- Hello, and welcome to how to play golf, the long game.
Thank you so much for taking part.
We're really excited to be able to coach you
over the next four weeks.
Now, if you've come from
how to play golf, the basics, welcome.
This is the next step in your how to play journey.
- Yeah, so over the next four weeks,
we're gonna be fixing that ball flight,
showing you how to hit the golf ball
out the center of the club.
Plus we're working with the longer clubs as well.
The hybrid, the fairway metal,
and the driver, the big stick.
So thank you so much, and lets get started.
(upbeat music)
- In golf there are lots of words
that don't often make sense.
So today, we're gonna be talking about
the square, open, and closed club face
relative to the cub head.
So Andy, what is a square club head?
- Well, square club head is basically
when the club face is pointing at the target.
We're talking about set up and impact here
when the club strikes the golf ball.
So really, this is what we want.
We wanna get the club face pointing
somewhere close to where the target is.
Now if you're a right-handed golfer,
an open club face is when the club face
will point to the right.
This is probably a common thing
that we don't necessarily want to see
because we get that ball sort of curving out to the right.
And a closed club face is very simple,
it's the opposite of that.
It's where it points to the left.
So that really helps you understand
what that means when we're talking about the club face,
cause we're gonna be discussing this
as we go through the weeks.
So that's as simple as it is.
Let's get into this weeks practice.
(upbeat music)
- It's now time to get into your practice,
and what better place to do it on the 9th Fairway
here at La Reserva at Sotogrande.
Beautiful hole Andy coming up,
looking forward to you playing your shot.
So, if you've done how to play the basics
or you've got some experience in golf,
and you've been building your swing,
that's fantastic,
but what's starting to probably happen to you now is
you're starting to get the golf ball going right or left,
and it could be a consistent bad shot.
So what we're gonna be doing in this practice segment
is working really hard to show you
how to get rid of that shot,
and also understanding what may be causing it.
So there's two main things that we need to look for.
The club path and the club face.
Now, the club face is the most important one
so that's the one that we're gonna focus on today.
So Andy,
if you've got a golf ball
which is going to the right and to the left
- Yeah
- We know we gotta look at the grip haven't we?
So let's go with a right-handed golfer.
If the ball is going to the right,
how could the grip be influencing this?
- Yeah.
You know, no matter what level you are,
I think we have to look at the hands as well Piers.
- Have to.
- Because, it's just so influential
on what this club face is doing,
so don't really bypass the grip,
it's a great place to actually just come back to.
So, if we're hitting it to the right,
and we're a right-handed golfer,
we often see that the hands are too far around to the left.
We call this a weak grip.
So if I just exaggerate this,
I'm gonna get the lead hand
a little round to the left like this.
I can't see any knuckles on the back of that hand.
I'm gonna get my trow hand a little too far around
to the left where the v between the thumb and forefinger
point to my left shoulder.
This is a weak grip.
Now, what happens here now,
as I swing back and down,
the club face will want to return to the right,
open, and we know
that open club face wants to get the golf ball
starting out to the right.
So, we'll start to see these as we play golf,
and then we'll have to make compensations
- Of course.
- in the golf swing which we don't want to do either.
So, if we can really build a very neutral grip,
or very consistent grip,
[Piers] Yes.
- It makes us, it makes it so much easier
to produce an efficient swing
with as little compensations as possible.
- And this is really really important,
Andy is saying here that
if you don't get the grip correct,
you make compensations,
so we're definitely gonna stress that
start with the grip so that these compensations
don't come into your swing.
So, I'm gonna ask you to hit a shot with this weak grip.
- Okay.
- I'm probably not safe here am I?
- You're definitely not safe there.
- So I'm gonna come over here.
This ball is definitely going to the right.
- Okay, so, both hands around too far to the left.
I'll do a normal golf swing here.
You'll just see where this ball starts off.
- (Laughs)
- And that was no difference
in terms of what I was doing there, but the grip,
and so many, is very short as well
because the club face is open
it adds loft and it's really weak, which we don't want.
- So that's you trying,
you're just doing a normal shot there
- Normal.
- with just a very poor grip.
- Exactly.
- Wow, okay.
- So let's look at the person hitting the golf ball left,
for a right-handed golfer.
So, this is a really common one as well.
We get the hands too far around to the right.
