Josh’s Tips & Tricks: Neutralise your path with a beach towel

Welcome

Hello fellow golfers and welcome back to this weeks tips & tricks. This week we’re going to be looking at how you can improve both ball striking and direction with a simple trick involving, once again, a towel.

Towel Drill For Path

During my time coaching I see lots of ball striking that moves towards the heel of the club and often combined with this an out-to-in path (left of target). This can impart unwanted sidespin on the ball, losing efficiency, and can also be one of the causes of the dreaded shanks.

A simple way to correct this is by placing a towel down towards the toe end of the club making a slight arc around the ball. As you can see the mat in my teaching studio has a yellow cross and white lines that slightly arc around the edge of the mat. This gives guidance towards the way the clubhead should be moving through impact (in-square-in). The closer the clubhead can move along those lines consistently with the clubface rotating to face the target at impact, the straighter the ball will travel to the target line with minimal sidespin.

Take a look at the following video to see how to set it up and take note of how the clubhead moves through impact.

Common Problems

If you struggle to find the middle of the clubface and hit the towel when doing this drill the likelihood is your path isn’t neutral. Hitting the towel before the ball means your path is out-to-in and if you hit it after the ball the path is in-to-out.

If you swing it out-to-in and tend to spin the ball left to right it’s likely that your hands and shoulders are not separating from your hips. When your hands start the downswing they are likely to push away from the body creating a gap between the right hip and butt end of the club. To get the path more inside try getting to the top of the backswing, unwinding the hips first but dropping the hands down to your right pocket. From this position the clubhead will stay closer to the body potentially preventing that dreaded heel strike.

If any of this sounds familiar and you would like me to take a look using Trackman4 and full video analysis, you know where I am.

Cheers,

Josh