Is This The Best Golf Drill to Instantly Improve Ball Striking?

Rick Shiels and Charles Howell III recently released a video packed with the former @PGATOUR and current @LIVGolf veteran’s favorite tips and drills. But are these the secrets that will actually improve YOUR game? As a professional golf instructor, I’m providing my expert analysis and breaking down the powerful advice from one of golf’s most dedicated grinders.

In this video, I offer my professional opinion on the golf instruction shared by Charles Howell III in his latest appearance on the @RickShielsPGA channel. We’ll go beyond the surface-level tips and perform a deep dive into the “why” behind CH3’s drills. We’ll analyze his philosophy on ball striking, his secrets for consistency, and the practice habits that have led to a multi-decade career at the highest level of professional golf.

Is every drill from a Tour Pro right for the amateur golfer? Which tips should you implement immediately, and which ones might need modification for your swing? I’m filtering through the noise to give you actionable takeaways you can bring to the driving range tomorrow. We’ll cover everything from swing mechanics and short game feel to the mental approach that separates the pros from the rest of us.

Join the discussion! Which one of Charles Howell III’s tips was your favorite? Do you agree with my analysis? Drop a comment below!

➡️ Watch the original video on Rick Shiels’ channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3E50uMOXos

🕒 VIDEO CHAPTERS 🕒

0:00 – Intro: Why This Video is a Must-Watch for Golfers
0:33 – Rick Shiels introduces Charles Howell III
1:31 – Tip One, The Setup
6:55 – Tip Two, The ReCentred Turn
11:30 – Tip Three, How to Control the Downswing
16:20 – Tip Four, Charles Howell III Favorite Drill.

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Rick Shields has published this really interesting video that he’s done with Charles H. Uh gives you four things that Charles does and a really interesting draw at the end. Let’s trace on through it. Let’s watch it together. Uh there’s some really good value in this. Charles is an amazing ball striker. Plus, he does some old school things that certainly make a lot of sense to probably most of the golfing public and you can learn from without being super athletic. You can help you a ton. Let’s dive on in and let’s watch it together. should be uh should be entertaining as always. Guys, ball striking is one of the most important factors when you want to play great golf. I’ve got he is man’s he knows how to talk the camera here with you today who’s one of the best ball strikers in the world. He’s got four correct Charles How is an amazing ball striker. Little guy hits it so good. So far, so strong. Four tips for you to help you strike it pure every single time. Charles, thanks for coming on the channel. What’s going on? How are you? We need four little awkward backhand, lift hand. Four tips. Okay. Okay. Simple that the audience at home can follow. Love it. That will help them get that beautiful compression that every golfer wants. Perfect. That you’re great at. I love it. So, four tips. So, I spent a lot of time on the driving range. I love ball striking. Love ball hitting. So, all right. We’ll start with start with the setup. So, your grip your grip. How cool is that little background uh imaging they got there on the screen like 3D. You can see the shadow on the range. It’s kind of cool. I like it. It matters to an extent in that it’s just not I don’t like it terribly strong, terribly weak. So you would just say something in the middle and that’s so instantly I mean Charles there he demonstrates what is what we’ll call extremely traditional neutral grip especially that left hand like he has not got that left hand in a strong position he has not got it in a weak position where like a pita that’s just come out strong grip a lot of great ball strikers have strong grips Bryson on the other hand weak grip Rory strong Bryson weak bunch of guys weak grips John Ramwe grip. So he sits right in the middle kind of your two knuckle almost a one knuckle and then a nice pronounced right hand. A very traditional grip. Now for a guy to have a grip like that and hit it right to left like he loves to do. We instantly going to know that he’s not going to have a very fast hips. He’s going to have more of a slower matched up body movement synced up with his arms and hands to keep the club face from not being too open at impact with a neutral grip. So that you instantly know he’s going to have a lot of body turn. He’s going to delay how quickly he gets his body open to match up the face to path. traditional is everything, but um instantly that grip like that, a lot of foreshadowing wants to come. Not a bad thing, not a good thing. It’s just understanding, hey, look, there’s going to be some interesting stuff that comes from here to you. That’s your attachment, your whatever. With the setup though, what I find really important is is I see way