Transcript - Episode 18: Angles That Kill Consistency: Wrist Rotation and Hands Off Center

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Now, here’s your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

Welcome back to episode 18 of the Birdie Board podcast.

So my voice might sound a little different today, and that’s because I have a bit of a story. I’m sure a lot of you have experienced a lot of the weather that’s been happening over the last week or so. I am no exception here in the Northeast, and on Sunday, I was set to fly out to Los Angeles for work.

With the winter storm, I changed my flight to Monday, thinking that I’d be okay, and my flight was supposed to be at 8 a.m. in the morning. And after about seven hours of delays, my flight was finally canceled.

Well, American then put me on a new flight about 45 minutes after that to fly to Boston, and then from Boston, I would fly out to LA. And I got on the flight to Boston. Unfortunately, my bag did not also get on to the flight to Boston.

I did in Boston waiting for my layover, delay for the way layover, and then it was finally canceled. So I was left in Boston without my bag. Had to get a hotel, got a hotel for the night, tried to fly back out to Los Angeles the next day, didn’t end up working out. So I ended up flying back home that evening.

And I say all of this because of the key thing is I didn’t have my bag anymore. And for some reason, they put my bag on a flight to Dallas. I’m guessing they were going to send it all the way to LA.

And my normal podcasting mic is in that bag because I was going to record this episode while I was on that work trip. So I have just my regular headset today. It is a gaming one that I used to use. So it has a decent mic, but it’s probably not as nice as my podcast mic. But it is what it is.

I do have a good headset though, so hopefully it will sound OK.

Last Thursday was the first time I swung the golf club and actually hit a ball all off season. I’ve mentioned I’ve moved and stuff, so I haven’t had as many opportunities, especially in the Northeast with how cold it’s been.

I went to a golf simulator with a bunch of buddies of mine and we played alternating shot for nine holes. And unfortunately, me and my buddy lost that. But then we came back and did individual plays, and I came, I did when going back in individual plays.

So I felt good, and it got me excited because it kind of inspired me to talk about what I want to talk about today, and that’s actually getting into some swing tips.

So so far on this podcast, we focused entirely on winter golf. It just hasn’t really been, I guess, a ton of episodes to talk about the swing. And that was mostly purposeful, just because not a lot of people can swing the club.

And I still don’t think that’s changing for most of the country for the next, at least maybe half a month to a month. I know down south, probably in March, a lot of you guys will start being able to get back out on the course. Definitely maybe hit the range on a nice day. But the Northeast, we probably still have, or just north in general, we probably still have like a month to a month and a half, two months before we can really start hitting the ranges and going outside and playing some real golf again.

That being said, me playing golf last Thursday in the simulator did get me excited to do start working my swing. So I did some research, and one of the main problems that I have with my swing that I’ve identified is turning my wrist, my lead wrist, back too early, and then also getting my hands off center too early.

So let me talk about some of the research and some of the questions that I was digging into. And this analogy helps explain it the best, in my opinion.

So if you hold your fist out straight in front of you, so if you are watching this, I have my left hand up as a right-handed golfer, and the back of my left hand would be facing the target. The question that I had was: how much rotation happens of this fist during a swing?

So if no rotation happened, that means that it would stay at this orientation relative to your body during your entire swing. What I was probably doing is I was turning my wrist more to like 45 degrees.

So if you still have your arm out in front of you and the back of your hand is facing your target, simply face the back of your hand 45 degrees like it’s starting to point up, and go even farther to 90 degrees. So just kind of get you guys the feeling of what I’m talking about.

I was probably falling in a rotation somewhere between 45 and 90 degrees. And my question is, okay, well, what do the pros do with their left hand? How much rotation do they do?

And the results surprised me. So through the combination of a lot of research, I actually found that the pros, they don’t hardly rotate that lead hand. They’re not rigid with it, but the degrees are somewhere between 0 and 20 degrees.

So if you hold your hand out in front of you, what that looks like is you’re facing the target line and you’re only turning it ever so slightly. Whatever is natural would be key.

