If you're a golfer who has spent some time on the internet lately, it's likely you've seen several ads for the Lag Shot training aid. It is probably one of the most aggressively marketed golf products right now.

If you can’t resist the urge to click, you are treated to a whole bunch of claims and hype on the website; “pure golf shots with precision accuracy,” “add distance to your game,” and “double your greens in regulation” just to name a few. Can the Lag Shot really live up to these claims? I’ve been working with the training aid for several weeks now to find out.

About the Lag Shot

The Lag Shot is a swing training aid with the length, loft, and weight of a standard 7 iron. It can be used both for practice swings and to hit balls with. What differentiates the training aid from a regular club, however, is the bright blue whippy shaft. This shaft certainly flexes much more than any standard golf shaft and is the key to the results that the Lag Shot wants to create. You can call it a "cousin" of the Orange Whip trainer, one of this site's favorite training aids.

With the shaft and the clubhead’s weight, the Lag Shot forces you to create lag in your swing, whether you typically do or not, keeping your hands in front of the clubhead through impact. Additionally, the shaft’s whippiness improves sequencing and tempo, helping the user better feel proper mechanics through the swing.

Here is a video from the company explaining how it's used:

Additionally, with the purchase of the Lag Shot, you get access to their training video site. This site has ten videos from Adam Bazalgette, PGA teaching pro, well-known on YouTube, and his instruction site Scratch Golf Academy. These videos walk through how to best use the Lag Shot, building up from short swings into full shots.

Also, it comes with a stamp of approval from Andrew Rice, and a nationally respected teaching professional (and friend of Practical Golf).

My Experience with the Lag Shot

My initial impression of the Lag Shot out of the box was positive. It seems like a well-constructed club.

Additionally, because it is more-or-less a standard golf club, it’s easy to immediately understand what you need to do with it; just swing it. That brings up the first important point for me, the Lag Shot doesn’t force you into a particular grip, stance, or type of swing. Instead, the training aid is all about creating the right feeling within your own swing.

For me, this is the best type of training aid, as I’m a firm believer that there is no single, ideal swing for everyone. All good golf swings will share some features, though. They’ll have solid sequencing with the upper and lower body, they’ll have a face mostly square relative to the path, and the hands at least level, or in front of the clubhead at impact, which helps "compress" the ball and hit stronger iron shots.

In my testing, the Lag Shot design really helped me get a solid feel for my sequencing and lag, and when used to hit balls, there was no margin for error in squaring the face. The training videos also focused on creating feel over specific swing mechanics, starting with the feet and through the body.

Practice Sessions

Generally, as a practice session with the Lag Shot at the range, I’ll start with a few pitch swings, just feeling the club’s low point and my upper and lower body’s timing. From there, I’ll begin to hit punch shots with it and then full swings.

Once I’ve taken a few full swings with the Lag Shot, I’ll start to rotate my regular 7 iron in, taking a few swings with each while trying to maintain the feel between the two clubs. In all honesty, some days, this has been easy, but it is seemingly impossible on others. Even on these “bad swing” days, however, the Lag Shot does seem to help me get to an acceptable swing, at least, even if it’s not perfect.

Besides using it during practice, I’ve also found the Lag Shot to be a great warm-up club, helping me get a feel for my swing before starting the round.

For best results, users should plan on working through the library of training videos. Adam Bazalgette is a great communicator, and it's not a surprise he has one of the most successful YouTube instructional channels.

Conclusions

To put it right out there, “just 12 swings” with the Lag Shot didn’t have me hitting all pure shots. I haven’t really added distance, and I certainly didn’t double my greens in regulation in recent rounds.

Like almost any training aid, those types of overblown promises are simply hyped, and the Lag Shot is no exception in this regard. No one should purchase one with the expectation of miracles.

That said, the Lag Shot is an excellent training club, one that I can see myself using for a long time to come. Regardless of your skill level, having a strong feel for your swing can help you play your best, and the Lag Shot helps create this feel. The fact that it can do this regardless of your swing’s idiosyncrasies makes it something useful for pretty much everyone. So while they have chosen to promote the product in an "infomercial" style, it does have a lot of substance. I wouldn't put it in the category of other infomercial training aid junk.

Golf will require time and effort to improve, no matter what training aid you use, but I’m confident that a tool like the Lag Shot can help you with your game.

You can purchase the Lag Shot for $119 on their website here.