Frequently, golfers play the ball according to general guidelines such as “in the middle of your stance” or “off the left foot.” However, if you don’t take into account your own particular swing dynamics in finding your best ball position, you’re bound to produce shots that stray wide and short of your target, even when you execute a perfect swing.

Many golfers I teach have a difficult time starting their forward-swing. What I usually see is that as they get to the top they have a violent move to start the swing down and after they hit the golf ball they fall out of balance. What you want to do in the golf swing is have a gradual acceleration when you start down. If I let this club go it starts down slow and then builds up speed. Its maximum speed is down by the bottom of the swing arc. The same thing is true in golf as I swing the club back, and when I come down, it is a gradual acceleration. If I want to build a 100 miles per hour of clubhead speed at impact, the way I do it is, as I swing to the top, I gradually start down with slow speed and I let all my speed occur at impact. Just like if I let this club go, when I let it go, it starts slow and its maximum speed is down by the bottom. I want you to do the same thing when you’re hitting a golf ball. When you start down from the top with your arms and your body, it’s a gradual acceleration, then building the speed up at the golf ball. And it’s the same for every club. I’d like to demonstrate one for you. With a three-wood, I’m just going to have a gradual acceleration as I start my forward-swing. If you can learn to do that with every club in your bag, you’re going to play a better round of golf.

We are shooting these little vignettes at the absolutely beautiful Trump International Golf Club, and of course our owner is Donald Trump. A lot of you may have heard that Donald Trump does not shake hands with people. That is not true at all, he is a very affable and friendly person, if you meet him in private and put out your hand he will be happy to shake hands with you. I think that all came about during that semi Presidential talk when he had to go out and meet all kinds of people. Anyhow, I wanted to tell you about shaking hands in golf. First of all, if you go up to a famous player and you are in a crowd of people and you put out your hand they may turn their hand sideways or put out there left hand because a lot of times a real strong man will take a hold of a tour players hand and squeeze it so hard that he can actually do damage. So they are very careful about shaking people’s hands in large groups of people they do not know. I am going to bring in Peter Yunis, our director and producer of this show, and he is going to have an experience he never had before. Right Peter, you don’t know the difference between how good players and weak players shake hands? Absolutely not. Well here goes, and because it has to do with good golf, good players shake hands like this. Poor players, high handicappers, shake hands like this. Why do I show that, because in golf, Peter, this position in the right hand is the key to keeping that golden angle where the shaft is tilted correctly, while the high handicapper flips that right hand through like that. So good players shake hands with their right hand cupped up while bad players shake hands with the right wrist folded down. You got it? Absolutely. And now you have it!