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Learn how to stop standing up in the golf swing and achieve consistent contact by keeping your right side down—not your chest. In this golf lesson, Eric Cogorno explains the key to maintaining proper body inclination through impact for better ball striking.

TIMESTAMPS:
⛳ 0:00 – Understanding Body Inclination: How Keeping the Same Distance to the Ground Creates Consistent Solid Contact
🏌️ 0:33 – The Right Side Secret: Why Your Right Shoulder, Hip, and Knee Position Matters More Than Chest Position
📊 1:42 – Good vs Bad Swing Comparison: How Standing Up Too Much Causes Poor Contact and Inconsistent Shots
💡3:22 – The Chest Down Myth: Why Keeping Your Chest Over the Ball Actually Hurts Your Swing Rotation
🎯 3:55 – PGA Tour Analysis: How Max Homa, Justin Thomas, and Tiger Woods Keep Their Right Side Down Through Impact
🏒 4:31 – The Hockey Drill: Split Hand Grip Exercise to Feel the Correct Right-Side Movement in Your Golf Swing
✅ 7:32 – Applying the Feel: How to Transfer the Right Side Crunch Sensation into Full Golf Swing Shots
⚙️8:08 – The Shortening Effect: Why Maintaining a Bent Right Arm and Wrist Through Impact Improves Ball Compression

What You’ll Learn:
• How to stop standing up in the golf swing by maintaining proper body inclination to the ground throughout the downswing
• How to stay down in golf swing using your right side (shoulder, hip, knee) rather than trying to keep your chest down
• Why the common “keep chest over the ball” advice actually prevents proper rotation and causes you to get stuck
• How the right shoulder works in the golf swing by staying closer to the right hip through impact while the chest rotates toward the target
• The split hand grip “hockey drill”—one of Eric Cogorno’s favorite golf drills for feeling the correct right side crunch sensation
• How PGA Tour players like Max Homa, Justin Thomas, and Tiger Woods maintain their right side position for better compression
• The connection between body distance from the ground and release pattern for consistent contact in golf
• Why standing up forces you to prematurely straighten your right arm and wrist, causing poor shaft lean and inconsistent strikes
• How to shorten your swing radius by keeping your right arm and wrist bent through impact for solid golf lesson results

