Ricky Castillo’s Elite Iron Play: His Consistent Hand Thrust

 Ricky Castillo offers a different lesson — how hand structure early in the swing leads to consistent delivery through impact. 

 One metric that highlights this is hand thrust, which measures how the hands move toward or away from the body during the swing. 

 In the takeaway (P1 → P2), large changes in hand thrust often indicate the hands are moving too far inside or outside, which can create compensations later. 

 Ricky keeps this first move extremely simple.His hands move back with minimal deviation, creating a stable structure early in the swing.  

 Hand Thrust: The forward/backward position of your hands. It is set to 0 at address. It is negative when your hands are moved backward, away from the ball.  

 What’s interesting is how that structure carries into the downswing: 

From P6 → P7 (impact), Ricky’s hands actually move slightly outward, finishing further outside than they were at address.

This shows that great ball strikers aren’t simply “dropping the club inside.”

Instead, they organize the hands and club in space, allowing the shaft and clubhead to deliver efficiently into the strike.

The result:

• A simple, repeatable takeaway
• Clean spatial organization of the club
• Consistent iron delivery into impact