The Secret to Lag in the Golf Swing

October 13, 2015

So what is the secret to “lag” in the golf swing?

This is a question many of you would kill to know the answer to, as we would all love to be in that powerful delivery position where the club is trailing ready to release at the golf ball.

Creating lag isn’t as easy as just holding the wrist angle for longer in the down swing – if only it was, it would make our job much easier and there would be more happy golfers out there.

We have all seen the best players in the world just before impact where the golf club looks in a really powerful position with a beautifully timed sequence to the down swing.

We see many golfers trying to improve their lag by just trying to hold the wrist angles for as long as possible in the down swing, and so often this causes the ball to push, slice or even shank now and again.

Now, this doesn’t breed confidence or improvement, so what’s the secret?

Well, creating a good down swing sequence relies on a number of things and one of the most important things is having good club face control.

The majority of golfers who “Early Release” do so due to an open club face or poor back swing sequence. This makes it difficult to sequence your down swing correctly and extremely difficult to get any “lag”.

Remember that if you aren’t creating much lag, it’s happening for a reason. You must first need to fix that reason.

Well here is one of the ‘secrets’ to creating a good lag.

Understand that the club face does not stay square to the target through impact (see image below) – the face is in the process of closing.

Many golfers we see that struggle with lag have poor rotation of the club face through impact, which has a knock-on effect in the golf swing and the “Early Release” (loss of lag) helps compensate and square the face up at impact.

Correct the reason first, now you can improve your lag.

Allowing the club face to close through the hitting area (see image below) will not only increase speed and distance but also unlock the very thing that is limiting you from creating this lag.

The first few shots you hit may go a little left, but that is a great indicator for you to work on getting the golf club trailing in that powerful position we see so often.