The L-to-L Drill and What It Teaches About Hinge Timing
A staple of golf instruction for decades, the L-to-L drill is really a hinge formation and release exercise in disguise. Here's what it's actually training.
The L-to-L drill has a golfer make a short backswing to about hip or waist height, forming an "L" shape between the lead arm and the club, then swinging through to a mirrored "L" on the follow-through side. It's usually taught as a tempo or contact drill. Watched through a hinge sensor, it's really teaching something more specific: how to form the hinge quickly within a short backswing and release it on a repeatable schedule.
Why the Short Swing Length Matters
Because the backswing is short, there isn't time for a slow, gradual hinge formation the way a full swing allows. The drill essentially forces a compressed formation window, which is useful training for any golfer, but especially useful for identifying whether a late-set golfer's formation timing holds up when the swing gets shorter — a very close parallel to a wedge or pitch shot around the green.
What We Watch For on the Sensor Graph
During an L-to-L drill on the sensor rig, we're specifically watching two things: whether the hinge angle at the "L" position on the backswing side matches session to session, and whether the release into the follow-through "L" happens at a consistent point relative to impact. A golfer whose backswing "L" angle varies by 15 or 20 degrees swing to swing is showing exactly the kind of inconsistency that shows up as scattered short-game contact on the course.
The drill isn't really about tempo. It's a compressed-window test of whether your hinge formation and release timing hold up when there's no room left to fix them mid-swing.
Where This Connects to Fitting
If a golfer's L-to-L numbers are inconsistent, we often find the same inconsistency showing up on full-swing wedge shots, since both rely on the same short-window formation skill. In those cases, a grip texture change that gives clearer feedback on hinge position — rather than a shaft change — is frequently the first thing we test, since the issue is often feel and feedback, not equipment resistance.
The Takeaway
Next time an instructor has you run through L-to-L reps, it's worth thinking of it less as a tempo drill and more as a stress test for how well your hinge formation and release hold up under a shortened timeline — the exact skill a good wedge fitting is built around.
Test Your Short-Window Consistency
Wedge fittings include partial-swing hinge testing that mirrors an L-to-L pattern.