hands being above the swing plane in order to prevent the right elbow from getting stuck, thus producing a flip through impact. Is this correct? I must admit this scares me. Isn’t this going to cause an “over the top” move? Thank you for your excellent content.

seems like your hands move off the plane when they move away from your body momentarily.is that not what I am seeing in your video?thanks John

I quit golf because well, I suck. 99 percent of the time I slice the ball 100 yards to the right, I lose 30 golf balls every time I play. I thin or duff every iron shot, I send my chips flying over the green. I don't see how any amount of practice can help so I have called it quits on a game I love because I can't afford to keep wasting money being so bad