slight bowed wrist = more distance and not having to worry about releasing the club?

[uppi]

just curious, and if true why dont more people practice this?

[golfdad]

ok, i will bite

everything else being equal, bowed wrist may lead to deloft and therefore more distance.

all clubheads eventually are "released" or the ball will not go "straight". whereas some actively "release" via the wrists, others may release through the "body" so the clubhead is squared with no effort from wrists.

i think this is one of those areas in golf that can have 2 camps. read an article not long ago in a golf mag where someone advocated the extra snap in wrists for extra distance. tiger on the other hand talked about avoiding it because he prefers control and accuracy than more power...

[MacBooky]

Also a good question might be which wrist? I pressume you mean the lead one ..
The other question would be: when in your swing would you like to see it bowed?

[flopdarock]

bowed wrist with no release?
im lost

[granitegolf]

Almost every PGA player leads their hands through the ball before the club head. When this is the case the left wrist(right hander)will always be bowed. This will de loft the club and also cause the head to still be gaining speed. This is one of the key areas where club head speed is gained or lost. The reason not many players don't bow their lead wrist at impact is because it is hard to do.
I have been taking lessons and always felt I was getting my hands through the ball before the club but video clearly showed this was not the case. After some drills and much range time I'm finally getting my hands through the ball first but not by much. This has given me about 35 extra yards with my driver and with my 8 iron I went from 150 yards to 170. Also produces a much cleaner ball strike and much more spin with the irons.

[uppi]

Yes I mean the leading wrist, the left wrist for right handed players and the right wrist for left handed players.

Also when I am refering to the "release", I mean the way Hank Haney describes it. He says that in the proper release of the club the back of the hand is square (flat) at impact and the clubface has the correct loft. So if you keep your wrist slightly bowed/flat thorugh the entire swing, why would you have to think about "releasing" the club. Obviously a flat left wrist is what everyone talks about, but with a slightly, and im talking slightly, bowed left wrist it delofts the club and you will get more distance. If your hands are cupped at the top of the swing, which I used to do, it makes it much harder to time the proper release of the club at impact, and strike the ball consistently.

[iacas]

Almost every PGA player leads their hands through the ball before the club head. When this is the case the left wrist(right hander)will always be bowed.

Be careful. The bowing of the left wrist is slight, not pronounced.

Ideally you'll have a straight line from your left shoulder down to the clubhead at impact. It's impossible for this line to be very straight if your left wrist is bowed very much at all. Different grips can make this bowing appear more or less exaggerated (or not), but I think people are better off trying to have a flat left wrist and maintaining the angle formed by the shaft and the right wrist/forearm than trying to bow the left wrist. Which, if I read things properly, is what Hank Haney suggested anyway. A flat left wrist, not a bowed one. A bowed wrist is a flaw, just as one that's flipped. Flat is ideal.

[shaun]

Almost every PGA player leads their hands through the ball before the club head. When this is the case the left wrist(right hander)will always be bowed. This will de loft the club and also cause the head to still be gaining speed. This is one of the key areas where club head speed is gained or lost. The reason not many players don't bow their lead wrist at impact is because it is hard to do.

I've been in the same boat recently -- I always thought that my hands led the clubhead as well, but video footage showed that my hands were "at" the ball, rather than ahead of it. To be honest, I've found it a surprisingly difficult fault to fix, although I have improved a bit over the last few months. Can you let me know which drills you were using?

[iacas]

My hands were always pretty close to the golf ball. What helped me was to aggressively push my hips through to the target and not worry so much about spinning the hips or rotating them.

Look at the "slide the hips SECRET" thread, though - I don't want to take up a bunch of room here re-hashing it, particularly since this fix might not work for everyone.

[granitegolf]

The drill that worked the best for me was to take a rather stiff piece of material like the plastic dowels that are often used for alignment aids and slide it through the hole in your grip so it is sticking out about a meter. Then swing the club and don't let the dowel hit you. Start very slow at first as it will whip you. After time I was able to practice 3/4 speed hits without releasing the club which kept my hands well ahead of the head at impact. With full swings it will release but the ingrams you have created will help with lag.

