By Shawn McConnon

February 18, 2022


Hinging Wrists Early Can Hurt Your Golf Swing

Setting or hinging your wrists early in the backswing can hurt your golf swing.

2 big issues an early wrist set can cause are casting and a reduced turn.

  1. When you set the wrists early, you'll be more likely to cast the club early in the golf swing. This is due to the stretch shortening cycle. Essentially, your wrist muscles will want to immediately shorten the lengthening you caused by hinging. 
  2. You'll decrease your rotation. When you set the wrists too early, the club will likely get high quickly and promote less turn in your backswing.

Wrists in Golf Swing Transcript...

00:00

(golf ball flies)

00:00

(golf club swings)

00:04

- There we go.

00:05

Hit that one nice and solid.

00:06

Got a six iron here.

00:08

204 yards of carry distance.

00:09

Definitely happy with that, but you probably

00:12

noticed I was really smooth there, and this is

00:15

gonna be a tip that I love. I spent a ton

00:17

of time thinking about this.

00:19

How can you create a smooth kind of effortless feeling golf

00:23

swing, and still have tons of power?

00:25

Let me go ahead and hit another one.

00:26

And I want you to pay particular attention to my transition.

00:29

So what I wanna do here is I wanna make a little,

00:32

not even a real huge, backswing I must make a nice

00:35

comfortable back swing.

00:36

I'm gonna feel like my club almost pauses in the air

00:39

smooth transition, and then the ball's just gonna explode

00:42

off the face.

00:43

We'll see if we can get another one that goes 200

00:44

yards here.

00:45

So I'm gonna go nice and smooth.

00:46

Notice how slow the transition is.

00:49

And hopefully we get some

00:51

pretty good power on this one again.

00:54

(golf club swings)

00:57

There we go. 219 on that one.

00:59

We'll see if I can ramp it up.

01:00

And this is a six-iron again.

01:02

Let's see if I can ramp it up

01:05

Almost pretty good distance with an even slower transition.

01:11

(golf club swings)

01:13

There we go. 219 for the third one.

01:16

All those 200 yards or more. All with the six iron.

01:19

- [Siri] You'd like to call...

01:21

- Hush, Siri.

01:22

She's always talking to me.

01:23

So how do you get it to be that smooth?

01:25

That's the question that everybody wants to know,

01:26

and still create the club at speed.

01:28

Well, it all has to do with how the muscles work,

01:32

and how you use the technique the right way.

01:35

So if I set my wrist early, this won't work.

01:38

If I start to stand up outta my posture,

01:41

and throw the club early, this won't work.

01:45

I like to think of it more of like a paint brush.

01:48

And if you can imagine that I just dip this down into paint.

01:51

I got big glob of red paint,

01:54

just dripping from this paint brush.

01:56

What I wanna do in my back swing is I wanna load my body.

02:00

I wanna turn my shoulders, turn my hips

02:02

get my body really loaded up

02:04

but I don't wanna fling this brush.

02:05

I don't wanna fling all the paint off of it back here.

02:08

I wanna feel like the sensation that I'm having is

02:12

that the bristles are pointed straight up

02:14

toward the sky as I'm doing this so big body turn

02:17

but I haven't really set these bristles yet.

02:20

Then in the downswing, as my body begins to unwind

02:23

I'm keeping the paint in this brush pointing toward the sky

02:28

and then it's not until the last second

02:30

that I fling the brush off, or all the paint

02:32

off that brush.

02:34

Even more important than that,

02:35

I wanna fling it inside out.

02:36

The sensation that I'm having is,

02:38

as I set these wrists in the downswing

02:40

and I get all this lag the club, or my paint brush,

02:43

however you wanna visualize it, is setting to the inside.

02:47

So my club, instead of being out here is from the inside.

02:51

And as I fling that paint, I fling all of it out.

02:54

What would be to the corner of this simulator here.

02:57

So I wanna imagine a stripe of paint,

02:59

from my golf ball and then slung,

03:01

out all over that screen

03:03

in the right side of the screen there.

03:05

That's the exact same feeling that I have,

03:07

when I make a smooth swing like that.

03:09

Especially if I wanna get a draw like we did on those,

03:12

if I wanna hit a straight shot

03:13

I would just fling the paint more toward this fairway.

03:16

If I wanna play a little bit of a fade

03:18

I would swing the paint a little bit more to the left

03:20

but same overall motion for all three

03:23

of those swings.

03:24

And really most people wanna hit a draw,

03:25

so let's focus on that one.

03:27

So here again, let's go through it in a real golf swing.

03:29

First key checkpoint as I go back,

03:32

I'm not setting the wrist a ton.

03:34

I'm not doing this to make my back swing,

03:36

cause I'm gonna want do that as I start down. I'm gonna be,

03:39

be nice and wide with my hands and arms.

03:41

That means that I haven't really set my wrist here.

03:43

My club is way far away from my chest,

03:46

and I've got a weight shift that goes to the right.

03:49

Now if you look here, my hips have turned,

03:52

I've loosened up this left foot to allow my hips to rotate,

03:55

my knees are moving to allow my hips to rotate,

03:58

and my shoulders are loading up.

04:00

So even though my club hasn't gone very far back,

04:03

I've really made a great shoulder turn here,

04:06

or what I call the power turn in the Top Speed Golf system.

