[August 2019. I’m keeping this post here for historical purposes, but you are better off reading The Hands Lead the Clubhead – IV.]

In their book, How to Become a Complete Golfer, Bob Toski and Jim Flick tell this story:

“There was once a pupil at our golf schools who, when he was instructed to release the clubhead through the ball, threw the whole club down the practice range. So we have to be very careful to define what we mean by release.”

Well, releasing the club is one thought, but today’s thought is throwing the club and it isn’t a bad idea. Or, at least, swinging as if that is what you were going to do, but not letting go of the club.

This does four things for you:

1. It gets you off your trailing side and onto the leading side during the forward swing,

2. It guarantees the hands will lead the clubhead into the ball,

3. It gets your mind off hitting the ball and puts it on swinging the club,

4. And because of that, it evens out your rhythm and tempo.

Those are four very good things to have built into your swing because they are the solutions to four prevalent swing problems.

If you would like to give this a try, it is easiest to do at first with a driver swinging at a ball on a tee. You don’t want the ground in the way on this one right now.

The idea is to feel like the function of the forward swing is to throw the club directly at your target downrange, but without actually doing it. Get the feeling of a smooth throwing motion and then try hitting a few balls.

Shawn Clement has a really good, and short (for him) video on this very idea.

So try it out. It’s a different way of thinking about how to swing the club, and maybe something will click for you.