– Today we're gonna be
sharing with you a live lesson with one of our members, James, where we change one thing, that is gonna transform his golf swing. And this is something
that you need to check. Let's get to it. – [James] That did feel
really good to be there. – [Piers] You feel really good, yeah? The best shot's gonna fly five feet. – That is crazy. – Hello and welcome. You have joined us here at
Asprey on the 14th hole. Now, if you are new to the channel, and you wanna improve your game, then make sure you hit
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Five Shots Lower video series in the description. It does exactly what it says on the team, it's gonna make you better. Okay, Piers, we're here with James. One of our members. – How's it going James, you good? – Yeah good, thank you.
– Good, right we're on the
14th fairway at the Asprey, we've got an iron in hand. How can we help you? – I think it's basically just
trying to get more distance on my irons. It feels like that's
something that I've always probably struggled with. Bad shot used to be a slice, but strengthen the grip a little bit, so it's probably a polyphonic
now, but definitely trying to get more distance really. – Okay, well, let's see
what we can do and show me. All right, well, let's just
get you hitting some shots. I've got some video
already that I've done. And let's get some FlightScope numbers. We'll may get some more
video if we need to. And let's just see if
we can see this pattern that you're getting when you are playing. And James is in a match tonight as well. A great ball golf club. I'm not sure what the
result's going to be just yet. We'll figure that out by
the end of this lesson.
Or at least reduce it
and that's exactly right. And that's a pull straight to that bunker. Probably got a little toe is
what I'm guessing on that one. So strike wasn't quite pure. Let's get another one and
then we'll have a look at what we've got on
our FlightScope numbers. And then we'll actually
show James the video. – Oh. – A little bit of a low
cut under the wind there. All right, I'll tell you what, let's have a look at this golf swing here, first of all, then. So look down the line. This is where we really
want to look at things, so we can see as you swing the club back you can see what's happening to the club. There's a lot of rotation
of the club face. So opening the face and the club head is going
well behind your body. So we'd call that swinging
underneath the plane. As you get to the top now there's a couple of things
we want to look to look for. You can see you've got this left wrist.
There's a lot of bend in it. What we call a cup and the
club face is quite open, 'cause normally what we would do is at the top of the backswing,
if you had a square face the leading edge of the golf
club would be matching parallel to that lead forearm. So you can see at this
stage here it is open. It kind of keeps going it tips now, over the top of the plane, is that right? Elbow sticking out behind you. So you can see it's very much
over the top of the play, and the face is a little bit open still.
It probably was more open before, after you made the grip change, you can definitely see how much you've pulled that shot there. And that's the pattern
that we're seeing here. So you kind of got this swing where you swing the club
around your body to start with, opening the face it goes
up and then it comes over. It's kind of the loops inside
and then loops over the top. So I think there's a few
things that we can do here. But the first thing that we have to really do is we need to just
see what would happen if we can change the face
position as you take the club back because me and Andy
will always talk about, look if you see these big
moves in your golf swing that you want to fix, you
have to fix club face first.
And I've got faces open in James's case then we have to fix it. – I think this is
crucial for you guys here just as as we sorta thinking about this, what you will notice is
you'll film your golf swing and you'll see, let's say
this big, maybe over the top. So you immediately go, I
need to fix the over the top. So you try and get it from the inside. But what we're doing now is
we're going to the root cause which is the club face. If we can improve the club face,
everything else can change. So if you ask them that
your swings over the top don't just try and fix the over the top. Look at the club face. And when we, what we go
through with James here, this is massive and going
to help you as well. – So show that again for me. So what we're asking James to do here now so swing back is we want
him to get the feeling of the club face being pointing,
or that goes in the back the club face pointing
more towards the ground.
So that's quite closed. That's exaggerated. And we're going to see
what it would be like if the club was a little bit
more on plain at this stage as opposed to whipping round behind you. Okay, do that again for me. So swing back to my hand. Beautiful, that's really good. And then again, try and get
it more closed on the way back – Sorry. – That's fine. It's all good. – He's got another thing. – That's why I've got a wedding ring. It protects it. So go one more. Don't worry about it. You can go there aggressively
as well, if you want to. All right, good. Just trust me when you get
a few bad shots in a minute you'll be hit me harder. Let's just have a go hitting a shot and just see what happens
as a result of doing that. – Okay. – Okay. I'm going to have some rehearsals. Let's get the ball in there. Go again on that. Beautiful. So one more, then I'm going
to get the video ready.
