Chris Stroud - Square Clubface

Chris Stroud explains how he keeps his clubface square in the swing. If the clubface is not square at the top of the swing, compensation will take place in the downswing to get it back to square.


Transcript

Well, there's just so many things you can go to here. But here's one right here. Just go on one arm. A great way to just see if you're in the right position-- I put my left hand on my chest, same set up with the 9 iron, and I rotate back like I said back behind. And I just put my arm like I'm holding a tray.

Yeah, but what I see here is if there was a wall here, your elbow's not going to hit it.

That's right.

You just fold it up. Pretty much it's true that-- now you swing a lot like I do-- is that clubface is square. Any twisting of that clubface-- it's going to arrive up here twisted. Now we have to untwist it. All Tour players, all good players as you become better golf-- you keep this same same, same same.

The goal is to make it as easy as possible to hit straight shots. To do that, the clubface has to be square at impact. To make it square at impact, you need no movement.

We want square all the way.

You want square to the circle, square to circle. Well, crazy thing is to do that, you have to keep this very still. And this has to turn and go up and then turn and go up. But at the same time it looks like everything's moving, but this is very, very still. My hands don't do much in the swing.

They're on the ride, right?

They're just on the ride. They're just on the ride, waiting. If you get this way, that causes a lot of problems. So I always have to work on keeping my elbow in. But back to the take away again, left shoulder-- I do a lot of these. You'll see me do a lot of these reps.

I'm just trying to keep my level. I'm not trying to go down. I'm not trying to stand tall. I'm trying to stay in my posture, go to the top, and see if I can hold that position. Because I know right there I can go down right now and hit from the top.

Yeah, show me a couple. Hit me a couple of 9 irons.

So here's just a 9 iron-- same thing, just good rhythm. Left shoulder back. And it may not look like it, but the clubface feels very stable and still while I hit that shot.

We don't like twisting.

There's no twisting. If I feel a twist--

Something bad's happened.

It's because something probably happened on the way back, and then I had to fix. And then I had to fix it again.