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Control the momentum to create the correct arc - in golf and in auto racing.

Release From The Top

Proper grip square the face without compensations.

GRIP

Regarding driver fitness, leg and core strength are essential; however, flexibility relative to what your swing looks like is just as vital.

Put your driver parallel to you on your chest. Leave your hips still and rotate your shoulders back and forth. Try rotating your hips and not moving your shoulders. When you swing, there is much more separation between your shoulders and hips.

If you are limited in shoulder mobility and if you move your shoulders and your hips turn with them, everything has to stay more together. Being more flexible will help your swing.

Practice turning your hips, isolating them from your shoulders, and do the same with your shoulders.

DRIVER FITNESS

MAKING A SWING

A Malaska Golf Member has a question about the Front Loader Drill. Mike demonstrates how to do it, starting by extending your hands with the club out in front of you and then swinging back to hit the ball. Mike explains that it is a simple drill and does a lot of good things.&nbsp;The Member wants to know why her arms feel like they are floating all over the place on the backswing when she does the drill. Joe Nichols described the arms as pivoting on the backswing. Mike demonstrates the ‘pivot’ that Joe talked about. Once Mike has pivoted, the right arm moves away. Your right arm mustn't stay pinned against your body.After you pivot your right arm, your elbow goes up, giving you room to come down. You will feel like your arms are moving away from your body.Mike uses the concept of throwing a ball to the ground where his arm and hand would be on the backswing. He says you wouldn’t cup your wrist when you threw it. You wouldn’t have any leverage.Again, the Front Loader Drill is good because when you pivot on the backswing, the momentum of the club takes your arms up, and then you swing down into the ball. It is key to feel the freedom in your right arm.

Sync Out Your Swing

Face control is a critical component of the M2 Coaching Series, as it directly impacts a golfer&rsquo;s ability to hit consistent, accurate shots. Mike Malaska stresses that players with superior face control excel at every level, much like edge control in skiing or racket control in tennis. Developing face control allows golfers to adapt to different shot requirements, such as hitting fades, draws, high shots, and low shots.
Training the hands to control the face is essential. While advanced players rely on the momentum of the club to guide the swing, beginners must practice consciously manipulating the face. By learning how to adjust loft and curvature with their hands, players can respond instinctively to various on-course challenges.
Mike introduces drills that help golfers practice face control, such as using a clubhead or a small practice device to simulate different face angles. Players are encouraged to experiment with curving the ball left, right, high, and low, gradually building awareness of how their grip and hand movements influence the face.
Practicing face control regularly sharpens a golfer&rsquo;s instinctual response, enabling them to make adjustments mid-swing. This skill not only improves accuracy but also boosts confidence, as players gain mastery over their shots. M2&rsquo;s emphasis on face control underscores its importance in developing a reliable, versatile game that performs under pressure.

M2 Coaching Series-Face Control

This drill will help to develop a straight hit with no wobble or face tilt. It's also a great chance to see how your other skills are working towards a solid putt.

START LINE

Three alternatives to "holding the angle" for casting.

THREE WAYS TO STOP CASTING

A waggle is not a random jumble of movements. A waggle consists of elements that you are actively bringing into your swing. If it is random, it's not helping.

NOT A RANDOM WAGGLE

M2 focuses on mastering the lever system, grip, face control, and utilizing natural athletic instincts to build a consistent and powerful golf swing. Mike Malaska emphasizes that the lever system, comprising the hands, wrists, and arms, is the primary driver of distance and consistency in the swing. Practicing a correct grip and loosening the wrists are essential for achieving fluidity and effortless speed.
Through drills like the L to L and exercises designed to develop face control, golfers can refine their mechanics and better understand their swings. Integrating insights from other sports, M2 ties together athletic patterns and body awareness, helping golfers enhance performance and avoid unnecessary strain.
Mike reiterates the importance of consistent practice and patience, urging golfers to spend time mastering these fundamentals before progressing to more advanced techniques. M2 delivers a comprehensive guide to building a swing foundation that improves accuracy, distance, and overall enjoyment of the game.

