– Well today's subject's a good one, golf swing made simple,
how can we do that? I'm Adam Bazalgette, Two-Time PGA Teacher of the Year
award winner, founder of Scratch Golf Academy right
here in Naples Florida. I wanna give you some
thoughts that I think'll really help you. (vigorous electronic music) Okay, so the golf swing made simple. Well, I'm gonna show you
two factors, straight hit and solid hit, and I'm gonna
give you drills for each that I think you'll find
really really simple.
These might be great
playing thoughts for you out on the golf course.
These will, I hope, will really make this thing a lot more simple. If you like the video, please subscribe to the
channel, we've got a lot of free content there, more
coming your way we hope, and of course ScratchGolfAcademy.com
is my home website, have full courses in
every aspect of the game, and a full course on the
full swing that includes an entire course on
iron, so you might want to check that out.
Okay, let's get started. Okay, so as we look at how
to make a golf swing simple, one of the two things
really rounding off that you have to do to be a good
golfer, you have to hit the ball solidly certainly,
you have to create some distance out there, and
of course the other thing you have to control your
direction reasonably well. So, we're gonna look at
the first of the two keys, we're gonna give you one simple key to try to make this swing
simple in each category.
Let's first look a
little bit at direction. Let's assume, for this video, and this segment of the video
that you have a decent grip and a decent set-up, we're
not gonna get exhaustively into every element,
that's important for sure. One of the keys to hitting
the ball fairly straight, maybe the biggest key, is
getting on a decent plane with the golf club. If your
plane matches the design of the club well, it doesn't
come this way or that way, you're gonna hit the
ball reasonably straight. Now certainly you've
got to hit it solidly, certainly you have to have
some club face control at the bottom, that's very very important, but I find that most people, if they have a decent grip on the club, and they're on a decent swing plane, with a
little bit of practice they get pretty good at
directional control in terms of those other variables. So let's have a look, what's a simple key, and I'm gonna go to one of the simplest. Listen, swing plane, people
make this out to be like, super complicated and a
life's work to get it right.
It is not that difficult.
One of my mentors, Fred Shoemaker out in California has this wonderful drill he teaches people that I think is just a
winner, and I want to share it with you here,
and that is what he calls "Mapping out the right hand". Now, for the right-handed golfer, that's my trailing hand, and you could kind of correspond if
you're a left-handed guy playing right-handed, you
could kind of figure out how to make this work for you as well, but here's what we mean. Fred contends, and I've seen this, this holds true for people,
that if you give someone a decent pivot, and you can do that without the golf ball,
get a golf ball if you can, or if you don't have one at the house, just pretend you have one in your hand.
Get a good pivot, and
then say to yourself, look, if I had to toss this golf ball from underneath my body out there, like I'm skipping a rock,
much like a golf club if I had to do that, once I make my pivot where would I put my right hand? Very instinctive for
most people to do that and not at all difficult, and here's how you get it to where you can use it for your golf. Make your pivot, find that spot, find that spot you think is perfect for throwing the ball there, and then what you do is you reach back with your lead hand, now, for most people they're not gonna be flexible enough to quite get where they'll
place their right hand, so what we do is I'm gonna bring that right hand in a little bit, and that becomes my spot,
that's the one I wanna map out.
And believe me, it is easy to
do. The brain works so well with these little mapping positions, it works much better doing stuff like that than a formula of 'turn and do this', and all that jazz here. So try this, pivot, get your hand in the spot, reach, that becomes your spot. Now after a little
while what you wanna try to do is once you familiarized yourself with it, is blend the two, the pivot and the toss, where you can reach. So you start to map that spot right there, where you say 'Hey, for my body I can reach my left hand there, that's a good throwing spot'
and just put it in there until you're comfortable with it.
And again, it just isn't
that difficult to do, and it's very brain
friendly. Now, hey listen, this may not make you Justin Rose, or put you on the PGA
Tour, but believe me, it will get you in the
neighborhood of good playing. Gary Player, one of my personal favorites, possibly yours as well, used to talk about or I've heard him talk about this, he had a key of taking the car, which was his right hand, and putting it in the garage at the top, he
just felt that slot there, and that was his back-swing key.