04:09

Now from here, here's the bristles.

04:11

They're loaded up with paint.

04:12

I don't wanna fling that off yet.

04:14

I'm gonna shift my weight to the left.

04:16

And as I open my body, I'm creating lag then.

04:20

I'm letting those bristles drop down

04:22

to where now there's a sharp angle here

04:24

but no paint is off of it yet.

04:26

And then from there I'm throwing that paint.

04:29

I'm slinging it on through as my body opens up.

04:32

And that's what allows you to be smooth,

04:34

but really get that snap that kind of pop of speed.

04:37

Get that paint to fly off there through contact.

04:39

You don't have to be that strong or

04:41

that powerful to have this move happen

04:43

and still get some pretty good distance.

04:44

Again. Let's go ahead and try it one more time.

04:47

In reality, my club will go a little farther back.

04:49

In reality, it won't look exactly like that.

04:51

But that's the feeling that I'm having.

04:54

So really nice and smooth here.

04:56

See if we can keep it over 200 yards.

04:59

(golf club swings)

05:00

There we go.

05:02

Pretty solid shot; 203 again,

05:04

and nice little tight draw right down the target line.

05:07

But you know, one thing that people really struggle with

05:10

even if you get this, a lot

05:12

of times it'll happen is you'll make a swing.

05:14

It'll actually be a powerful swing

05:16

but the ball will up flying out to the right.

05:18

And that's just because we haven't been shown the right way

05:21

to square up the club face.

05:22

Most players have been told to square up the club face

05:25

by rolling the hands over each other

05:27

or the forearms over each other, like this.

05:29

That's not really the way the pros are doing it,

05:31

and that's not the way that I'm doing it here.

05:33

So even though I'm getting this club to set

05:35

on the downswing, I'm doing something in particular

05:38

with my wrist that allow this ball to draw every time,

05:42

and I can be really smooth and powerful,

05:44

and it kind of ties the whole package in together.

05:46

It's what I call the anti-roll method.

05:48

And I wanna teach you the anti-roll method

05:49

so that you can get these same great results

05:51

for your swing and hit it way past your buddies,

05:54

and look really smooth while you're doing it.

05:56

I'm gonna play a preview of the anti-roll method video.

05:58

I'm gonna show you exactly what it is, how to do it

06:00

everything you need to know about it.

06:01

Just go ahead and click the card

06:03

that pops up on your screen.

06:04

If you don't see that card, don't worry.

06:06

Go down to the description below

06:08

click the link there and you'll get instant access to it.

06:10

Best of luck.

06:11

Let's go and get started right now.

06:12

So here's the bottom line.

06:14

If you've been taught to roll the club

06:16

in the early down swing that causes the shaft to get steep

06:18

and that steep club causes all your problems,

06:21

causes you to hit it way behind the big hitters,

06:24

and way inconsistent with your quality of strikes.

06:27

So you're in the tall grass,

06:28

and the trees and the hazards all day long.

06:30

Now the great news is this.

06:31

There's really only two pieces that you need to,

06:33

know to fix all these problems.

06:35

The first one is we need to learn,

06:37

the proper way to square up the club face instead,

06:40

of rolling the forearms and getting steep.

06:42

There's another way that the pros do this.

06:44

Once you learn this right way to square up the club face,

06:47

then you can shallow out,

06:48

from the inside and everything starts to fit together.

06:52

Now I'm gonna teach you this right now,

06:53

and what I call the anti-roll method.

06:56

You may also hear this called the motorcycle move or the

06:58

tour twist, but let's walk through exactly how to do that.

07:02

Now, what I want you to do is go ahead,

07:03

and go kind in the last parallel in the downswing.

07:06

So here I want my hips to go ahead and be opening up.

07:09

I want my club to be parallel with the ground,

07:12

and I want my hands to be in front of my right thigh.

07:15

Now, when I take my grip, you're gonna notice that,

07:17

when I do this, the club face is basically

07:19

straight up and down.

07:20

So if I'm looking at it from this angle,

07:22

you'll see the face is straight up and down.

07:25

And the logo of my glove has pointed out in front of me.

07:27

- Now from there...

Set The Wrists Late for More Speed and Distance

Setting your wrists later in the swing will take advantage of the stretch shortening cycle. They will want to fire right away creating a whipping effect in the downswing.

See the image below where Clay has the paint brush (representing the club) pointed to the sky. This is the feeling you need to have in the swing. In reality, because of momentum, the club will actually hinge.

Set wrists during transition in golf swing

Here you can see Clay illustrate not hinging wrists early in golf swing. Think of club being vertical and not behind your head.

Gary Woodland Wrist Movement in Swing

If I had to pick one player who executes a late wrist set, it would be Gary Woodland.

Gary does not get as big of a turn as some longer hitters, but still generates massive speed because of his late wrist set during transition.

He consistently ranks in the top 15 in Driving Distance.

Thoughts on Wrists in the Golf Swing?

Drop a comment below and let me know if this wrist movement has made you think differently about the golf swing.

Happy Golfing!

About the author

Shawn is the founder of UpGlove. He started UpGlove to solve his own problem of getting an affordable player's glove. Shawn is a single-digit Handicap and loves to play different courses throughout Tampa Bay. He also enjoys taking his two doggies Brutus & Champi for long walks.

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