A lot of golfers saw Billy Horschel’s pre-shot routine over-and-over during last week’s WGC-Match Play.
He drops his right foot back, gets the feel for the path of the club. Then Billy drops his left foot back to get another feel.
You can learn a lot from what he was doing and you can use it as a valuable drill in your practice sessions.
The first time I saw this was Sir Nick Faldo talking about both drills.
First, and most valuable to the hordes of slicers, is the right foot back drill.
Get in proper golf posture with your feet together, then drop you right foot back two or three feet. First thing you will have to do is slow your swing in order to maintain good balance. Start off with practice swings. This drill, done properly, makes it very, very hard to hit the ball to the right. It forces you to feel that “inside-to-square” path that most are looking for. It’s a proven, documented fact that most players don’t hit the ball very far and can benefit from learning to hit a nice, controlled draw.
Once you have the feel of it and can make your practice swing in balance, you can start hitting balls. Again, keep your tempo slow. You’re looking for solid contact. Don’t get the ball to far in front of you, keep it behind your left foot, far enough back so you can make good contact.
This is a great practice routine, we’ve used it often and last week, we showed it to a player who was losing too many shots to the right. Once he tried the drill and set up to it properly, he began hitting right-to-left shots. He was amazed.
In the same light, if you want to learn how to hit a nice fade, it’s just the opposite. You drop the left foot back and work from that stance.
Exaggeration is something we need to correct swing faults.
These are two great drills that can really help.
You know they have credence when you see a player like Horschel using them as part of his pre-shot routine.