So let's have a quick go at that, then we'll look at solid
contact from the other angle. So, here we go, I'm gonna get set up. Now, I like to choke
all the way sometimes, and practice this with my right hand only. There's my spot, there it is. Yep, I can kinda feel that spot now. One other little thing here
that you might find interesting, the brain is wired such that when you do something instinctive
and simple like that, you will never see
someone when they do this, roll the club or do something
unnecessary like that, it will always have a look of efficiency.
It goes right into that spot, and of course that's something we want. So let me get set up here,
I've had a good feel for it. Find my spot. (golf club smacks) That's a pretty decent shot there. Felt about the same at the top, nice and simple too, easy
to do on the golf course. Let's have a look from in front. Okay, let's talk about solid hit then, and we'll discuss solid hit
when the ball's on the ground, no tee underneath it, that's what gives people the most problems.
There's two things you have to do, round numbers, to get a pretty solid hit. And you have to understand,
these are very very simple, and that is, where you
are at address, at impact, both your hips and the
handle of the club shaft have to be more forward at
impact than they were at address. Super simple, let me show you a couple of very quick examples,
then we'll come out and I'll show you a couple of drills as to how you can do this. So there's my boyhood idol, Jack Nicklaus, let's have a look at his hips there as he takes his address,
let's put a little line on his club shaft, and he was always one to forward press his club by the way, but if you look at impact,
bam. Quite a lot more forward, both the hips and the hands forward, head, as you see, pretty still. Let's have a look at another
great player in action here, Adam Scott, there's the lines for him.
Again, impact, everything's forward, and of course that allows
him to hit the ball before he hits the ground. Any time the handle of the shaft's forward like that as you hit the ball you're gonna tend to hit
the ground more up here, and all this movement, all this thrust, produces a lot of pressure
in the shaft against the golf ball, gives you good distance. Alright, let's have a
look at how you can do it. Alright, simple way to work on that and I'll give you a couple of mental pitfalls I see a lot as well. Just put a little shaft, one of these alignment rods in this case, and just lean it up
slightly over the golf ball, anything'll do like that, and
that becomes your reference. And I've got a short
iron, this is an eight, and we're gonna start with small swings, and all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna feel, keeping my head pretty still, that I can drift past
the ball with my hips, and I can get the handle past
the ball before I hit it.
It is not at all difficult. What tends to get people in trouble, I promise you I've watched this so much in my teaching career, is the attempt to hit at the ball and to try to make solid contact, and especially to think
too much of club head. So here's two keys for
you, don't think club head, think club shaft, that's always
what you should be doing. Believe me, move the club shaft well, and you'll have some success with this, hit at the ball with the club head, you won't have success with this. The other key I think is
really helpful for people is it's your goal at
the golf as the golfer not to hit the ball, but
rather to apply pressure to the ball, that's what
you're really trying to do. You're trying to take that club face and put pressure on the ball
so it compresses and goes. So if you think club shaft, and you think pressure,
this is a lot easier. As I generally say in these videos, critical ingredient is
relax, relax your mind, be a little bit playful,
don't prioritize results straight away, and believe me,
if you can't get the handle and your hips a little
bit past that shaft, you're too mentally stuck there.
So let's try a couple of
little shots, small scale. (golf club smacks) There we go, you can see the bottom of the swing well past the shaft there. That was just a fraction
off the bottom of the face, I'm not worried about that. My goal is to apply pressure
and to feel the shaft moving. Address. (golf club smacks) And again, nice pressure on the club, and just build it up to
bigger and bigger swings, then dial it down to smaller swings if you need to go back to it, it really couldn't be any easier. So if you can get the car in the garage, as Gary Player would
say, and you can start to get the feeling for how to
apply pressure to the ball, move a little bit past
the ball with your hips and your handle, your golf
swing's gonna function, it's gonna be simple.
So I hope that helps you
with golf swing made simple, how can you get simple keys
and play with some freedom? If you like the video, please
subscribe to the channel, we have a lot of free content already, ScratchGolfAcademy.com is my home website, and we have full courses in
every aspect of the game, and within the full swing category there's a full course on irons,
hope you'll check that out. Thanks again for your
interest in the videos, hope this helps you play better golf. (mouse click) (mouse click).