too many golfers setting up with their feet dead straight, okay? But yet we’re trying to turn and it’s really hard to turn when your hips are kind of locked in this way and your feet are straight. So I like to see the feet flared a bit which that’s just going to help you turn. Okay. Another great piece of advice but also foreshadowing what his golf swing has to do. Right. Yes. Most players have their feet or amateur golfers shall we say have their feet too square. Most to a prior have their feet out a little bit. Why do they have their feet square? I don’t know. There’s some weird belief that having your feet your toes dead straight is a good thing. It’s really hard. And then if you do any type of testing on yourself, you’ll find that it’s harder to rotate with your feet square than it is to have your feet rotate open. Now Charles has both feet rotated open, especially the trail foot lot, which is going to be foreshadowing two things. A, by having the foot open there, it’s going to be easier for him to make a lovely big turn. So clearly his golf swing is going to be based around rotation back, creating some space. And then also with your foot like that, it’s harder to get your hips open. You actually are slowing down how quickly your your feet can open. You’re keeping them closed for longer. So by having his trail foot, especially rotated open like that, it’s going to be easier for him to turn and also easier for them to stay closed for longer. Two things that he needs to do with a neutral grip to have time to square the face up. But good things, right? The neutral grip stops the ball going left. The body matching up stops the ball going right. So if you can’t hit it left, you can’t hit it right. Match up. You’re going to hit it pretty good. But let’s continue hear what he says. Take some pressure off your knees and off your hips. Correct. And the second thing I like to see is the handle in front of the golf ball. So now by doing that, you’re kind of presetting in a little bit of a draw, which okay, handle in front of the golf ball does not necessarily mean you’re presetting in a draw. However, if you have your handle ahead of the golf ball and your shoulders are pointed at the target, you can see there now how my right right arm gets low, left arm gets high. So, you can have a handle head. Now, that’s preset for a draw. Most players, the average guy you see on the range or the average amter when he has his handle forward, he’s going to have his shoulders open to facilitate that. And now with the handle forward, shoulders open, you’re going to swing left, swing left, ball curves right. So, Yes, if you have that handle forward with your shoulders closed or your shoulders at the target, yeah, that is certainly making it a lot easier again to turn, get inside, hit a draw, but understanding that it’s the shoulders matched in with the handle position. I like to play a draw. I know most people hate to slice the ball. Okay, so from that, we have our feet slightly flared, handle slightly in front of the ball. Then from here, I’m gonna move the club around. Okay. On that one there, because that it’s that sound like that real Oh, it’s I mean, off this turf, it’s beautiful. Interesting question there. How how you flare the feet out. I noticed you do that quite like is that was that something you introduced quite early on? And do you think a lot of amateur golfers would actually benefit from having slightly flared feet as well? So, when I was a bit younger, it’s not as hard to turn. as we all get older, it becomes harder and harder and it kind of feeds into a back swing tip, which I think is vital for every golfer is from so with with these feet flared. Okay, and this is my huge key on the back swing and I’ve even spoke to Jack Nicholas about this and some other greats is the second that I start moving my club back, I want my right hip to turn back and to be where my belt buckle is. So, if you can envision where your belt buckle is, I want to put my right hip there. So, I want to turn this hip back. Now, if you’ve watched any of my content, any of my tips, I do love it, right? Getting the pelvis moving forward. Soon as the clubs, soon as the hands pass that trail pocket, getting the pelvis to turn, right hip depth, lengthening of the right leg, obviously your left hip’s going to go down, right hip’s going up. So the pelvis is going forward as the lead shoulder gets behind the golf ball. Yeeha! Surprise, surprise. What a spot. And you can see here his You can start to see the trail shoulder, the right shoulder pop up. As soon as you have that pelvis lined up and the right shoulder pops up over here, you can see the right shoulder of a ball striker pop up, the man has loaded. Now, obviously, he has to have that right foot position to pull that off. If his trail foot was square, he ain’t getting there. He ain’t turning that much. So, that’s why it’s a big thing that first situation. Very, very important for him. So cool to see an old school move there. Little