'Throw The Club' (literally!) Drill

Has anyone tried the drill where you literally throw the club away? How did you find it?

My golf pro had me try it the other night. Basically you swing without a ball and instead focus on throwing the club. The object is to release the club at the impact position and try to throw the club low and straight. Anyone who scoops or casts the club (even just slightly) will throw the club high and left.

I picked this up quite quickly and was amazed when I looked at the video comparisons. Where before I would cast the club early, when I threw the club low and straight I had lag like Tiger Woods and an absolutely perfect impact position (albeit without a ball ).

The intention then is to get the feeling of what this feels like, then try to slowly implement it into your actual swing.

It something I'm definitely going to continue doing. The hard part is finding somewhere where you can throw clubs without breaking windows or injuring dog-walkers! Any advice or suggestions would be welcome! e.g. is there a safer implement to use rather than a steel club?!

Fred Shoemaker wrote a whole book around this, it's called "Extraordinary Golf" and there are some great pictures of HIGH handicappers getting into beautiful impact positions.

More here if your interested: http://thesandtrap.com/t/14340/extraordinary-golf-the-art-of-the-possible-by-fred-and-pete-shoemaker

Thanks

Yep, I did this drill at Shawn Clement's facility.  You can do it anywhere there's a hitting net.  You probably don't want to do it into a simulator screen, but if there's a hitting bay with a net somewhere, or you have a backyard net, you can do this drill.  Use an old club if you've got one, just to be safe.

That "ball being there" part turns out to be pretty dang tricky.

The best thing I've found for myself is The Impact Zone by Bobby Clampett. If you can "click" with his aiming point concept you can easily get past the "ball being there" hang-up. Trick is to understand the difference between aiming the clubhead and aiming the hands, once I could grok the difference between the two my ballstriking took a huge turn for the better. Of course there has been almost zero change in my scores but hey! I'd much rather shoot a 98 with a pile of awesome strikes that shoot a 96 full of toppers and fatsies!

http://golf.about.com/od/golftips/ss/club_throwing.htm

"The idea of club throwing is not mine. Sixty of my closest friends and I learned this phenomenal experience from Fred Shoemaker, the author, golf instructor and founder of the golf school, Extraordinary Golf. Club-throwing was just a small part of the workshop with Fred, but very empowering. Throwing clubs empowers you to feel and be aware of your movement and tempo. And it's yours. Some people can't put the feeling into words, but after some practice they know their swing and own it."

I have now had the opportunity to practice this drill on my own and I really think this will be a turning point for me. I have struggled with casting, loss of lag etc since I took up golf over 2 years ago. Now when I throw the club down the line I know what the swing should feel like - what my swing should feel like. The above paragraph really sums ups my thoughts on this drill.

Try it ;-)

Since were're talking aimpoint and throwing the club, here's another exemple from a pro (Gregg McHatton) teaching the same approach as Ben Doyle (Bobby's mentor):

Go directly to 1:40 to see the pro doing the drills. There the club is thrown to somewhere on the baseline close to where the ball would be.

I'm not sure this is for everyone but I found the drill spectacular,