Former tour pro and owner of training aid company DST Golf Bertie Cordle has made quite the splash on Be Better Golf recently.
Bertie maintains that for a golfer to be able to control the face through impact (and thus the ball) the club must be in a state he calls LAG TENSION at impact.
Personally I don't like the term Lag Tension because I think it is too easily confused with LAG. Someone can have a TON of lag in the downswing by retain NONE of it and by impact have ZERO LAG TENSION. One of the early videos on Be Better Golf was titled "Lag is Irrelevant". If you have zero or less than zero lag tension at impact then whatever lag you had earlier in your downswing is indeed completely irrelevant. I know because that was exactly my swing when I started Be Better Golf. If you can think of a better tern email me, I'm wracking my brain. Some be better golfers have had good ideas. Kinetic Tension, Work Line, Degrees of Work, sustained pressure. We can do better!
However, Terms aside, after talking to Bertie for hours via Facetime and then having him fly out from England and spending 3 days with him talking about this specific issue I am 100 percent convinced he is correct.
Bertie has recorded literally THOUSANDS of golfers with a high speed GLOBAL SHUTTER camera and maintains that he can't accurately predict a golfers handicap just by seeing a face on image of them at impact. 96 percent of golfers HAVE LESS THAN ZERO lag tension at impact. If you care about your score, golf is hell with negative lag tension. If you just care about the walk, have unlimited balls to lose and like seeing interesting new parts of the golf course you don't need it.
After an extensive years long study of the swings of golfers of every skill level the metric he has found for best showing lag tension is by drawing a line from the lead elbow through the center of the lead wrist and continuing it through to the ground. If the line is past the ball at impact the golfer has lag tension, if it is at the ball the golfer has zero lag tension, if the line is to the trail side of the ball you have negative lag tension, (images below) this is where 96 percent of golfers reside. NOTE: Camera position for this is CRUCIAL, place the camera face to to the golfer, exactly 90 degrees to the target and place the camera halfway between the ball and lead foot.
Bertie maintains that for a golfer to be able to control the face through impact (and thus the ball) the club must be in a state he calls LAG TENSION at impact.
Personally I don't like the term Lag Tension because I think it is too easily confused with LAG. Someone can have a TON of lag in the downswing by retain NONE of it and by impact have ZERO LAG TENSION. One of the early videos on Be Better Golf was titled "Lag is Irrelevant". If you have zero or less than zero lag tension at impact then whatever lag you had earlier in your downswing is indeed completely irrelevant. I know because that was exactly my swing when I started Be Better Golf. If you can think of a better tern email me, I'm wracking my brain. Some be better golfers have had good ideas. Kinetic Tension, Work Line, Degrees of Work, sustained pressure. We can do better!
However, Terms aside, after talking to Bertie for hours via Facetime and then having him fly out from England and spending 3 days with him talking about this specific issue I am 100 percent convinced he is correct.
Bertie has recorded literally THOUSANDS of golfers with a high speed GLOBAL SHUTTER camera and maintains that he can't accurately predict a golfers handicap just by seeing a face on image of them at impact. 96 percent of golfers HAVE LESS THAN ZERO lag tension at impact. If you care about your score, golf is hell with negative lag tension. If you just care about the walk, have unlimited balls to lose and like seeing interesting new parts of the golf course you don't need it.
After an extensive years long study of the swings of golfers of every skill level the metric he has found for best showing lag tension is by drawing a line from the lead elbow through the center of the lead wrist and continuing it through to the ground. If the line is past the ball at impact the golfer has lag tension, if it is at the ball the golfer has zero lag tension, if the line is to the trail side of the ball you have negative lag tension, (images below) this is where 96 percent of golfers reside. NOTE: Camera position for this is CRUCIAL, place the camera face to to the golfer, exactly 90 degrees to the target and place the camera halfway between the ball and lead foot.
