Blue Brick Shallowing — Golf Drill

The difference between amateur golfers who struggle with consistency and those who strike it pure often comes down to one critical move: shallowing the club in the downswing. Top Speed Golf's Clay Ballard has revolutionized how golfers approach this fundamental technique through his innovative "blue-brick-shallowing" method. Unlike traditional drills that can be disastrous for recreational players, Ballard's constraint-based learning approach uses physical barriers to provide instant feedback, f

How to practise it

  1. Set up the brick at address position Place the brick just outside your ball position at roughly knee height. The brick should force you to swing under it on the way down.
  2. Practice the pause-and-drop move Pause at the top of your backswing and let the club drop into a flatter plane before swinging. Feel the club head fall behind your hands.
  3. Rehearse weight shift with hands back Shift weight to your left side while keeping your hands back at the top. This prevents getting stuck and promotes the shallow approach.
  4. Hit wedges under the brick constraint Make full swings with a pitching wedge, focusing on swinging under the brick. Any contact with the brick means you're too steep.
  5. Remove brick and maintain the feeling Take away the physical constraint but keep the same shallow feeling. Compare ball flight to your constrained swings.

What is the Blue Brick and how does it help me shallow my downswing?

The Blue Brick is a training aid that provides instant physical feedback to help retrain your swing plane. According to Clay Ballard, it forces your body to make the correct shallowing move by giving you tactile feedback, which is essential for breaking the habit of making steep downswings that you'

I'm a recreational golfer - should I be doing the same drills that tour pros use?

No, many pro drills can actually be disastrous for recreational players. Clay Ballard explains that drills like the Tommy Fleetwood stick drill are great for pros who are already shallow, but recreational golfers are typically too steep to begin with and need different training approaches.

How can I get more consistent contact with my irons?

Use the Blue Brick in the shallowing setting with shorter irons like a 9-iron through lob wedge. Clay Ballard recommends this as the 'ultimate drill' for consistent iron play, as it trains the proper shallow approach angle needed for solid contact.

How each of them teaches it

Coaches who demonstrate the blue brick shallowing drill, each linked at the second they start.

  1. Top Speed Golf - Clay Ballard: Toe-Deep Divots? Your Swing Plane Might Be the Problem 👀 (from 1:27). Swing the golf club underneath an angled shallowing stick attached to a ground alignment board to feel relaxed wrists in transition and lower hands at impact.
  2. Top Speed Golf - Clay Ballard: Shallow without Swinging Harder (from 0:48). Insert an alignment stick into the Blue Brick's driver shallowing slot and make downswings without striking the stick to feel a 45-degree shallow tour-quality path.
  3. Top Speed Golf - Clay Ballard: Stop Getting Stuck - Play Fade From the Inside (from 1:36). Set up an alignment stick in the Blue Brick training aid to shallow the driver early in the downswing, then feel the butt end of the club pull up into you to kick the clubhead back out in front through impact.
  4. Top Speed Golf - Clay Ballard: Why shallowing adds distance (from 4:44). Insert an alignment stick into the brick's plane slot and make practice swings matching your club shaft angle to the stick to automatically shallow the club and feel momentum release.
  5. Top Speed Golf - Clay Ballard: Stop Throwing The Club Early (from 0:45). Using the Blue Brick training aid, place an alignment stick at a 45-degree angle to force the club to shallow on the downswing without hitting the stick.
  6. Top Speed Golf - Clay Ballard: Brick - Get Better at Golf (from 0:11). Using the Blue Brick training aid and an alignment stick to create a physical barrier that forces the golfer to shallow the club and avoid an over-the-top swing path.
  7. Top Speed Golf - Clay Ballard: David Duval “Cover The Ball” (from 1:18). Uses an alignment aid to ensure the club shaft drops onto a shallower plane early in the downswing before rotating through.
  8. Top Speed Golf - Clay Ballard: Tommy Fleetwood Drill Disastrous For Recreational Players (from 0:22). An alignment stick drill designed to force the club to travel on a shallower path by swinging under a stick placed outside the ball.

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