There are plenty of golf training aids out there, and the sheer volume of choices can be overwhelming at times. Steve Dresser from the Steve Dresser Golf Academy at True Blue Golf Club is here to tell you about some of the ones that he uses with his clients.
Steve Dresser:
Let’s talk a little bit about training aids. There are zillions of them out there. They’re all good, but first of all, they need to be relevant to your needs, and a lot of people aren’t really sure if that particular training aid is going to be right for them. To be honest with you, most of the ones we use around here we built ourselves out of wood or PVC, but there are a bunch of them out there that we like to use. This one’s called the Power Package, and it’s really a full swing training aid, but it’s really particularly good for helping people get in the right position at the top of the back swing. Myself, I have a little tendency to get over here, it’s called crossing the line. And from there, I’ve got to do a little rearranging to get a good downswing. So if I practice with this, I can get in a better position.
It may look a little laid off right there, which means point it over that way, but that’s because I haven’t taken it back all the way. But it’s really a nice training aid to get you in a good position at the top of the back swing. Another thing we see a lot of in our schools is just people coming through the ball and really flipping their wrists. Especially in short game, but we see it a lot in the full swing too, for various reasons. This one, it’s called the HANGER. It looks a little bit like a coat hanger. And if I can start with it up against the inside of my lead arm, my left arm in my case, and keep it there, that’s going to help me come in with my hands ahead of the club face, especially with the irons. You’ll also notice I’m turning quite a bit by the time I get down to the ball.
By the way, this is just a really good drill to practice, just practice bringing it down to impact and holding it there. We’d like to play a game here called Setup or Impact. And we’ll show some of our students on the video their setup looks like this, their impact looks like this. But the impact should look much more dynamic. There are times we honestly can’t tell the difference, people just come right back to this position and not this position. But again, the main thing here is that we get the handle ahead of the club face, and you will if this stays against your arm. And by the way, we have tons of them, but I’m just showing you a few.
This one, gosh, I think the first time I had one of these was in the early 1980s, and if you swing it fast enough, it’ll make a clicking sound. Most people tense up and they swing hard, but they don’t swing fast. Now, I’ll caution you in this day and age where the game is being taught more with body rotation and less hand action, we don’t want to get to the point where we’re just standing there going like this. But if you’re getting a little older, like I am, and you don’t move quite as well as you once did, if you can get a little bit of this, blend it in with a little bit of upper body rotation and lower body rotation, you might pick up a few extra miles per hour, which of course translates into more distance.
Just understand, training aids, they take more than one try. We’ll put one in somebody’s hands sometimes and they’ll try it. “Oh, that doesn’t work.” You got to give them a chance. And again, it has to be something that is truly what you need, not just because the commercial says it’ll take 10 strokes off your score.