So, you can see now here,
I can see the whole of the back of the hand here,
all of the knuckles.
I can see the logo on the glove is facing the camera.
The right hand often gets too much
underneath the club like this.
This is what we call a strong grip,
and this is gonna have the opposite effect
of what we've just seen.
As I swing back and down now,
the club face will want to return and point to the left,
in a closed position.
The ball is gonna start out left,
and I'll probably be hunting for the golf ball
in the trees down there,
- (Laughs)
- which we don't want obviously.
- Hit one here, let's see it go again.
- I might lose this golf ball Piers?
- Again, really important,
this is the grip that we often see people start with.
They get a little bit too much round to the right.
- Okay, so I'm really,
as you can see I'm getting those hands
really around to the right there, normal golf swing.
And you can see that ball starting left,
and I'm definitely gonna be hunting for that Piers,
in the trees.
- But if you two,
if you were two people,
hitting ball right and left like that,
I wouldn't want to be playing golf with ya.
We'll have a quiet time, that's for sure.
Okay, so, what do we,
what do we need then
to actually get these, get the grip correct?
- Well let's go through
just building the neutral grip again.
Let's just recap from what we want
in terms of the position of the club in the hands.
So first of all,
let's build it with the, with the lead hand.
So if I take my club,
and bring it up to sort of club hand
about eye height like that.
Now I'm gonna position the lead hand
just to the side of the club like this,
and I'm gonna place the grip diagonally
across the base of the little finger,
across the heel pad, diagonally through the bottom part
of that forefinger there.
So, if I just make sure I'm in a good place there,
and then close my hand,
I now have a neutral grip.
Now, when I'm looking down at this now,
I can see two to maybe three knuckles.
The thumb is slightly down the right hand side of the club.
So I've got a great left hand there.
Now, if I put the right hand down on the side,
keeping the club angled like this,
I'm gonna place it across the base of the fingers
again here, close it around,
and then just slide it up so that they touch each other.
Now the thumb and the forefinger form that v
and that is now pointing to the right of my chin.
So I've got a really neutral grip there,
and this now will really help me deliver
a square club face back to the golf ball.
It really minimizes those chances
of me doing some very funky moves to get back to square.
- It makes absolute sense.
- So building that grip is key.
- Okay, should we see you hit one of those then?
[Andy] Yeah, let's see if I can help it.
I've gotta hit one straight haven't I?
- You, well,
anywhere in between them will
classify as a straight shot, I think.
- Okay, so I can see two knuckles still there.
I know that v is pointing somewhere
to the right of my chin.
So, normal golfing again.
- And that was pretty much as you said,
right between the knife.
- Again, look at, look at the distance,
distance on that Piers.
So much further as well compared to the two.
- It was actually a lot better wasn't it?
[Andy] It was.
- He was a lot better.
Okay, so look those grips are really important.
Now, this is something you may be asking.
Well, we're still talking about the baseball grip.
There are some options on how you can
intertwine the hands and the fingers.
So Andy, there's a couple of simple options,
what are those?
- Okay, well the first one,
let's talk about the interlock.
This is probably the,
the first thing that most people get told
that they need to do.
You need to join the fingers together like this.
- Well Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus
do this one, so it makes sense.
- Exactly, yes.
So, the interlock is when the little finger
on the trow hand just sort of interlocks
with the forefinger on the
lead hand like that.
So we just lock the fingers together.
Now we don't want to go too deep in like this,
cause that can cause some poor things,
but we just want to join them together lightly like that.
Making sure that the hands stay in the very similar place.
We don't wanna lose the positioning,
this is really important.
- Again, really important as Andy was saying before.
Bring the hand in from the side as you said,
we don't wanna be coming underneath like that.
- Yeah.
- That's gonna be really bad for you, and cause a bad grip.
Exactly, now let's go to the overlap.
This is something that I actually use.
So there's the baseball.
The overlap is just literally overlapping
the little finger on the glove hand like that.
So you can see there,
I'm just sort of lightly resting on the knuckle.
This is something that I feel comfortable with.
What we would say is,
there's nothing wrong with the baseball,
there's nothing wrong with any of these,
just do what feels comfortable,
but most importantly, do what gives you the results.
[Piers] Yes.
- If you're having a go with a few of these,
and one feels more comfortable than the other,
stick with the one that feels comfortable to you,
and actually works.
