A power-boosting backswing feel pros use—and a trendy training aid that helps
It's always interesting when you start seeing the same thing make repeat appearances at PGA Tour events. Whether it's a move, a piece of equipment, or in this case, a training aid.
One of those making inroads among golf's elite is the ProSENDR Connection Sphere, which is the latest product in the ProSENDR's suite of training aids, which have been popping up everywhere on PGA Tour driving ranges in recent years (which you can read more about here).
The Connection Sphere is a volleyball-sized object that players place between their arms and keep there as they swing. Golf Digest Top 50 coach Sean Foley, a co-inventor of ProSENDR's products said he's especially excited about the sphere because of how it's shaped specifically to players' arms, and designed to attach to players' forearms.
"I wanted to help create something that was even easier for players to use while creating good arm and wrist structure," he says.
The common mistake
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As Foley says there, he's especially focused on helping golfers improve their structure in their arms and wrists in the backswing.
"What you do with the wrists and arms affects the shoulder, which affects the rest of the body and how you use the ground," Foley says.
Foley says one of the most common mistakes you'll see amateur golfers make on their backswings is getting their arms, specifically their right arm, too close to their body on the backswing. When this happens, their right arm tends to collapse, which costs them power and consistency.
That's why the connection sphere exists: Because keeping the ball firmly between your arms forces you to widen your arm structure, Foley says. If your arms get narrow and collapse, the ball will become detached.
"If you want to increase clubhead speed, pushing your arms away as one and widening that structure creates more elastic recoil [in your body]," he says. "So many amateurs just lift their arms, they don't turn. This forces them to turn their body around them more, and use their body," he explains.
Top tour players can often do this, too, and it's why you see so many players using this training aid on tour. Getting wider with the arms is a key thing that Foley and Byeong Hun An have worked on with the help of the sphere, which has helped An jump from 117th in SG: Off The Tee in 2020 to 17th on the PGA Tour this season.
Getting wider with the arms is something recent PGA Tour winner Jake Knapp has talked about too, as has 2024 PGA Championship winner Xander Schauffele.
As Schauffele explains in our Swing Thought Finder tool (which you can check out for yourself right here), the feeling of stretching his arms wide and back helps create a huge shoulder turn, and more distance because of it.