Hingeing The Wrist To Create Lag In The Golf Down Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles
Hingeing The Wrist To Create Lag In The Golf Down Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles

So as we should be aware now, the hinging of the wrists on the back swing creates an amount of angle between the shaft and the left forearm for the right handed golfer, and that angle we’re going to call lag. As we go to the top we actually create more lag. Now the more lag that you create at the top is due to the nature of the club is quite heavy, it pulls down, it adds some more angle through here. Now the lag is the important reason why we hinge the wrists because the lag is going to help us allow the club to pull down more quickly than the arm is traveling.

The arm is traveling quickly down to the ball but nowhere near as fast as that club head can potentially travel. Now if everything was held in a straight line, you’d really only hit the ball as hard or as far as your left arm is turning, but if we can put a joint in that wrist, then certainly we can get the club swooshing through, we can get the lag adding and releasing, so adding lag is a good thing to happen in your back swing, so we start by hinging, hinging, hinging, hinging all the way to the top, we add a little bit more lag as we start down and then as we come down to the ball we’ve got the lag and we release the lag at the vital point just to strike the ball. The releasing of that lag is where your power comes from, what you might considers is because that club is traveling far faster than your hands at this point the club head is going to keep overtaking past your hands and effectively create another amount of angle on the other side, another wrist hinge, effectively another area of lag. So we’ve got lag on this side releasing through to a lag on the other side. So when you’re spending some time practicing and working on this motion, it’s going to be really helpful if you’ve got a mirror or a camera. So where my camera is at, set your video camera up there as well or even just a mirror, and just watch yourself create an angle here and an angle here. And if you can create those two angles you should start feeling like you can hit the ball a little bit further for longer, straighter golf shots. 2016-08-19

So as we should be aware now, the hinging of the wrists on the back swing creates an amount of angle between the shaft and the left forearm for the right handed golfer, and that angle we’re going to call lag. As we go to the top we actually create more lag. Now the more lag that you create at the top is due to the nature of the club is quite heavy, it pulls down, it adds some more angle through here. Now the lag is the important reason why we hinge the wrists because the lag is going to help us allow the club to pull down more quickly than the arm is traveling.

The arm is traveling quickly down to the ball but nowhere near as fast as that club head can potentially travel. Now if everything was held in a straight line, you’d really only hit the ball as hard or as far as your left arm is turning, but if we can put a joint in that wrist, then certainly we can get the club swooshing through, we can get the lag adding and releasing, so adding lag is a good thing to happen in your back swing, so we start by hinging, hinging, hinging, hinging all the way to the top, we add a little bit more lag as we start down and then as we come down to the ball we’ve got the lag and we release the lag at the vital point just to strike the ball. The releasing of that lag is where your power comes from, what you might considers is because that club is traveling far faster than your hands at this point the club head is going to keep overtaking past your hands and effectively create another amount of angle on the other side, another wrist hinge, effectively another area of lag.

So we’ve got lag on this side releasing through to a lag on the other side. So when you’re spending some time practicing and working on this motion, it’s going to be really helpful if you’ve got a mirror or a camera. So where my camera is at, set your video camera up there as well or even just a mirror, and just watch yourself create an angle here and an angle here. And if you can create those two angles you should start feeling like you can hit the ball a little bit further for longer, straighter golf shots.