The Impact Strap is part of Tour Striker’s family of swing aids, along with their Smart Ball and famous Tour Striker Iron. I’ve tested out the Impact Strap over a few weeks and put this article together to help you decide if it is right for you. The Impact Strap promises to help you:
- Create & maintain lag
- Increase swing speed
- Elevate power
- Gain more distance
How does the Impact Strap work?
The Tour Striker Impact Strap attaches to the base of your grip and wraps around your wrist, constraining the degrees of freedom between your arm and the club. This prevents too much ulnar deviation, known as un-cocking or casting of the golf club.
The result is that you have to find new ways to hit the golf ball that doesn’t require this wrist movement. The Impact Strap comes with a series of instructional videos to help guide you from first movements to full swing.
Testing and review
Unboxing and setting up the Impact Strap
Setting up your Impact Strap is a little complicated, thankfully Tour Striker provides a great video to help (see below). It will take 5 minutes to set up and another 5 minutes of fiddling to get this correctly positioned on your club and arm the first time you try.
Once in place, the Impact Strap creates a new link between your club and forearm. The exact angle can be adjusted by lengthening or shortening the main strap. Tour Strike provides some guidance on this, but it will take a little trial and error on your part. This needs to be combined with how low down or high up you want to place your hands on the grip.
Hitting shots
The Impact Strap instructional videos provide a nice progressive approach from one-handed mini swings to hitting fuller shots. The videos are a little slow in their progression, but I would highly advise following their advice of working your way up to a fuller swing.
I don’t have too much un-cocking in my golf swing, but I certainly felt the force of the Impact Strap constraining my movement as I hit fuller golf shots. I’d describe the first few shots with the Impact Strap as uncomfortable, but not painful. However, I’d much prefer this discomfort over something that isn’t effective.
How the Tour Striker Impact Strap changes your golf swing
With your movement now constrained, you’ll need to find a new way to move the club through impact and into your follow-through if you do normally cast the club.
As Martin discusses in the video below, the Impact Strap pushes you to use forearm rotation (pronation-supination) to move the club through impact (jump to 3:30 in the video to learn more).
This movement will help square up the clubface and help generate additional clubhead speed if it is something you do not currently do in your golf swing.
Does it work?
Yes, I’m quite confident that the Impact Strap will help most golfers learn a better way to release the golf club. And this improved release will have a positive impact on your golfing performance as long as you meet the caveats below.
You’ll quickly hit shots that feel different, but it will take a few practice sessions before you get to the point where this move is natural and can be performed with all clubs in your bag.
What should you check before buying the Tour Striker Impact Strap
Many golfers who struggle with casting the club and/or an early release have a weak golf grip. You will also struggle to stick to a good release if you have a poor posture at setup. So please do check your fundamentals before buying one.
Does the Impact Strap meet its aims?
The Impact Strap promises to:
- Create & maintain lag
- Increase swing speed
- Elevate power
- Gain more distance
When we break this down there are only two underlying claims:
- Increased lag (swing mechanics)
- Increase club head velocity (outcome)
For most golfers, it will help them learn to create a better release, with more lag. And for most golfers, this newer feeling of forearm rotation will likely deliver the club with more velocity over time and with practice.
Summing up the Tour Striker Impact Strap
For golfers who struggle to release the golf club correctly, the Impact Strap provides a very specific but useful training aid.
Please do check your grip and posture are in good order before buying. It is also worth noting, that to consistently release the club well you will have to develop good body rotation back and through. For other training aids focus on wrist actions check out the Swingyde golf swing trainer.
The Impact Strap is a little fiddly to set up and use, but it is a great option for golfers looking to learn a better release and who are willing to put in a little bit of weekly practice down the golf range.