For me personally, I have to feel like I’m holding my wrist almost rigidly, and I think that’s just helping me get the motion down. In reality, if you look at the slow-mo of my swing, you’ll see a little bit of rotation. And I think that’s the key is you just don’t want to be rigid with it where there’s no left wrist rotation, or right wrist rotation if you’re left-handed golfer. But there’s not nearly as much as you would think.

So hold your wrist, your hand out as a fist straight in front of you, and try this. Grab the back of your hand, face the target line, and turn it like no more than 20 degrees. That’s like the most you’re ever going to turn your left wrist as part of a golf swing.

That was fascinating to me and totally opposite of what I had ever done in the past, and it surely led to my ins consistency.

So that was the first thing that I learned through my research.

The next is a similar research idea. I was trying to figure out, okay, in my golf swing, I know that my, when I do my back swing, my left arm really comes across my chest. And that was so that I would be able to get into a backswing and get it levered at the top.

Well, my question was, if I put my hands straight out and I put them kind of in a prayer motion, kind of pointing straight out for me, how far off center does it come? And off center without rotation.

So it’s kind of hard to demonstrate, but like bend your, your trail arms so that you don’t have rotation in your torso. How far off does your hands come from the center line?

And the result of that was pretty interesting to me as well, because it wasn’t nearly as much as you would think.

I’m going to get the actual numbers. If you’re interested in actually reading about this, I made a blog post about this that you can go and actually dig into the numbers a little bit more. And if you’re a little bit more technical or just want to learn more about this, I do have a blog post on birdieboard.golf that you can read up on this.

But I wanted to get you guys the exact, I got to pull it out real quick. I should have been more prepared. But hey, it is what it is. We’ve talked about this before. I’m always going to be authentic. This was a nice polished podcast. It would be very different.

Anyways, so I just pulled it up. Let’s see. So here it is. So here’s the numbers.

Let’s start back at the beginning. Hands are out in front of you. Kind of make a prayer motion with your hands and extend both your arms so that you’re perfectly centered. The question is: how far off center is you’re going to go when you start to collapse that trail arm?

And the answer is not as nearly as much as you would think. So these are numbers from the pros too.

At takeaway, pros stay zero to 15 degrees off a center. That’s nothing. That’s like a couple inches to the right off a center. I mean, that’s hardly any movement.

And by the time they get their lead arm to parallel in their backswing, there are no more than 30 degrees off center.

So if you can picture that 45 degrees would be pointing halfway to your side. So it’s less than that. You’re really not moving your hands off of center very much during your swing.

So think about that consistency and something that really hit me.

So there’s two things that we talked about is how much lead risk rotation you have. We talked about it. It’s barely anything. It’s no more than 20 degrees.

And now we’re talking about, okay, how far off center do my hands move? Well, again, barely anything. Zero to 15 degrees on early takeaway, at most 30 degrees for most pros.

These are really small numbers and some big mistake that I’ve been making in my golf swing.

So think about what happens when you go further than, let’s say, the 20 degrees of risk rotation or the 30 degrees across your chest.

Well, as a lot of times in your golf swing, you have to overcompensate to correct those things.

So if you’re thinking, let’s just think about the lead risk. So if I rotate my lead risk, let’s say to what I usually do, like 45 degrees or maybe even 60, 70 degrees, what do I have to do in order to hit the golf ball?

Well, before I make contact to the ball, I have to reorient my wrist back to facing the target. Otherwise my face of my club is going to be extremely, extremely open.

And that is such a timing thing. So I have to close it from 60, 70 degrees back to zero degrees or close to it. That’s a lot of movement that I have to time perfectly in my golf swing.

You combine that now with the second part where, okay, how much off center are my hands?

Now they don’t have to get back to center, but like, if I’m moving my hands 30 to 40, 50 degrees off a center, they do have to get back to like 15 degrees at least or 10 degrees in order for me to make contact.

So now you’re talking about these two angles that are just having to correct drastically. And I’ve done this over the years.

