I'm at Bali National Golf Club. And
this is the 16th hole, a beautiful hall. That you can see the lovely expanse
of sand down the left-hand side, Mark has written into us at Search
4 Scratch Program about his game. Max is 7 handicapper that
wants to get down to 4, and he has a few problems that
he wants to address. Primarily, he feels his golf swing is too high and
he comes down too steeply on the ball. So he has a problem with long
irons. We've got a 4 iron here. There's a problem with long irons and
feels like if he could get a shallow strike, he'd play a lot better. He also wants to shorten his golf swing, but he finds that when he shortens
his swing, he loses power.
So I guess the compromise
is, at this stage, he feels the swing is too high.
The swing is too steep. Mark, what I would say to you, I mean, there was a bit of a list
of things that you've got. But I would say if we look at the core
principle behind what you're doing, if we were to focus on one thing, it sounds to me like what
you want is a shallow strike. That you'd like the golf club to swing
onto the ball on a slightly shallow path. I'm less inclined Mark too, if I
was working with you, one on one, I'm not going to change your golf
swing too much.
You've been playing. You play off 7. So the proof there is that you can
actually play the game and probably the potential to get the
four is there as well. Otherwise you would not ask for that. But the thing you really need to do is find
a way from your high position and long position to get it into
a shallow place. Now, many golfers that have gotten
very successful at the game, Mark, have played from very long
positions in the swing. You can think of guys straight off your
back, like John Daly and guys like that. Very long swings that were
very successful players. And so I think it's less
about how high your swing, even if you're someone who likes
to compare your swing with others. And in this day and age with people
spending a lot of time looking at YouTube and getting caught up in lots
of swing theory and method, the thing to realize is
to own your swing Mark, own your golf swing and love your golf
swing and just find your compensating moves for your swing, that helps you
to play the way you want to play.
So let's just talk a little bit about
how to shallow the golf swing out. So assuming your golf swing
is up here somewhere, Mark. And your arms a long way from your side,
let's say it looks something like this, where you've got a high hand
position elbows up in the air. And from here somehow you get the golf
club to travel too much. This way, coming down. What we say is there's too much out
pressure and down pressure to do that. Meaning that at the top of the swing,
the hands, tend to move towards the ball; outwards towards the ball
and then down. So in effect, what we really want to do Mark, is we want to get the hands from the top
to move away from the golf ball in the opposite direction, which is going to
shallow out the path straight away. Now, something has to happen there. If you're coming down and
your hands move this way. And then this way the club tends to
travel to the left too much and down much.
So what we would like it to do from the
golf swing from the top of the swing is the hands to move a little bit
more away from the golf ball, and then travel this way through the
ball with a slightly different release motion at the bottom. So the golf club is coming down
and the club is releasing this way. In other words, it's
rotating fully like this. What it's not doing is coming through
and being held open like this. And this is really interesting, even though a lot of professional
players today are taught by coaches to keep the club face relatively
square for a long time through the swing. That's a product of a lot of things that
they've been trained to do since they were junior golfers. What I will always say to you is that
the best players have always been able to do one thing, build the right
compensations into their golf swing, to suit their style of swing.
So that's
what I'm encouraging you to do, Mark. So, golf club at the top. We've got to find a way to get the golf
club to come this way so that it can come this way through the ball
because you're right. You know, they're going to strike
your long shots very well. That is your driver or your long irons. If the golf club is coming
down on the wrong path. So I appreciate that that can be a real
problem. Okay. So how do we do that? Well, there are a number of ways, but if I was to swing the golf club up
here somewhere where you have at a high hand position, what I've got to be able to do
is route the club more behind me this way, coming down. So you can't make a change to the
outside of your golf swing, Mark, if you don't make a change to the inside
of your golf swing.
So in your mind, you have to imagine very clearly a
picture of you at the top of your swing. As if I've got Andrew looking at me
right now on the camera. And he's, he's looking at what I'm
doing from this angle. You've got to imagine
yourself from this angle, Mark and this movement
happening in your swing, that the hand path from
the top is moving this way. It's moving gently away and down. And you see the path of
the hands moving this way.
What they're not doing is moving
this way in the golf swing. So first thing is to get that right? The second thing you do is you
practice that. You rehearse that. So, what does that feel like for you to do
that? What does that move feel like? What do you feel your body doing?
Because what you do with the hands, the body will respond to that.
Let's look at it from this angle. We swing back up here somewhere,
when the hands path moves this way, the body's already in a position
to move the way it needs to move.
Brain's very good at organizing
body parts to move as they should. So it is a hand path in my opinion. It's a hand path move that
you've got to focus on. It's not so much about a body move. The body will learn to accommodate
the movement of the hands. Alright, so the golf club is swinging
to the top, hand path, moving this way, golf club itself, you can see
how it's rounding off this. That's just naturally going to
happen. The mass of the club up here, the weight of the club is just
moving towards the ground. So if you move the hands this
way, the shaft will do this. So practicing it swinging
it up, and shelling it. So it's like a little looping
motion there like that. You can see it very slowly loops
this way. So, what you want to do, is you want to get to the driving
range, and this is really important. You want to reduce the
overall tempo of your swing to 50%.
So whatever you think is normal,
half that when you're doing this exercise. And the reason you do that is you have
to be very mindful of the feeling of the hands in the golf swing. And if you go at normal speed by default, the brain will just take over and you'll
go to automatic and you'll never be able to do this. So it would
look like this over the ball. I'll just do it in a very slow tempo.
Just knock one out here for you.
Very slow, really focus
on the feeling. So back, back, back, back, back, back,
slow. And through this way, Top of the swing, feel the hand path move away
from the ball and under , away and under this way
and round like that. Mark, you could…you know that you
had a lot of things going on there, but the core principle is
the key to successful golf. It's narrowing down to the one thing that
you need to do better to get the kind of results you want to get. I wouldn't be changing the height of your
golf swing and how long it is because you've been doing that for a long time.
And I've seen people try
to change those things. And all they do is ruin their game. They get much higher handicaps and they
have a lot more misery in the game. What is better is just to learn the
compatible, move to your golf swing. So focus more on the hand path
and let us know how you go. Like we really appreciate you riding
into Search 4 Scratch Program with your particular challenge and make sure you
drop us a line once you've done a bit of work on this and let us know how you
go.
Mark thanks so much for your time. Best of luck with the game. Well, there it is. We hope
you enjoyed this lesson. Remember to share any questions in the
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