Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

With this swing tip, we are going to look at a great hinge drill to help you use your wrist correctly, during your golf swing. It’s really important for ladies to use your wrist correctly because number one, it helps you to hit with accuracy and number two, it helps you to get consistency and further directions, further power. So using your wrists correctly is a big help to any lady golfer and it’s something lady golfers do tend to struggle with. So in this hinge drill, we are going to look at how your wrist can hinge, so if you put your hands on the golf club, your wrists can hinge either left or right or your wrists can hinge up and down. Now it’s the up and down action that we are looking for to create power, if we have hinged the wrist correctly on the backswing, with this upward movement in the thumbs, as you swing back down, you can then get just before the ball and then release the angle that the wrist has created to really generate a lot of club head speed into the golf ball.

And the more club head speed that we have got going into the golf ball, the further you are going to hit the ball. The other reason that we want to hinge that wrist correctly and work on that, is looking this way on, if you are not hinging your wrist correctly, so you are not making an upward movement with the wrists on your backswing. If you are making more of a right to left movement, you are going to find it very difficult to swing on playing, that club head is going to get around and behind you and out of position and under the correct position that it should be in. So rather than making this movement back, if you are not making that upward movement in your wrist and you are making more of a right movement, you will go into position.

And it’s going to cause you issues, getting the club back down to the ball, so you won’t find that you are able to do this consistently and strike well and also your directional control is going to be very, very difficult because you are not making the club move down the target line. So with this drill, it’s going to help you with improving direction of control, your accuracy and the power that you can hit the golf ball up. So to do that swing drill, we could do it this way. We are going to set up in position and then I want you to hinge your wrist up, so the club becomes horizontal to the ground, the club head is level with your hands at this point and then just rotate to the right. And that’s sets the club into the right position that I should be in on your takeaway. So do that once more, just make a thumbs action, so the club head comes up away from the ground, the shaft of the club is now horizontal and then rotate your shoulders, that’s the correct position to be in, on your takeaway.

The club head is as high as your hands, and the shaft is pointing directly to the right of the target, but parallel with it, rather than this position. Okay, but that’s separating the two movements out, we have hinged the wrist and then we have rotated and if we are going to hit golf balls, we want a bit more of a fluid flowing movement. So this drill will just get a little bit more dynamic, just start the club doing this action. So you get the feeling of how to point your thumbs up, how to hinge that wrist and then slowly start to rotate the shoulders around and it will set you into a really nice position at the top of the backswing, where the wrists have hinged correctly and you are on plane. From here, you can now strike through and hit the golf ball, so it’s quite a good drill to do, so it will actually get you hitting balls, but it will encourage you to hinge the wrists up. So work on those two drills, the next time you are at the range, and you should find that you are using your wrist hinge much more correctly during your golf swing, giving you much more power, improved consistency with the strike and far better accuracy.