M2 Coaching Series-Summary

Mike talks about maintaining the M-System after going through the videos. The most important part of the M-System is the first, and Mike practices this daily. Mike starts with Line of Compression, how your right arm pushes the shaft, and how your wrist works. 

Take your club, hold it with your right hand, and just make small shots. Feel that motion, and then add both hands and the pivot. This is about moving your left hip out of the way. Your right forearm is still on the back of the shaft, with the pivot of your body, and you are running the club into the ball. 

The next step is Impact. Set up to the ball, and move your body and legs to impact position. Again, make little swings and shots. Mike goes through the routine: Setup, Impact, back to Setup, swing, and hit the ball at the impact position. Start there every day and build into the Lever System with more body motion. 

Mike stresses that you must get to the point where you practice certain parts of The M-System daily.

MAINTAINING THE M-SYSTEM WITH IMPACT

Hi, my name is Matt Baker, and I’m a Malaska Golf Certified Coach based here in the UK. Today, we have a great question from Mark Helm. Mark is having trouble relating drills to specific movements in his swing. He also mentioned that others have had similar struggles.The key thing to remember about drills is that they are designed to create certain feelings, patterns, or skill paths, but they aren't always what you’ll be doing during a round. That’s why, for instance, when you see tour players making exaggerated practice swings, like big loopy motions, you don’t see them replicate those swings on the course.There's an old saying: “Feel versus real.” Drills are about creating the right sensations. For example, the "L to L" drill isn't necessarily something you replicate fully in play, but it’s great for feeling the hinging of the wrists in the backswing, unhinging through the ball, and rehinging in the follow-through. It's about the wrists' release pattern.Some golfers, including Mark, mention that forearm rotation feels extreme, but it’s a sensation they’re working on, not something they actively think about on the course. Drills are about building the correct feel.It's important to practice these drills as they create the right sensations and help with the overall swing. For example, the "right foot back" drill helps with hip clearance, creating the right feel for staying out of the way during shots.You don’t need to take drills literally. Even drills like hitting balls off your knees serve a purpose — to improve your golf. By practicing these drills regularly, you can blend the sensations into your full, athletic golf swing.Remember, it’s feel versus real. Drills enhance the speed of your improvement by building functional movement patterns. Keep practicing, and you’ll see improvements over time!

Drills And Movement

Once you are set up. Just hinge your wrists until the club is parallel to the ground. The only thing that moves is the club and your wrists. At this point your wrists are in the position you want them at the top. Then take the club and your arms back. The club head stays on the target side of your hands until your arms reach waist high. Then the club head breaks up and over your hands. As you swing to the transition of your swing the club head keeps moving away from the target line. Then as you change directions the momentum of the club will help your arms fall on the correct path into the ball. 

HINGE

PERFORM WHILE UNCOMFORTABLE

Brian Gott, Malaska Certified Coach, is subbing for Mike this week. A Malaska Golf Member wants to know how you can tell if someone is dragging the handle in a video.

Brian suggests that when watching, imagine placing a dot where the arms are at the top of the swing. If the arms and hands drop and pull forward, you are dragging the handle.

What should happen is that the handle should go out and away from you and down. If the handle goes down and forward, then you are in trouble.

You should be concerned with this because most people think that at the top of the swing, they should pull as hard as they can and get the lag. They believe that is the way to develop speed. The problem with this is that you are late with the clubface, and you find yourself trying to catch up.

An analogy that Brian has used with his students is towing an innertube behind a boat. The boat goes fast in a straight line, then makes a left-hand turn. What does the boat do? It slows down, and the innertube slingshots around using centripetal force and momentum. This creates a lot of speed.

Brian points to the top of the handle of the club and says this is the boat. Then, he points to the clubhead and says this is the innertube.

He demonstrates the swing at the top and says you should go down and out. As you start to release, your hands and wrists slow down, and the clubhead takes off. It’s a bit like whipping your clubhead through the ball. This is how you generate more speed. Pulling the club at the top of the swing does not create more speed.