In an interview I saw with Hank behind the scenes Hank was advocating a flat wrist for most amateurs because their lag is so poor and the club is ahead of the wrists at impact. He said for pros he is trying to get to a completely different place but often does not talk about this as it causes other problems when trying to learn. If you look at stills at some of the best ball strikers like Sergio or Tiger when the club impacts the ball the hands are well ahead and the leading wrist is fairly bowed. One of the reasons the pros hit it so far is they deloft the clubs so much. All being equal as far as loft goes a pros stand 8 iron is likely a amateurs 6 iron due to the delofting. No to mention all the other things the pros are doing so much better.

I'm no golf pro but this is how the pro I have been working with has described to me. It has helped my ball striking a ton and given me more distance.

[shaun]

(Belated) thanks, Erik and Granitegolf. I looked at a recent video of my swing a few weeks ago, and was shocked -- or, rather, appalled -- at the lack of lateral movement of my hips through the downswing. So, after reading through the thread to which Erik referred, for the past few weeks, I've concentrated on the motion of my lower body. It seems to have really helped my ballstriking: I'm taking nice divots again; the "sound" of impact is better; and my ballflight is a bit lower. To be honest, it's been a big change -- the motion of my lower body is now significantly different, I think -- and it took me a while to swing again in balance with my weight so much further forward.

For the benefit of others, I've used two drills.

The first was the drill that Erik discussed in the other thread. I don't have a tripod at the range, so I just stacked two smaller range buckets on top of each other.

The second drill may also have been described in the other thread; if not, it's a fairly obvious thing to do. You place a shaft or a cut-down bicycle flag opposite your front heel and about six inches from your front hip at address. The idea is to swing normally, but to concentrate on moving your hips forward on the downswing so that your front hip moves into the stick just before impact. For a long time, my body was determined to cling to its old ways, so it took me a session or two to get my front hip near the stick at impact. It's important to ensure that you're monitoring what your hips are doing at impact , and not merely during the follow through. I used to cheat in that my follow-through position looked fine, but my position at impact was a mess.

Another drill my instructor has mentioned to reproduce the feeling of having your weight forward is to "walk through" impact with your back foot. After you strike the ball, rather than allowing your back foot to move on to the toes in the follow through, you take a step forward. This seemed to help me for a while, but I found it of limited use in the end because the motion is quite different from a real swing.

The funny thing has been that my practice swings have always been good. Without a ball, my lower body seemed to be okay -- the divot looked good, my weight moved nicely forward. With a ball, however, I've only been able to reproduce that practice swing by consciously thinking about these things and, to some extent, overcoming my instinct to do otherwise. Anyway, that's just an observation.

Granitegolf, I've performed the same lag drill using a stiff-ish knitting needle in the grip. Lately, I've found it helpful as a "check", but I'm not sure I would've got there without thinking about my lower body.

[grandaddy510]

i've been working on getting that sensation of a bowed left wrist but it probably is closer to flat, just slightly bowed. i used to have more of a cupped wrist and would slice alot. now i have the feeling of bowed the left wrist, i have gained about 15 yards per club and the ball has more spin and goes higher and lands softer. also cut 5 strokes off my score just from that adjustment of the wrist

[TourSpoon]

The drill that worked the best for me was to take a rather stiff piece of material like the plastic dowels that are often used for alignment aids and slide it through the hole in your grip so it is sticking out about a meter. Then swing the club and don't let the dowel hit you. Start very slow at first as it will whip you. After time I was able to practice 3/4 speed hits without releasing the club which kept my hands well ahead of the head at impact. With full swings it will release but the ingrams you have created will help with lag.

This is a great drill and I slip a small rod in my hands and grip the club and take practice swings. After doing it for over a month, I was hitting the ball in the center of the clubface more and more often. I stopped the drill two weeks ago and during my last round, I felt the old flippy creep in a few of the shots. I started up with the dowel again and hopefully can get it ingrained. I feel that I am making progress as I could tell what I did wrong immediately which for me shows up as a little thin, toey, snappy, etc. When the hands lead it is just so solid and effortless. It takes a lot of work to become effortless...lol.

[Zeph]

I like this drill for getting the feeling of hands leading. When I first try it, I still flip, it takes a couple of swings before I find the right feeling of it. I also think about hitting the ball as low as possible, like the clubhead has to pass under a table after the ball.