cupping of the lead wrist and everything. It’s great. right to where that belt buckle was. Now, by doing that, I’m gonna feel a lot of pressure on this lead foot. Okay? So, all this is setting pieces in to draw this ball and to compress it. Not just pressure lead foot, he’s going to have a situation there where you turn the pelvis. Yes, you’re going to feel pressure ball of lead foot and also his trail heel. He hasn’t moved forward and his he right heel is extremely planted. He could easily just tap the right toe at that point. But why is it important to get the pressure forward? Because that allows you to hit slightly down on the golf ball. And when you certainly when you’re coming from a shallow plane like he is from the inside, you got to make sure you get those joints forward early so that you can hit the low point early. Point early. Hit the low point at the right time after the golf ball. Okay. So, we’ve got our feet slightly flared. Our right hip. We’re going to turn this back behind us and we place right where that belt buckle was. We’re not ever going to do this. We start sliding off this ball. We have to get back forward again. And it takes too much time when that’s waffling around. So, for an example here, I’m going to take my right. See, now that’s where I wish we had some ground force start of what Charles is doing because you can see that he set lead side at this point. And then for him to get the club off the ground, I can assure you from here to here, he has the tiniest little shift, probably only half an inch or something back, like a tiny shift back to then go forward. Just this tiny little shift. And I’m sure there’s a slow-mo in here and you’ll be able to see just this tiny shift forward, back, and then forward again. Especially with him with an iron be a little bit more pronounced turn back with the driver hip and turn it. Yeah, just a tiny move with that pocket back straight back behind me. We’re not going to have any swaying and moving around. I love that. You almost feel like you’re staying more centered. 100%. So if you were to draw a line from your almost your chest, your belt buckle and down. Yeah. There you go. So, as soon as he goes to get back, he moves just a tiny bit, right? Sets up. It’s just this tiny little shift back. I’m not You don’t If you want more power, you want to have more lateral load and then reentering. But we’re talking about pure ball striking consistency. You need to have just this tiniest little shift. Certainly in his case, they all squared up. This tiny little micro shift trail, then push straight forward again. So try any trail push forward and then you’re just going to be able to really just bang crush it like that. Very cool move the ball. You’d almost be rotating on that line ideally. So yes, so that’s tip one is set up. Set up. Tip two is that centered back swing. Correct. Get your right hip turning behind you. Now what I like about this as Charles tells you about tip three. Tip four is a drill that Charles uses which is unbelievable. I love that one. Let’s go tip three first. Let’s not jump the gun. So, okay. So, tip three is now extremely interesting. Way too many golfers, I’m going to set this way so you can see it from the top, feel their power by this right leg kicking in, this right heel kind of kicking up off the ground early. Okay? And now we’ve lost our inclination to the ground. So, if we’re from here at the top and this tilts this way, it’s really hard to get back down and control the low point. Okay? So, this down swing feel, which I love, is I want to feel like my right leg stays as long as possible and my right foot banks in this way. And then, okay, completely normal good ball striking again leads from the grip, which leads to the turn and then he has to stay closed for longer with all he has to keep the right hip back for longer than some players. He has to keep the right shoulder back for longer. has to allow the arms to come down in front of him because as soon as he has any of because of his wrist conditions like a lovely neutral grip at the top his wrists are in a little bit still a little bit of extension little cupped wrist square face to the forearm looks very pretty but as he’s coming down here if he has any inclination onto his toes his hands are going to go out his face is going to be open and he’s not be able to save it with his hands he’s going to miss it a mile right so Charles likes to draw it. So, he ain’t going to be doing that turn left faded to the right move. He’s going to try and keep everything closed. So, from that recentered wrist and his a little bit of extension from here, he needs to keep this trail hip back. He needs to keep allow the ankle to roll, which again facilitating this open foot allows your foot to roll. If you have your foot square, it’s not going to roll. It’s going to want to rotate. So it allows him that set up and that grip matches in with the the lateral slide to the lead side matching all the joints before he goes around the