Face control is critical in many sports, particularly golf and tennis. Whenever I have a student who needs to get a better feel for the position of the clubface at different points in their golf swing, I get them to put their golf club down and pick up a tennis racket.
How to do the Tennis Racket Drill
The face of the tennis racket is just like the face on our golf club. It’s just a nice big visual that we can see. If I hold the tennis racket, my palm is oriented with the face and as I try to imagine hitting some shots with this, I can leave the face pointing up, I can point it down.
That’s going to influence where the tennis ball would bounce or fly. So, when we have our golf club, it’s no different. I want you to imagine in your head that your golf club face is this big. And you can see and feel relative to your dominant hand how your wrist motions are controlling the clubface orientation in space.
If I go ahead and grab my iron again and take my grip position with my right hand feeling what I just felt with that tennis racket, I can imagine that tennis racket in space and down here near the ground. If I just make a couple of little swinging motions I can see that the face is rotating with the position as I change my right hand.
So, as you can tell, there is a lot of feel associated with what’s happening with the face of your golf club or tennis racket and your palm. And I want you to get that awareness because when the club is moving around, you need to have a sense of where it is in space at all times and be able to control that during your swing.
You’ll feel it more internally and you won’t need to be aware of it consciously. But it’s still important to be athletic and to imagine that you always have a connection with the clubface so that you can really bring that club back to square at the right moment, impact.
I hope that this video lesson inspires you to try the Tennis Racket Drill and helps you with your clubface control.
