Golf Swing Lag - The Most Important Fundamental?

Is Lag the Most Important Fundamental in the Golf Swing?

When you think of two of golf's best ball strikers of all time: Ben Hogan and Sergio Garcia, there is only one thing that comes to mind - Incredible lag! Most all professional golfers on the tour today have waaaaay more lag than the typical amateur golfer, so that begs the question: Is lag the biggest difference between you and a tour pro?

Now, there are a lot of things that go into building the perfect golf swing, but lag should be considered near the top of priorities, but why? The most important reason you need lag in your golf swing is simple:

60% of club head speed comes from the release of the lag angle!!

That's right, nearly two-thirds of your club head speed comes from the release of the right wrist angle in right handed golfers. In fact, using the RotarySwing.com FlightScope X2 launch monitor, we have shown that in the swings of all our professional and low handicap golfers, the golf club accelerates from about 20 mph to over 90 mph with a 6 iron in the last three feet just before impact!

You've heard it millions of times before, "You want a late hit." Having lag is what allows it to happen. Without it, you must try and make up for the powerful leverage that comes from the angle formed by the right wrist and club shaft with some sort of contorted body effort.

Not only is this way less efficient, but makes you less accurate and makes you susceptible to injury.

The Perfect Golf Swing is an EFFICIENT Golf Swing

If you go back to our set of requirements for the perfect swing, efficiency was in our list of the 5 most important requirements. Without lag, you have to come up with some sort of body movement to make up for the up to 60% loss of club head speed. What body parts can you move in your golf swing fast enough to make up for this loss? None of them!

That's because the right wrist is the last contributor to clubhead speed. It's the last thing touching the golf club and has the most direct and immediate impact. If you spin your hips 3 times faster than they are currently moving now, you can swing the club faster, but there is a lot lost in the transfer of energy from your hips to the time it gets to the golf club.

So, if you want lots of club head speed with very little effort, you better start working on your lag and I have the perfect drill to help you do it. But first, let's look at a golf student of mine from today that used this lag drill and see what kind of results she got with 10 minutes of work:

Yep, 76.5 degrees MORE LAG from one drill and in only 10 minutes. Would you be happy with these results? I thought so.

To increase your lag like this, check out my RotarySwing Tour Lag and Golf Swing Shaping Drill.