corner. Pretty cool. Extends up. I never want my right leg to work flexed and this toe going this way. I want this leg long and that right foot banking in that way. Okay. So on that feel, I’ll try to really exaggerate what my right leg long and what my foot banking in this way. And that was a good one. So you can see the foot’s banked in this way. It’s not back this way and spun around. I love that. Would you say it’s interesting you say that when I again has to slow down or match up or keep this back long enough for his arms to catch up to square it up. If you have a stronger grip or if you had like a Dustin Johnson situation at the at shut at the top, then you have to rotate hard to not hit it left. Pros and cons to every movement pattern. Feel like I’m actually hitting the ball the best. I almost feel like my right knee is moving towards my left knee. Always correct. It feels like it when I actually hit my really good ones, it almost feels like it’s it’s borderline touching. Yes. And I love how you said that you almost roll this right foot as opposed to going after. Now, this probably would help Rick too. He Rick has the tendency to get a lot of face rotation early in his golf swing. Unfortunately, he has it quite open at the top. So, as soon as he has any firing open, tries to save it with his hands, blocks, hooks. So, yeah, if he was to keep this trail hip deeper and more quiet, he’s certainly going to have more time to square the club face up and thus better timing. It’s officially that way. The two best in the world at that are Rory Maroy and Bryson. You watch their right feet. They roll. Both players that like to hit draws. Makes sense. One a weak grip, one a stronger grip. Ironically, roll in this way and then it comes up off the ground. Love that. So, tip one set up. Tip two is back swing. Tip three was that down swing. getting that right knee to go over towards the left knee and keeping that Yeah, Rick’s kind of got ahead of there, Charles, cuz Charles is talking about keeping the length in the right and rolling that way. He’s not really talking about this move. Soon as you have this move, as soon as the knee gets to that knee, that heel’s going to come up. And now you actually got the hand path working a little bit left. And now it’s not drawing. It’s actually fading a little bit. But we’ll get to that in the next drill. Kind of foot rolling in. Yes. And then give us that secret tip. We always talk about secret tips from professional golfers. Yes. But is there a drill that you do that just gets this absolutely zoned in 100%. Now this is a very cool drill. Very cool tip. But you need to do all the stuff, step one, step two, step three before you can do this drill or even have a reason to want to do this drill. So, I love to practice and you have to practice with drills. Then, the best drill I’ve ever seen and done for this is I’ll get to my setup. I’ll widen my stance and I’ll actually pre-bank my foot in. Why is he widening your stance? Switching movements off. Why is he banking the foot in? And he’s going to be lengthening this hip. So, wider bank it lengthen it. It’s keeping it’s getting the hips a little bit more closed at the address and it’s keeping them closed. Why? So that gives them more time for the hands to come inside, more time for the club face to square up. And I’ll pre-lengthen this right leg. Okay. So if my normal setup was here, I’m going to bank this in. I feel a lot of weight forward. I have this foot banked in. And I’m going to hit a ball from there. Oh, and I draw every ball. And so bear in mind as well wider base of support banked in right here. But as he’s going back, he’s still and pressure forward. So you hit it clean, not fat. He’s still going to be turning. He’s still going to have the concept of getting his right hip to turn where his center line is. So he’s getting even forward early. So he’s really stacked and turned. And then from here, obviously, if you keep that back, you have a lot of time for the face to close. With that neutral grip, though, it’s not going to start left. So, he’s eliminated the block. He’s going to hit a big old overdraw. But that’s the feel that he likes to see. And yeah, for most players hitting the big old high slice, wonderful solution. Well, you because our your weight’s forward, this is banked in. Now, that will teach your brain what that feels like and how that translates back into the through side. I love that. I’ve never seen that done. So, exactly. I’ve never ever seen that. That’s why we’re here today. I We wouldn’t have seen a lot of it, especially lately with social media. I mean, Charles is like an early lead better guy. So, we don’t see a lot of golf swings coming out nowadays with conventional neutral wrists. We see a lot of stuff now with flat lead wrists or bow lead wrists. So the players can fire their body harder and generate more speed. We don’t see as much as this. The lovely, beautiful matched up sequenced old school swings that have incredibly high smash and