The hands and arms move out and away to create a bigger arc with more width, and the clubhead will come through much faster.

Dragging the Handle

FOCUS ON MOTION

For some reason, people think that they must turn their bodies in order to hit the ball. This body motion disrupts the spine angle and throws you off completely. Here's what your body wants.

Body Motion and Impact

A Malaska Golf Member wants to know how and why Mike does the one-arm swing.

Mike begins by swinging an iron back and forth, independent of his shoulder moving. Mike places a finger on the outside of his shoulder socket to show the pivot point. You aren’t moving your shoulder forward as you swing.

Your shoulder socket must be relaxed for your arm to swing. Mike demonstrates this and hits a few balls with his right hand and then swaps to his left hand. You will notice there isn’t much body movement, and the pivot is at the shoulder socket. The key is to loosen up your arms without much body movement.

As you go to your full swing, you must keep that same lack of tension in the shoulders. Your arms need to go faster than your chest to create more speed. If your shoulder sockets are tight, you can only go as fast as your shoulders can turn.

Once you have a feel for that, then it’s about making a swing with the same amount of lack of tension in your shoulder sockets so your arms can accelerate and hit the ball.

Shoulder Socket Tension

In order to swing correctly, your hips need to work in your favor. Learn how your left hip helps your swing.

GETTING YOUR LEFT HIP BACK

An Instagram member wants to know why he keeps hitting slices now that he has a strong grip. Mike believes that the member's grip is more neutral than strong.

Mike demonstrates with a strong grip why the member slices the ball. As Mike hinges his wrists on the backswing, the wrists cup, and at the top of the swing, his left wrist is bent, and his right wrist is flat.
This causes the clubface to be open. When you start the downswing, your clubface is still open and will be open at impact, causing you to slice the ball.

Even though your grip is strong, it doesn't mean your wrist will work correctly.

This time Mike demonstrates the solution. When he takes the club back and hinges his wrists, it is flatter, so the clubface is facing the ball.

Mike then shows the difference between the two wrist hinges on the takeaways. It is obvious the member's wrist hinge will cause the clubface to be open. The key is ensuring your wrists work correctly with a strong grip.

CORRECT WRIST HINGE

Chris is an LPGA Class A instructor with over 30 years of experience. Born in Washington, D.C., she started playing golf at age seven at NAS Barbers Point in Oahu, Hawaii, and later competed in high school. She went on to play for the Lady Gators golf team and graduated from the University of Florida with a business degree.
After college, Chris played on the Futures mini-tour and caddied on the LPGA Tour, where she was on the bag for three wins with Sherri Turner &ndash; including the Mazda LPGA Championship, a major title.
As her teaching career grew, Chris learned from some of the best in the game, including Ted Sheftic, Mike Adams, Jim Hardy, and Chris O&rsquo;Connell. Their influence shaped her teaching philosophy, and she remains grateful for their guidance.
Now a Malaska Golf Certified Coach, Chris is excited to extend Mike Malaska&rsquo;s knowledge and the M-System to her students. She believes the M-System is spot on &ndash; and that she can help players of every level improve every facet of their game.