So what I’ve been able to do is get the timing right. And what you’ll see, and I think this is a key tell if you have mistakes like this, is you’re going to see a lot of holes where you look like you’re just the best golfer in the world. You can time everything perfectly. You have a lot of energy.

But then your timing just gets a little bit off and then you’re going to have a triple bogey or quadruple bogey and it just destroys your score. That is my golf game.

And I think it’s a direct result of me being way too large with my angles and my wrist rotation, and also way too large with the angle of my hands moving off center, because I have to just be perfect with my timing and I can’t keep that timing up all round.

Another thing that’s really indicative of this is being poorer with your long clubs because with these long clubs, it’s harder for you to get that risk back.

So I’m thinking like with my driver. I’m constantly coming through with my driver face way open. And that’s just because I just don’t have the ability to close it like I do with my shorter clubs.

There’s more time also in the backswing with it being longer for those angles to get even worse.

So that’s why for me personally, I don’t hit my longer clubs as well as I hit my shorter clubs.

I always talk to my friends saying I get better as I get closer to the hole. I think it’s a direct result of these angles where I’m just moving so far off that like once I get to these longer clubs, I just can’t even put two shots in a row together.

I can get one good drive and then the next hole I have a bad drive because I just can’t get the timing right.

It’s easier with the short clubs, especially once you get shorter swings because some of these angles don’t go as drastic the shorter swings you do.

So if you’re doing, for example, a half swing, most likely your angles are only going to get halfway to their extremes. So it’s a lot easier to crack from a half swing than it is from a full swing.

So I actually haven’t played a SIM match with this yet, but I’ve done a lot of practice in the basement with this.

So if you remember, or maybe this first time listening, I have a basement that’s tall enough ceilings for me to swing the club. I haven’t set up a simulator in it yet, but I do intend to do that someday.

And in the, but I think this is the perfect thing for me right now because I don’t need to focus on trying to hit the ball. I need to get my swing right and get these new habits part of my swing without even thinking of the ball.

So it’s been awesome to do this practice in the basement without any of that even in my mind.

So I didn’t notice when I was practicing my swing, I would feel like I’m being almost rigid with my swing. And I think it just speaks to how far off of an angle I was. And I think it’s going to feel uncomfortable first before it feels natural.

But I think this is also more of the emphasis of like, well, this is the perfect time to do it. First, it’s winter golf. Second, I can’t actually hit a ball right now. So all I have to do is focus on just getting used to this new swing.

And I have, I have found some good key checkpoints if you guys want to try this out yourself.

So the easiest thing to do during your swing to check if you have your angles right is at any point during your swing, pause yourself and hold your, move your club back to the front of your body, and observe: where’s my lead wrist facing? What degree is that at? And then how far off the center line am I?

You can stop that at any point during your swing and assess yourself.

So if you’re doing a half swing, you can stop yourself, pull your hands back in front of you, see how far off, how far has that lead wrist rotation happened?

So if you’re doing really short swing, like 25% or 30%, 40%, you’re probably, you really shouldn’t be that far off center. The pros are zero to 15 degrees. That’s barely noticeable.

And then your lead wrist is probably barely rotated as well. Even the whole swing, your lead wrist shouldn’t rotate much more than 20 degrees.

And you can just stop yourself at any point during your swing and just take your hands back in front of you, try not to bend your arms any differently, and just assess yourself: is my swing, is my hand, my lead wrist facing the target or is it facing the sky, and how far up in the sky?

Because a little bit of movement is fine. We don’t want to be rigid with our swings. We want to be natural. But it was a lot less drastic than I originally thought.

And then the last thing, and I guess there’s these three things that I’m focusing on right now, is just the rhythm of the swing.

So my last blog post I did for Birdie Board, I wrote about the tempo that you guys can practice with a swing. And the biggest takeaway that I took from doing the research about the tempo is having a really slight pause at the top of your swing.

And I did have this already practiced a little bit before I did my Sim Match, and the results were very, very encouraging.

So let’s talk about what this tempo is real quick and talk about what the point of the tempo is.

So if you take your swing and you get ready to go, count in your head up to three. And on that second beat, you should have be paused at the top of your swing.