 NEGATIVE L.T. "Welcome to hell" |  ZERO L.T."In the casino" |  L.T. AT IMPACTWhere actual golf can be played. The best players in the world live here. |
Any confusion about Lag tension will be cleared up with this video showing was the overwhelming majority of golfers are doing. (Apologies to Cindy) Zip to the end to see some golfers who do retain lag tension through impact,. Those men happen to be famous golfers that have won literally millions of dollars playing a fun game we all pay to play. THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE.
YOU DON'T NEED AN OUTRAGEOUS AMOUNT OF L.T. BUT YOU WANT MORE THAN ZERO!
Bertie says it's not about how much you have but you must have some. 96 percent of amateur have less than zero.
1 ENG Justin Rose 2-3 inches of POSITIVE LT
2 USA Brooks Koepka a TON
3 USA Dustin Johnson . a TON
4 USA Justin Thomas a lot
5 USA Bryson DeChambeau retains it beautifully, not a lot but there.
6 USA Xander Schauffer good amount with driver less with irons but still there
7 ESP Jon Rahm the most in the world
8 NIR Rory McIlroy A lot
9 ITA Francesco Molinari 1-2 inches it looks like to me definitely the least on the list but still there. More with irons. 10 10 9 USA Tony Finau A TON
Also it should be noted that 21 of the Top 27 players on the world used DST clubs (Bertie's inventions)
Because it is more important to some LAG TENSION rather than how much, it is even more illuminating is to look at the STATS of the bottom 5 of the PGA tour from 2018 (or any full year of record keeping) in Driving Accuracy (good measure of face control) and Smash Factor (measure of quality of strike) on tour and compare them to still face on images of them on camera. They are obviously great golfers to even make it on tour but their Lag Tension at impact is dramatically different to the list above.
1 ENG Justin Rose 2-3 inches of POSITIVE LT
2 USA Brooks Koepka a TON
3 USA Dustin Johnson . a TON
4 USA Justin Thomas a lot
5 USA Bryson DeChambeau retains it beautifully, not a lot but there.
6 USA Xander Schauffer good amount with driver less with irons but still there
7 ESP Jon Rahm the most in the world
8 NIR Rory McIlroy A lot
9 ITA Francesco Molinari 1-2 inches it looks like to me definitely the least on the list but still there. More with irons. 10 10 9 USA Tony Finau A TON
Also it should be noted that 21 of the Top 27 players on the world used DST clubs (Bertie's inventions)
Because it is more important to some LAG TENSION rather than how much, it is even more illuminating is to look at the STATS of the bottom 5 of the PGA tour from 2018 (or any full year of record keeping) in Driving Accuracy (good measure of face control) and Smash Factor (measure of quality of strike) on tour and compare them to still face on images of them on camera. They are obviously great golfers to even make it on tour but their Lag Tension at impact is dramatically different to the list above.
An anonymous golfer on the PGA tour with zero Lag Tension.
Mainly there seem to be a population of golfers (including some very famous TOUR coaches) that hate "position chasing" or claim it is a fools errand to try to freeze at a static position. We'll get more into how to create lag tension in the future but it isn't from holding or freezing anything. Maybe that feeling might work for some people but certainly not me. The key is to find the things that get you great impact then learn from those feels. If you try a bunch of feel and hope that it shows up in improved impact you're probably going to be frustrated and just give up on improving this part of your game. Impact can be dramatically improved. Tool's like Bertie's DST clubs can help. There is also a very powerful mental paradox to overcome that is nearly impossible for adult learners of golf to break if they don't know what the real challenge is. It is simple but takes a little explaining.
So to me it's obvious, having Lag tension is good, it helps you control the ball and hit it with a higher smash factor. Having less than zero is bad, you'll never be able to routinely predict where the ball will go, course strategy or mental game work becomes totally useless.
Anything you can do to IMPROVE your impact has got to be good. Not sure why that would be controversial but then again this is golf and lots of people are passionate.
Anything you can do to IMPROVE your impact has got to be good. Not sure why that would be controversial but then again this is golf and lots of people are passionate.
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