efficiency because the face is close to the path. It’s great for a smaller built guy like Charles to still hit it out there miles. And myself, someone like me, lean, I’d love to hit fades. I know exactly the move to hit like a tour player power fade. I personally just don’t generate enough club head speed to to do that move to have that fun. So, I’ll just hit a hold off draw that goes further than a hard hit power fade and just sacrifice a little bit of accuracy for a little bit more easy speed. That decision gets a lot easier as you get older and slower. Love that idea that you preset preset it, pre-bag it, and now hit it from there. So, you’re you’re almost allow Oh, wow. Yes. So you’re presetting that. So how ch how Rick’s showing you right there is already going to be way too much path left. Okay. So soon as he’s gone, see how high his right heel is and his right knee’s gone forward that way and his hands are working low and left. Now that’s going to neutralize this. That’s going to make it you got to keep this heel back and down that lengthened so that you can come from the inside. As soon as you do that same move, as soon as this heel goes up, hands go out, path is now actually going to work left. So from there, Rick would hit it flush, but it would be a low fade. It would not be a draw unless he had some cool wrist actions, which is not what we’re talking about here at all. There’s no wrist action when it comes to this type of golf swing. It’s just up and down the hands because the body’s doing all the movement. the wrists don’t really need to do a lot of shallowing or any of that kind of stuff. Yeah. So, you’re letting your brain know, okay, my right leg can be long, my right foot can bank in, and then on the through side. So, set up slightly flared feet, feeling like you’re staying nice and center, very centered, right hip back behind you, moving that right hip behind and down swing, getting the right leg to stay straight and going to the knee going towards the left foot as you roll the foot. And then as a drill as a practice drill in driving range is practice that the drill as a practice drill in driving range. So the knee going towards the left knee as you now bear in mind Rick said that like four times. Now right knee going to the left knee. Charles never said right knee going to the left knee. He just trail heel back bananked in. He never talks anything about the knees and his idea of doing it. As soon as the knees try, this right hip starts going forward fatty. So just be careful with that that Rick has jumped in there. Right knee is not the thing. Right knee staying back. Yes, right knee getting it stays back until post impact and then it can come up. But it’s working in that fashion, not that fashion. Roll the fork. Yes. And then as a drill, as a practice drill in driving ranges, practice that. Preset that. And you want to be listening for that sound. You want to be hitting. Yeah. So there that beautiful preloaded early, lots of lengthening in the trail leg. Right hip goes back. And then from here, he’s keeping this lengthened in his back as long as he can. As soon as you get to this point here, your arms, your chest are going to be pulling your rib cage through into a very strong looking impact. But this is staying back. This is staying back and then that hold off draw finish. Very nice. That real compression where you hear the ball first, then the ground. You want to see your ball being taken, then the diver after. Yes. That was amazing. Thank you. Amazing. And honestly, those strikes, I wish you were here in person because they sounded unbelievable. Hopefully it came through the video. Be sure to check out Charles. Be sure to I hope you guys have enjoyed that little video. Um, lots to learn from it. A very good movement pattern for anyone that doesn’t have massive ranges of motion, too. You don’t need to have all these modern cool flexing and shallowing of the club with the trail arm coming underneath. Charles doesn’t talk about any of that. Why? because it’s not important in his particular swing action. His action is all about creating a space where you can have lots of mobility easily reentering early and then staying closed with all your angles so you have time for your hands and arms to come down in front of you to then finish up in front of you. The arms are really staying in front. a little old school. Certainly the way I certainly learned to teach golf and a lot of us learned to play golf in the early 2000s. Not so much with the younger guys now. A lot of them are learning the the move where they’re getting the lead wrist flexion, a lot of right side bend and then an amazing amount of speed up and left. Again, different strokes, different folks, different grips, different matchups. Very cool. Well worth a try. But remember, you’ve got to get the right setup and then create the turn before you can dive in there and do that sweet drill. Otherwise, it’s going to be an absolute struggle for you. Thanks to your time, guys.