Just in case the headline of this article didn’t make it clear enough: Please, do not try this at home. We don’t want you injuring one of your golf buddies trying to improve your swing and then having to explain to their loved ones that it was Golf Digest who told you to do it. We’re not. Don’t do this.
With that out of the way: Earlier this week, Sky Sports Golf commentator Inci Mehmet shared a video of her acting as the test dummy for a swing drill from former European Tour player John E. Morgan.
In the drill—which you shouldn’t do yourself but can watch below—Morgan says the idea is to swing as hard as you can while also bringing the club to a full stop by the time the club reaches parallel post impact.
What’s the point, you ask?
If you’ll allow me to oversimplify things slightly: In order to create clubhead speed, your arms have to speed up in the early part of the downswing, but then they need to hit the brakes and slow down quickly. The faster your arms slow down, the more energy transfers into the clubhead as it whips through. Think of it like snapping a towel. It’s pulling your arms back towards you that allows the towel to snap.
World Long Drive champ Martin Borgmeier showed off his own, much safer, version of the drill on Instagram not long after. The drill forces you to slow down your arms really quickly, because it’s the only way to stop the club.
If it doesn’t involve putting other people in harm’s way, you can give Borgmeier’s version of the drill a try. But work up to full speed slowly. Pretty soon, you’ll have an appreciation for how clubhead speed is created, and how difficult Morgan’s version of the same drill is.
Editor’s note: If you’re interested in learning more about the science of clubhead speed, I enjoyed this Golf Digest Schools series by the same name, which you can watch right here.
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