That's the important thing.
- Okay, okay, absolutely.
Alright, so look,
we've spoke about obviously how the grip
influences the club face.
How about the first part of the back swing?
We call that the moveaway.
How can that influence right and left shots?
- Well, it's a,
it's so important that we get off to a good start
in the swing,
because if we get off to a poor start
with the club face moving all over the place,
again we have to make some adjustments and compensations.
So, if we can just get it starting in the right way,
again, it's gonna make things so much easier for you.
So, let's, let's talk about the right shot Pierce yeah?
To start with.
- Yes.
- So in the moveaway,
somebody who hits it a little bit too much to the right,
we want you to check this.
So as I swing back now
to what we call waist height position,
if the club face is sort of
pointing too much towards the sky,
this leading edge too much up,
this can cause the ball to go to the right.
It might even be more than that.
This is what we call open.
Now, if you're hitting the golf ball to the left,
we often see that the leading edge,
or the club face, is pointing down towards the ground now.
This is closed.
So, these sort of positions,
these excessive movements of the club face
can influence the impact.
Now, in an ideal position, ideal point,
we want the club face
to be parallel to the spine angle like so.
So if the club face is parallel to the spine angle here,
we are off to a good start,
and it means we're not gonna have to make
those little adjustments to get it back on track.
- Yeah, the thing is, this is really important,
we're not actually trying to say
that there's only one way to swing.
It's important for you to develop your own swing,
but we want to make sure there's a few key positions,
that if you can put it in that area,
you're definitely going to be a lot better off.
And the one thing that I will say going into this Andy is,
that the grip massively influences
[Andy] It does.
the moveaway as well doesn't it?
[Andy] It does.
[Piers] If you've got a hooking grip,
you're probably gonna be in a hooking place
when it comes to the moveaway.
[Andy] And the way that I like to practice this,
is I'm just taking my set up
and you can do this at the range as well.
You can either video yourself, use a mirror,
or if you haven't got those things,
swing back to waist height,
take a look, and see,
is that club face in a good spot.
Now, if you do this without looking,
you swing back,
and you then take a look and you can see the club face
is sort of wanting to be open or closed,
then you have that sensation.
So then rehearse the moves
until you get the feeling of what is good.
What is it when that club face
gets that sort of parallel to the spine angle?
You'll start to rehearse this move then,
and the more you do this, the more it's comfortable,
and the more consistent you're gonna be
from doing that as well.
- Suddenly, what you do at work,
your workload is gonna get a lot worse,
what you do at home,
you're gonna do a lot less around the house as well,
because you'll be practicing this all the time.
I think a video camera as well,
on the phones now is also a good way of just checking this.
- I'm gonna hit one more shot Pierce
because that last one was nice,
so I'm just gonna go with the way
I would rehearse this on the, on the range.
So, normal set up obviously,
I've got a good grip here now,
I'm gonna swing back,
take a look, that club face is looking good there.
- I like it
- Okay, now I'm gonna go.
- Let's see if we're gonna produce another good one.
Again, nicely on the green there.
Again, it makes such a difference
if you can get that first part right.
- Sure does.
- So, we hope you're enjoying the video.
If you are, hit that thumbs up,
and if you've got any questions,
make sure you leave them down below.
And also, don't forget to check out the rest of the plan
over at MEANDMYGOLF.com.
(upbeat music)
- The driver is definitely unique
when it comes to the rest of the set.
So Andy, let's just go through this.
- Well look, first of all,
look at the size of it.
It's a long club.
It's the longest club in the bag,
and I think the men's generally averages
about over 45 inches long.
But you've also got a few different things.
This shaft is carbon fiber so it's graphite.
Obviously in the steel, in the irons,
[Inaudible] you get is a lot of steel shafts,
but generally with the driver
you're gonna see this graphite carbon fiber,
which is very light,
because it helps you swing the club faster.
Remember, this is all built for speed.
Then you got the heads,
a great big whopping head,
which hopefully gives you a little bit more room
for error on the face here as well.
But then you have the options in loft.
Anything between eight degrees and 15 degrees loft,
depending on your swing speed,
and actually how you swing the golf club.
So, there's quite a few options.
And also, in some of the latest drivers,
you'll have this adjustability in the club,
where you can actually move some of the weights around,
and play around with it to actually
complement the things that you're working on.