See how we're doing. Okay, good. Same feeling when you hit the shot. Okay, so beautiful. I mean, that's exactly
what we want to see. This is why it will be a
problem playing tonight because the distance now
I'm sure would have gotten up on that shot. It's gone a long way to the left. Well, I've looked at the
distance numbers in a moment. But that is definitely
more the ball flight that we want to see. We want to see a strong ball flight. We want to see the ball penetrating through the air and going further. Now we may need to sort out
the fact it's gone a little bit to the left, but we can
look at that in a moment. – Yeah, felt like a better strike, anyway. – This is the crucial part of this. What we're looking for
is a change in flight.
Now with somebody like James, who tends to maybe have
a little bit of a pull but his bad shot is predominantly
that's say that slice. We want to see the ball go left here because if we see the golf ball go left, that's going to give the body a green light to really work harder. So hitting the golf ball left
at the moment is a good thing. It's a good sign. – It's just a lightweight thing. – Let's have a look at this one. Let's just look at the club face to see if that's any better. So it's still going around you. It's still obviously opening up but it's not as much as it was before. So it's just going to
take more exaggerating more and more exaggerating, yeah. – Okay, I think it's just
getting into the habit of a little bit of a bit of
a straight I'm so used to try and when I'm trying to fight this lies that's why I was taking it quite wide. So I think it's just
getting into the habit of being a little bit
straighter I think so.
– I think, I think the key is here. That's exactly right. So sometimes if you can, if we think about trying to play a draw or we think about bringing
the club around your body but then you've got to be able to swing it out there to the right. But the part that was
stopping him was the fact that face is open. So I still want that
to be the main thought if we can get it on
playing more to start with. That's fine. There's a drill we can do in a moment that we could maybe work at. But I think let's just get
the club face stronger. – Okay, yeah. – You see Andy as well. He's aiming to the right
to allow for this as well. – Oh yeah. – I live for the pull.
There we go, beautiful. – Such a good strike that is. – So much more penetrating on that one. – That was so much better. – Did you see the height though? So it's gonna higher as a result of you hitting it more solid. 'Cause that's obviously another issue that James is looking at. It's a weird one because
an open face normally makes the golf ball go high. But in James's case because the strike just wasn't solid enough, he just wasn't quite
getting up into the air. So there was no speed there.
So more speed is going to
get the golf ball in the air. – And the general beauty
of this as well, James, is that by doing what
we do in here, James, isn't going to swing the golf
club any faster at the moment but he's going to get more speed because he's presenting
the club in a stronger way. And this is perfect because he hasn't really
got to swing any faster but he's going to get the
benefits of a, of a faster speed.
When we do any of these movements, when we making a change and we'll maybe think
about on this one James. Just do a super slow-mo backswing because what you're going
to do when you go slow when you're trying to learn a new movement you can really start to feel what goes on. Now the fact that James
nearly took Piers' finger off was because that movement was very fast. So if we just go super slow,
even slower than that, James just so you really get a sense. There you go. You get a sense of what's going on. We don't need to rush this
first part of the backswing especially this first
part of the backswing.
We'll have a little bit more understanding and feeling of what
this club face is doing. The crucial parts of the golf swing. – Oh. – Just look at the ball
flight those as well now. And what was the actual ball flight? It was probably a draw ball flight. – Just so much higher
than what it was before. – It's the longest one yet. – That's just because of the speed. – That, that was the
highest ball speed yet. That was 108 mile an hour ball speed. 151 yards carry. That was nice. – I think it's like you say on it so much, it felt easier because it was slower. I wasn't sort of like rushing it. It just felt a lot easier to do. – This part of the backswing
does not need to be fast. So it's like, so you can be
a little bit more deliberate and the more deliberate
you're on this first part the better the movement's going to be.
The gut, the great thing about making a backswing
change in the first part. It's the easiest thing to change because as soon as we get
to the top of the backswing it's very hard to change this downswing. So it's a great thing to work on. Okay, so that takes care of the backswing. We're going to move into
downswings changes now. Now, if this is helpful,
then hit that like and let us know your thoughts
in the comments below. Is this going to help you? – So if we were doing a lesson normally, we probably could easily leave
it with what we've just done. And we'll say, we'll see you next week. And we'll, continue to work at this but we're not going to
do that, are we, Andy? We're going to go for it.
– So to completely mess
him for his game tonight, – But we are going to show him
how, good he can change this. I believe. So playing a draw is probably
something that you've probably felt a long way from. – Never did it. – Never did. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to get this alignment stick here. I'm going to put it on your target line. Now your objective will be at some point, hopefully we can get the golf
ball to start right of this. And bend around it. So think of, you know, David
Beckham playing a free kick, curving it around the wall. So just take your setup
now, if you could please. So almost want you to
just to aim at that stick. Now we know that you're aiming
a little bit right at that but that's okay for this stage.