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Keeping our body the same distance to the ground throughout the golf swing, especially on the way down and through would be the way that would make consistent solid contact the easiest and most repeatable. What we’re trying to do to keep our inclination to the ground is not keep our chest down over the ball. It’s keep your right side down over the ball. And when they get through, you’re going to notice at impact, their chest is actually pointed out towards the target, not down towards the ball, but their right shoulder, hip, and knee are all down at the golf ball. Once they get through the ball, you’ll see them on the screen. Their right shoulder, right rib cage, hip, and knee are the things pointed down to the ball. That’s what keeps them in their inclation to the ground, not chest down, not chest down. If you’re like a lot of people that I coach, you really struggle with standing up too much during the down swing through the ball. You don’t hit the ball as solid as you’d like. You’re not as consistent daytoday. Just don’t hit the ball as straight and far as you know you can. I’m going to show you in today’s video how to fix that. One of my all-time favorite drills. Okay. When we’re talking about staying down and covering the ball, the important concept here to understand is what we call inclination to the ground, which is just a fancy way to say keeping our body the same distance to the ground throughout the golf swing, especially on the way down and through would be the way that would make consistent solid contact the easiest and most repeatable. So when we look at a good golfer, if we draw a line up my back line here at setup, we would see that especially during the down swing, their body stays the same distance to the ground or even gets slightly closer to the ground on the way down and through the golf ball. And that enables them to hit it consistently solid. Now, if you’re like a lot of players that I work with during the down swing, we look something like this. If we draw a line on my head and a line up my back here, we know that during the down swing, we’re getting too tall. We’re standing up too much at impact. And that causes us a lot of issues. And the reason that causes us a lot of issues is the distance of my body away from the ground dictates my release pattern. Okay? And how well I am able to get to a good impact position. If my body is a certain distance from the ground at setup and I get farther from the ground at impact and I stand up and stall, the only way for me to get to the golf ball to reach it is to prematurely straighten my right arm and my right wrist. Now, that enables me to get down to the ball. But if I put my opposite hand on, what’s the problem there? Let’s look at me here and put a good player at impact who looks like this. Notice the difference side by side of that. The problem with me prematurely throwing my right arm and right wrist, no shaft, poor contact, no distance, inconsistent. So, we want to be able to keep our body the same distance from the ground on the way back and through. The key concept here, and I see this and hear this all the time, and it messes a lot of people up, is when we try and keep our body the same distance from the ground, we are not not trying to do that by feeling our chest stay down. When you feel like your chest stays down, we’re not able to rotate. You get stuck. The hips are too far back. No good. What we’re trying to do to keep our inclination to the ground is not keep our chest down over the ball. It’s keep your right side down over the ball. So, we’re going to put some players on the screen here. You’ll see Max Homa, Justin Thomas, couple players on the screen, Tiger. And when they get through, you’re going to notice at impact, their chest is actually pointed out towards the target, not down towards the ball, but their right shoulder, hip, and knee are all down at the golf ball. So, we keep our body’s distance to the ground during the down swing with our right side of our body, not our chest down. That’s really, really, really important. Now, how do we do this and feel this? There’s a couple different ways. One of my favorite ways to do this, we call this the hockey drill or the split hand grip drill. When you take your setup, I want you to slide your right hand down where it’s just past the grip on the club and hold it out in front of you like this, where the butt of the club’s about even with the golf ball. Let’s make a back swing where your hands like to get to about hip high. And then from this position, I want you to get down to the golf ball. To the golf ball. So, normal setup like this. Slide the right hand down, the grip, hold it right in front of you, back up to about hip high, and then take that and get that down to the golf ball. And the beautiful thing about this drill is that it really helps you feel that trail side working down. The reason it works, if I bring it up in front of me, as soon as I take my setup and I slide my right hand down the grip, notice where the club head is relative to the golf ball. It’s up about an inch or two. And what that means then is as I swing, assuming I stay about the same height on the way back, I’ve got to actually lower some on the way down. Now, do you have to actually lower some? We’ll show some examples on the screen with the line on their head. Some really good ball strikers do in fact lower some. That enables them to keep their trail arm and trail wrist bent and hit it very solid. The opposite of standing up and throwing those angles. So lowering would be totally fine. But in reality, even if we stay the same height on the way down, that would be good. We just can’t stand up too much. Why can’t we stand up too much? Because then our body’s too far from the ball and we have to early throw our right arm and right wrist. Why is that bad? Because we’re going to get inconsistent contact. No shaft lean, no solid contact. So what I want you to do when you’re practicing is split hand grip. Hand down the end of the grip here. Left hand even with the ball. Back to about hip high. Get to the golf ball. You should feel a big right oblique crunch here. Okay. The right shoulder feeling closer to the right hip. Same thing. Back and through. Now, as I’m doing this, I’m doing this as a drill and stopping at impact. But in reality, as I do this, I’d be working through the ball like those players. Once they get through the ball, you’ll see them on the screen. Their right shoulder, right rib cage, hip, and knee are the things pointed down to the ball. That’s what keeps them in their inklation to the ground, not chest down, not chest down. So, I like one or two of those drills. Grab a feel of what that feels like. And then we’re going to hit with that same sensation, feeling like my right side, like what do I feel when I’m doing this? My hips and weight are still forward. I feel a right side oblique crunch. Like my knee is about even with the golf ball and my hip and my shoulder are pointed down towards it. My chest feels like it’s out towards the target. Right, that’s the feel. So, I’m going to get that feel. I’m going to hit one. Right side works down and through. Let’s hit one with that. And there’s a very solid iron shot. Now, when you’re doing this, like I mentioned, the bad version. Okay, the bad version is us standing up, straightening our right arm and wrist. Now, if I’m getting my body actually closer to the ground, even if I’m staying about the same distance, something needs to shorten to make up for that distance. Just like when I got farther, something needed to lengthen to make up for that distance. As I get closer, something needs to shorten. And that’s good. That’s what all good ball strikers do. Since your right shoulder, right hip, and knee are closer to the ball and forward, you’re going to probably need to feel like your right arm and right wrist are more bent as well. From about hip high, hip high through the hitting area. It will of course straighten out past impact, but through the hit, the right arm and right wrist will feel a little bit shorter. That helps shorten the radius. shorten the radius. So, as I’m doing this drill, split hand grip or hockey, and getting down to the ball, I’m feeling a right side crunch. My right arm feels bent. See, my weight’s still forward and hips are still forward over my left leg. My chest certainly feels like it’s out, pointed out here towards the target, not at the ball. And I’m still going to feel like my right arm and right wrist are bent at and past impact. Okay, so same feels. We’ll show those players on the screen. Right side works down and through. right arm and right wrist feel bent. And there’s another one. Very solid high iron shot. Now, in terms of the lowering, if we draw a line on my head here, the thing that’s actually causing the lowering is that right side bend. Notice as my right shoulder gets closer to my right hip, see how my head, let’s draw a line on my head. My head goes down, but also it’s going away from the target. Okay, that right side bend is the piece that actually causes the lowering. Some lower body stuff too, but in terms of upper body, that’s what causes it. Now, as I do that right side bend, notice as I add rotation, that brings my head back on center. So, how I get lower is right shoulder closer to the right hip. As I rotate, brings it back forward. So, it’s that right side down and through. That’s a really good one to use that split hand grip like that to keep compressing the ball and stop standing up. I absolutely love that. We’ll put a card on the screen for a similar style video. If you want a plan like this or drills you can do for your game, check out kornogolf.com. Would love to work with you there. Any questions, always leave a comment. If you click that gray thumbs up button, subscribe if you haven’t. Maybe send this to a friend. That all helps. Appreciate you guys watching. All right, guys. If you’re interested in a winter golf school, we just made the dates live for December, January, and February down in Boca Raton in South Florida. We’re partnering with our good friends at the Don Law Golf Academy. I personally hand selected some of the best coaches in the world to be there along with me to give you a two-day event that I want you to never forget. I want you to have a transformational event for your golf game. I want you to have a blast. I want to hang out and spend some time together. We’re going to work on your game in the morning. We’re going to go play in the afternoon. Plus, you’re going to get access to everything we have on the website. You’re going to get 90 days of coaching afterwards. Really want to give you a plan to ideally cut your handicap in half, right? To really make a difference in your game. I’d love to have you there. We had a great time at Woodstone in September. Have a great time this winter. We’ll put a link in the description down below. Be the first link. Click on that. Check out the details. Send us a message with any questions you have. Look forward to seeing some of you there. If you want to watch more like this, check out this video next.

