Tom Tucker is the current Teaching Professional at the Plum Creek Driving Range & Practice Facility, located at 5141 Batavia Elba Townline Rd, Batavia, NY . Mr. Tucker was formerly the GM at Fifty Four Flags in Akron, NY, the Teaching Professional at the Batavia Country Club , Batavia NY and was the Head Golf Coach for Genesee Community College from 2009 – 2011. Coach Tucker was named 2011 NJCAA Division 3 Region 3 Coach of The Year.
Great ball striking involves (among other things) having your weight positioned correctly
on your front side, and sustaining a line of compression through the ball by maintaining
good wrist positions.
Wrist positions at address for chips and pitches are set up just as described in the
next paragraph, which is the impact position.
At impact, your left wrist should be either straight or slightly bent in the direction of
the palm of the hand. Your right wrist should be cupped, which means it is bent away
from the palm of the hand. As long as one of the wrists is angled correctly on the
club, the other wrist will be correct also.
The hands and wrists must remain in this compressed state into and beyond impact,
which is challenging for many players to get right without practice. Here’s a good drill
for this, the inverted praying hands drill.
Wrist positions at address for full shots may be the same as for chips and pitches, or
for some golfers it’s common to set up with a cupped left wrist and straight right wrist,
then on the takeaway, the wrists reverse – the left wrist goes flat, and the right wrist cups.
Now your hands and wrists are in the impact position, and they stay that way throughout
the rest of the swing.
For stock swings, the right wrist should NEVER flatten out completely at impact, even in the
immediate follow through.
Train yourself to attain these wrist positions through impact, and watch the ball start
to explode off the clubface!
Enjoy, Tom