So you go one, two, three.

And what that does is that two second count, that literally hitting two at the top of your swing, it helps you not rush your swing. It gives you a second, quite literally, to start rotating. And once you hit three, that’s when your hands can start moving forward.

I want to emphasize it’s not really about the actual count. For me, one, two, three works.

Some people I’ve heard do it like swing fast, swing through. Everyone has their own mantra, everyone has their own saying.

Actually, I think you do this enough and it just kind of becomes second nature and you’re not repeating it to yourself.

But for me, what it did is it gave me a second I didn’t realize I needed in order to start my rotation before my hands. And that’s really important to avoid things like slices or a hands-y swing or all arm swings. It forces you to get your body rotation in.

So you can actually combine all three of these things because I think that one, two, three motion helps you not get too rigid as you’re practicing these degrees.

So take your swing, do a couple, re-center yourself, check your lead hand, check how far off-center you are. Look at those things.

So once you get used to yourself, check yourself a couple times. If it’s going well, then all you have to do is count out, do a rep with the counting, and then do a rep checking yourself.

So one, two, three, and then take your backswing, re-center yourself.

So I’m looking at myself, my lead wrist right now is good. I am probably a little bit farther off-center where I wanted to be. I move my hands a little bit left.

That’s just the extension of your back arm a little bit. You probably are going to feel like your back arm is a lot straighter than you’re used to, especially if you’re in an amateur golfer.

So just go back and forth with those drills.

And I am going to probably leave you guys with the advice of like, do this without a ball.

It has been super beneficial to me to practice my swing without a ball, taking that mental aspect out of it and just getting the rhythm down, getting the tempo down, and giving myself, or forcing myself, to have the patience to actually just assess my own swing.

And what better time to do that than winter golf?

So hopefully you guys have liked this episode today. I have found it super encouraging, some of these things that I’ve been learning.

Again, check it out on the last two blog posts. The very last one that I did, which if you’re listening to this later, the date would be January 28th. The title of the blog is Why Golf Consistency Breaks Down.

And then the episode before that is five, or sorry, not the episode, the blog post before that is Five Simple Golf Swing Consistency Tips That Actually Work. That was made last Wednesday. So that would be January 21st.

Read both of those. They pair well together.

One is more tempo related. One is a little bit more mechanical with the degrees that you can actually hit some points at and start to get used to it.

And I think they pair well together because the degrees ones is really tempting for you to be rigid, but the tempo one, really, you can’t be rigid with tempos. So it pairs well, kind of the nice yin yang kind of thing while you’re practicing.

I guess the title of my last blog kind of reminded me one more thing that I wanted to touch on is, and I guess I kind of touched on this earlier, but I’ll foot stomp it a little.

Having so much movement in your swing is what creates inconsistency. And I’m not speaking to you as a scratch golfer. I’m speaking to you as a fellow amateur that this has to be the reason why I have such inconsistent rounds at times.

I mean, I’ll shoot in the mid to low 80s one round, and then the next two rounds I’ll be high 90s like my old self golfer.

It makes so much sense that my timing would have to be so perfect for me to have a good round being so far off center all the time, or so much wrist rotation. It’s just impossible for me to keep that consistency up, this type of golf swing.

So I read in many places this is really described as a boring golf swing, and it makes sense. You’re not rotating your lead wrist month much. You’re not moving your hands much off center.

It’s mostly just body rotation, and you just, it’s cliche, but letting the club do the work.

I did find a couple of my good swings just from practicing. I definitely generated more club head speed with this, just because the angles just end up being in a better spot because I’m not twisting it as the club as much or moving my hands as much off of center.

So I’m excited to try this out in the next, I guess, the next golf sim session I have. I usually do it like every Thursday or every other Thursday or so. And so I’ll let you guys know how that goes, how my practice continues.

I’m really optimistic that this could be a big game changer for my personal golf game. So if it helps yours as well, great. Let me know, excited to hear from you.

But I think I’m going to go ahead and wrap up this episode. So thanks for listening everybody, and good luck with your winter golf practice.

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