Malaska Certified-Chris Lebiedz

Born in South Korea, Julie swung her first golf club at age six. She achieved early success, winning her first tournament at seven and debuting in a professional tournament at twelve. She had an illustrious junior and amateur career, winning the 2007 U.S. Kids World Championship and becoming the youngest winner of an AJGA tournament. At fourteen, she moved to Scotland to experience golfing in different types of courses, and environments. There, she won multiple European national titles, ascending to the top of the world amateur ranking. In college, Julie played four seasons for Oklahoma State University, during which she earned NCAA All-American honors and claimed the title of 2014 Big XII Player of the Year. At age nineteen, Julie qualified to become an LPGA Tour Player. Throughout her professional career, she competed in professional tournaments worldwide, including all five major championships in women's golf, and posted a 6th place finish at the 2016 LPGA Coates Golf Championship.
Transitioning into the teaching aspect of golf, Julie brings a truly unique experience to Malaska Golf. Working with renowned experts like Mike Malaska, competing alongside the top athletes in the sport, and engaging at every level of golf, Julie brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and skill to her coaching.
Her teaching philosophy is rooted in empathy. Having overcome many challenges that golfers often face, understanding that each individual has their distinct learning style and natural movement pattern, and acknowledging the reality that solutions that make sense off the course don't always translate to success on it. Julie's approach focuses on discovering and refining individuals' innate abilities to produce attainable and enduring results. She currently offers tried-and-true golf guidance, personalized instruction, and mentorship in the mental and emotional aspects of golf, both virtually and in the Phoenix area.

Malaska Certified-Julie Yang

To get into the correct posture for you. First take a club and hold it up your spine on your back. Take your normal standing posture. Make sure your toes are quiet. Now just push your hips back and then tilt your spine slightly towards your trail foot. Your knees should be directly over your ankles and your weight should be in the center of your feet so that your toes are quiet. If your toes are grabbing or lifting you are off balance. 

POSTURE DRILL

Preparing for a tournament is very important. Practice finding your tempo.

Pre-Tournament Routine

This is such a good golf course, and I want to make sure you can see some of it. They've just top-dressed the greens, which is what they have to do here in Utah during the summer. So there's a little bit of sand on top of them, which makes them look a little white. It's a maintenance procedure.Unfortunately, we couldn't get the greens to look perfect, but I can tell you that even with the sand, these greens putt great. Walking on this course, the property, the shots, the visual concepts—there’s a lot of golf here. I love trees, I love holes where the angles and trees and all that stuff come into play.Even though I live in Arizona, which is desert golf and doesn’t have the same dynamics with big trees, it’s a different type of golf. But I want you to see how beautiful this course is. And if you’re ever here and know someone who’s a member, you’ve got to come and play it. It’s one of the best golf courses in Utah, for sure.Now, relative to the last day, this is the 18th green here. The members don’t play it this way, though. This is part of the front nine, and they finish on a par three as their 18th hole. But for us, this was the 18th hole in the final round. The pin was right here. It's a huge green, with the pin placement at the back. I hit my best tee shot of the week—a nice high draw—and ended up right here, with about 82 yards to the front edge of the green and around 100 yards to the flag. They’ve thinned out a lot of trees since I was last here, which is interesting.This hole is tough for driving because the trees hang over the tee, which is set up for a cut. But I was drawing the ball consistently. So the question was, do I hit driver? My caddie, who was excellent and helped me a lot, said, "Mike, you haven’t hit a driver offline all day. Let’s just get on the right side of the tee or way over on the left and go right over the top edge of the trees." So I hit it perfect—the best drive I hit all week. I had a two-shot lead coming into this hole, so I knew that if I just hit the fairway, I wouldn't make worse than bogey.But the pin was clear in the back, which I think is the hardest pin placement on the green. If you miss the fairway to the right or hit it left into the trees, getting the ball back there is almost impossible. This club doesn’t really have a full driving range. You can see they’ve put the tees way up, and they can hit up to those flags, which are only about 150 yards away.When we played the Utah Open, the practice tees were set much farther back, near the cart path, so you could hit up to a 200-yard shot. But even then, we just used it to warm up. In fact, every day, the first full driver swing I made was off the first tee. I’d hit a couple of drivers on the range, but they wouldn’t go past the tees. I was making big swings, just trying to hit it solid and get a feel for the swing.It’s interesting practicing like this, where you can’t hit the ball far and are just focusing on hitting it solid and controlling its flight. That’s actually better than standing there and rifling your driver, which is what most people do. So, even though this is a restricted area, it actually sets you up for a better warm-up.Again, we're up here on the range. They’ve got maybe a 120-yard shot, and I suppose you could hit into the rough and get it up to 180 or 190 yards. Back in the day, this tee was cut all the way back to the cart path, so it was probably another 50 yards longer. But you couldn't just stand here and rifle drivers out. They wouldn’t let you. In fact, a lot of times, they wouldn’t even let you hit drivers. During the Open, they let us, but you were only supposed to hit it to the trees over here, which from the back tee was only like 200 yards.For me, I didn’t know what I was doing; I just made long, smooth swings, hit the ball solid, and got a feel for how it was curving. I’ve never been in a rush to hit it far. The biggest problem I see, which I instinctively avoided, is swinging too hard and hitting the ball randomly. When I was a kid, we practiced with a shag bag, and we had to pick up the balls after hitting them. So, I was always concerned with where the ball went, rather than how far.I’m confident that’s one reason I got so good so quickly—I never swung so hard that I’d lose control of the ball. I didn’t want to lose a golf ball.So anyway, this is the practice area. It’s pretty much the same as it was back then, maybe 40 yards shorter. It’s just a place to warm up.For the members, they play this as their 10th tee, but for the tournament, they wanted to finish on 18, so they used this spot. There was a lot more room for the galleries here than at the par three, which is where the members usually finish.The first day—or the fourth day—when I came up here, it was just a gorgeous hole. It drops down, comes up one level, then another, and finally up to the top. For me, at the time, every ball I hit had a slight draw. That's another reason this course is so great: about 75 percent of the holes set up perfectly for a draw. I just set up on the left side of the tee, aimed at the left edge of the right-hand trees, and swung. It was so comfortable, and I felt so good.The two best tee shots I hit during the final round were on the first hole and the 18th. I hit them all well, but these two stood out. The adrenaline, the atmosphere—it all played a part. This tee shot on the first hole was crucial because when I hit it compared to the other two guys I was playing with, I was way past them. I ended up making birdie on the first hole, which increased my lead and made me feel like, "Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go."