So what I want you to do now, I want you to swing back
to waist high and stop. 'Cause I didn't crush into the hand. – So smooth that was James. – So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to attach an alignment stick on the heel of the golf club. Yep, just outside the golf ball. We'll show you how to do this afterwards. But what I want you to do is
to have some practice swings first of all, where the club
on the way back goes above that and what you think is going to do on the way down. – Be a little bit steep. – We want it to do that and go under it.
– Okay, yeah. – So we're going to go, we're getting you know how we said before you had a loop
this way and then that way we're actually going to
reverse that loop now. So all those videos of
Matthew Wolf you watch. – Yeah, I was just thinking that. – There we go, that's what we want. And we'll have a look at
the alignments in a moment. The first thing we're going to do is that's just having the practice swing. First of all. No golf ball. – So the biggest thing
we want to change now with James is that we've changed his face. The face is the crucial part. What we're looking to
change now is his path. Now James his path average before was like seven degrees to the left.
We just want to see if
we can get a little bit more neutral now to that, to see it. Maybe even a little bit, right? If you want to play the draw. So that's going to be the focus now. – I think we can get you a
little squared out a bit. – I just put this on it's just
so it's a little bit softer if you do clip it because
you may well clip it. It's fine to do so. Above it, under it. Okay, should we have a go? Yeah so, there is a particular number on flights that I'm really interested in but ultimately we want you
to hit some shots which are near the target.
So have a go hitting one
for me there if you could. That's the end of the video. – I do feel really good to be fair. – You feel really good, yeah? The best shot is gone for like five feet. – That is crazy. – Okay, let's go again. – How much do I owe you? – You don't want to know. (laughs) We are going to square you up as well. We're just going to go the whole log. If you can get your feet running parallel to that alignment stick there. I'm going to give you
a little bit of aiming to the right still.
Your feet don't have to
be totally closed to it. It's actually just go the distance that
you would be normally. So now we can readjust this. You can see that's
where it was originally. This is where we're going to go now. So we are going to move it inside. So again, you're going to be above it but making sure the face is strong.
This is still the priority. It's still the number one thing. And then from there you're
going to loop it underneath. So have a go of that again for me Beautiful. – There you go, that was nice. The interesting part about this is, you'll notice James is doing this practice swing really easy. When there's no ball there, it's easy. The reason it's easy when
there's no ball, though we haven't got to coordinate the face.
You put the ball in the way
and we have to compensate for the face. That's when things go a little bit wrong the practice swing is always different. So this is why the face
is so crucial, guys. – Good. And then, underneath,
without noise, obviously. (laughs) Okay, beautiful. All right same on the shot. Back swing was great. Downswing wasn't quite there. So as Andy said earlier maybe what we could do just to learn. That's still a good shot. Maybe what we could do to just learn this, is just take it a little bit softer. Don't worry about hitting
lots of speed on this.
Maybe just hit this one, a
hundred yards on this next one. – Yeah, okay. – Okay, so you tell me
when you hit that one, did you, what did you feel that you did? On the downswing? – It didn't feel as steep
as what it did before. – Okay, okay. So it's just gonna take some time. 'Cause it was, it was,
it was over the top. So, and this is why we always ask, what does it, sometimes you
need the video feedback to look at that and look back at those shots. And we can see from this one here that it still was steep on the way down. This is just something that's
going to take some time. It's going to involve you and
involve anyone watching this.
Just hit many shots, soft shots. Just really knowing
exactly what is going on by just taking the pace
and the speed out of it. Now going into a match
tonight and doing this wouldn't be the thing to do. Let's just say two more and see what we can get in these next two. Really exaggerate it. I think what we'll do
is in a few weeks time we'll have some more videos of you and see you how close you've got to this.
– Yeah. – That's a good shot. Again that's based purely on
the fact that the face is good. – Didn't quite catch that one. – No, it didn't quite get the contact. The good thing is if I
look at the club face here on the way back, look
how much better that is. Consider where that club was
before it was around your body. It was a lot more open and it was around here
off the screen almost now it's virtually on plain and pretty square, well nearly square.
And then obviously all we need to sort out now is the second part, dancing. Just getting them to see
us coming over the top. That's just because you're applying power. Call that a decapitation move
with chopping your head off. – It's great on that one, the path on that one was 1.8 to the left instead of seven to the left,
which he was at the start. So definitely a change in path there.
I think look, the key thing to this guys is if you want to make a
change on your golf swing and you've seen some funky moves, start with the club face everything tends to work
around the club face. If you fix that, everything
else is so much easier. Hope you enjoyed that guys. Make sure you check out our Five Shots Lower video series for free in the description. And we'll see you soon. We're going to watch James
hit a few more shots now.