15 Comments

  1. Watching Eric improved my ball striking specially with the irons. I'm seeing better results and it shows in my score cards. Thank you.

  2. I feel like my problem is that I get my left shoulder too high coming down. My right side is down but the left too high.

  3. I can't even begin to explain how much you've helped my game. December 2024 to October 2025 (145 first game ever to 93 best to date), strictly because of your teachings! Thanks again Eric.

  4. I don’t need to watch a ten minute video for this. Set the ball so the label is opposite you and you can just barely see it when you are done addressing. If you lose sight of it during your swing then you stood up. Practice to that.

  5. Just saw this video and haven’t been able to get to the range yet to practice. Lucky to have room here at home to hit balls out to about 100 yds, so was trying the drill with an 8 iron. After practicing the feel of the right side crunch, I hit some half shots w the 8 iron and the contact was SO damn crisp! Easily hit the ball into my neighbor’s pasture with hardly any effort. 😮😮🏌🏻‍♂️
    Thanks for your continued great content!!! 👍🏻

  6. My biggest problem by far with not being able to fix early extension, turned out to be that I was dipping too much in my backswing, leaving little to no room to go down (hips back) in the downswing. Fixing this by standing taller in the backswing made a WORLD of a difference. Wish I was able to catch that earlier in the year as I wasted so much time doing early extension drills that didn't work.

    & thanks again Eric! The side bend tip about focusing more on the back shoulder rather than chest down is great.

  7. another wonderful video. I noticed that the angle of the shoulder at impact is steeper, some 15 degrees, than on the backswing. Do you have an idea, drill how to achieve this. That would really help me. Thank you Eric.

  8. Great exercise/tip. I definitely stand/straight up at impact so going to try this out. I’m definitely not compressing the ball well/consistently and standing up is certainly a factor in that.

  9. Is this a reason why I hit a lot of shots off the toe as I know I definitely stand up a lot in my downswing.

  10. Can you actually hit the ball with that hand position. Also that looks like it jams on your lower right hip

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