Visualizing The Course

In this video series, Mike Malaska looks back on his return to the Utah Open, 50 years after his remarkable victory as an amateur, providing valuable insights into both the mental and physical aspects of competitive golf. He revisits key moments from that final round, beginning with the surprising calm he felt on the day of the tournament, despite the pressure of trying to achieve something unprecedented. Mike explains how reading an article that underestimated his chances helped remove the pressure, allowing him to focus on playing freely and with confidence.
Mike goes on to highlight the importance of trusting his natural shot&mdash;a draw&mdash;especially on a course that played to his strengths. He emphasizes that, rather than forcing a fade or other shots outside of his comfort zone, he relied on the draw he had perfected over the years, which gave him the consistency he needed under pressure. Mike shares how this trust in his own abilities allowed him to navigate challenging situations and maintain control of the game.
As the series progresses, Mike reflects on his ability to manage crowd pressure, recalling how entering a packed tunnel full of spectators made him feel claustrophobic but also helped him focus once he emerged onto the course. He speaks to the mental strategies he used to turn pressure into performance, keeping himself composed in critical moments.
Mike also recounts a pivotal recovery shot during a par-5, where instead of using an iron, he chose a 7-wood to escape from the rough and hit a remarkable 50-yard slice to the front of the green. This decision proved to be a turning point in the tournament, and Mike highlights the importance of making smart shot selections under pressure. He explains that knowing when to take risks and when to play it safe is a key factor in competitive success.
In the final section, Mike discusses how he closed out the tournament, holding onto a narrow lead and staying true to his strategy. He reflects on the critical decisions he made, including opting to stick with his driver on the final hole, even though a safer choice might have been tempting. His decision to trust his instincts and stay aggressive helped him secure the victory.
Through this series, Mike provides an in-depth look at his thought process during one of the most significant moments of his career, sharing valuable lessons about mindset, decision-making, and self-confidence on the golf course. The series is not only a reflection on a past triumph but also a masterclass in how to handle pressure and play to your strengths in competitive golf.

Mike's Winning Mindset

The front loader drill will get your right hip out of the way and get your left hip working correctly.