So, certainly a very different club to hit,
but unique in the fact that it's very long,
it's designed for speed,
and it's quite forgiving.
So, so much fun when you actually get to use this as well.
- It definitely is.
Now you know what it's about.
It's time to hit it.
(upbeat music)
- Now this is where things get interesting.
We're talking about the driver, the big dog,
and Andy, there's no better place
than the 18th hole here at La Reserva.
What a beautiful tee shot we have here.
- I'm looking forward to hitting this one actually.
- Absoulutely.
Right, okay,
so we're gonna be talking abut the concept and the set up.
So Andy, the concept,
what are we looking to achieve when we're hitting a driver?
- Well I think,
hopefully you know now that we can either hit down,
level, or up with a golf club.
And obviously with the irons,
we want a slightly downward hit,
cause that's what's gonna produce that nice solid strike.
Now, with the driver it's different.
We want get this thing,
hitting it down the fairway as far as possible.
And to do that,
it helps if we can have a slightly positive attack angle,
which means we can hit it slightly on the way up.
So there's certain things that we need to do
in the golf swing,
and in the set up that just help us to do this,
to really give it the maximum distance that we need.
The first things is tee.
We're gonna tee it really high so,
as we've got such a large club head here,
we're gonna tee it quite high.
So I like to really get it pegged up Piers.
Quite a lot of the golf ball
is above the crown of the club there,
because if I can hit it really center
or slightly above center, that really helps as well.
So the first thing is
just getting the tee height really high.
The second thing is,
a nice wide stance.
We need a nice wide base.
We want to use the legs to create power.
It also helps us get more behind it
to hit up on the golf ball.
And you can see here,
I've got my alignment stick on the ground here.
This is where we want the ball positioned to be.
We want it forward in the stance.
It's gonna feel strange having it here,
but having it forward in the stance
really helps the club bottom out a little bit early,
and then collect it off the tee on the way up there.
So, just a couple of simple things that we can do.
Now one more thing,
and that is how we tilt the body.
Now, a lot of people with the ball position so forward
are gonna wanna creep this way.
We're gonna ask you to go the other way.
So I'm gonna take my set up here,
lead hand on only,
trow hand on the leg here,
and all I'm gonna do
is actually slide it down a few inches towards the knee,
and then I'm gonna place my hand on the golf club.
Now, notice what this has done.
It's tilted the spine.
It's got me a little bit more over to the right hand side,
and this really helps add to that attack angle
where I can sweep it off Piers.
[Piers] Absolutely
- So, few key things there,
we've got the set up being a little wider,
ball position being forward,
a little bit of tilt,
and just in terms of weight on the feet,
we wanna be 50 50,
it's not the end of the world
even if you favor in the right leg.
Again, it puts you more behind the golf ball.
- Okay, just do that one more time.
What I really like about this
is when Andy slides his hand down his leg,
and then puts his hand on the golf club,
notice his shoulders.
They're still running pretty square.
Sometimes when we bring the hand around,
Andy how does it go?
Alright, so there's some people who bring it around like so,
and then the shoulders go well off to the left.
So if you're left with your shoulders with your driver,
it's a big big no no.
- So, oh I'm ready for this one Piers.
- (chuckles) This is cool.
- It's a great hole to finish on. So what I'm gonna do.
- The sun is perfect.
- Table set up,
trow hand on, little bit of a slide down here,
I'm ready to go.
I still need to put a good swing on it though Piers.
And that, is an absolute beauty,
look at the height on that Piers.
- It was actually better
than all the practice shots that you hit before.
- That's a lot better than the practice shots.
- (laughs)
- I'm warmed up now.
- Absolutely, all right so look,
this is your practice for week one.
First of all, we want you to have
two practice sessions a week,
hitting 50 golf balls on those practice sessions.
And then we need to break it up,
so you hit 10 shots working at your new grip,
30 shots working at the club face moveaway,
making sure the club face is square,
and then your final 10 shots with the driver.
[Andy] Yes, exactly,
and don't forget if you wanna take part
in the rest of the plan where we cover so much more,
including how to hit the hybrids, the fairway metals,
how to create power,
and the beautiful flowing golf swing,
click the link in the description,
and we look forward to coaching you
through the rest of the plan.
Thanks again.