- Well hey, Adam Bazalgette here,
founder of Scratch Golf Academy.
Today's subject, golf swing plane made easy.
(inspirational music)
So golf swing plane made easy.
Is it easy?
Well, it's actually fairly simple, but it's usually,
as I'll show you, interference from the golfer that gets
the club off plane, of course we'll give you some drills.
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channel, a lot of free content and of course,
scratchgolfacademy.com is my home website,
full courses there.
So here's Michelle Wie as a teenager, let's have a look
at her, we'll put a line on the club shaft.
Picture that as a giant hula hoop
tilted diagonally backwards there
and she will swing pretty much along that.
Now not every great player's exactly there,
but that's the ideal, then the club will tend to rise,
or the arms really'll rise a little bit up the body.
But you can see there's the maintenance of that nice circle
and in the downswing that club returns right in that area
to hit the ball.
You really can't do it any better than that,
and the simpler the plane, the more along the design of the
club, the easier it is to have repetitive ball flight.
Well, I was very fortunate to work for David Leadbetter
for 14 years, known him a a long time.
And this is something he would do in a lot of golf schools.
He'd golf a golf club at the very bottom of the handle.
With just his right hand, really just the fingers here
and he would get the club swinging and just get in motion
and he would explain to the group
that would be sitting there, hey listen, this club wants
to swing on plane.
The balance and the design are such
that it will swing on plane.
Now, that's the key though, is get the club swinging.
I'm telling you, if you take your hands and try
to put the club in the right position, maybe worse still
if you try to take the club back you're gonna get
in trouble right out of the gate and it's not gonna work.
So let me show you a close up grip you wanna take
as we'll introduce you to this first drill.
So really I'm just gonna grip this in the fingertips,
or the bottom of the fingers of both hands,
I might slightly have my palms resting there,
but there's no ability for me to grab ahold of it
and manipulate the club.
So with this grip I really can't manipulate or manage
the club so I just start back and forth very small scale
and after a few swings here, no ball, I can just feel
the balance of the club and how consistently that's moving.
Then you wanna try with just some individual little swings.
Now, when you have this grip,
you're gonna feel just a little drag off the ball,
that's absolutely fine.
In fact, I like that.
So I'm gonna start individually.
Okay, one quick caveat to this, if your access
or you head if you like, is moving around a lot,
you're not gonna get quite the same feel.
So put the club against you, remember it's a little
diagonally up and down movement, the pivot,
it's not a big sway or a weight shift or a turn,
and once your access is nice and steady,
it will really help breed the proper feel in the plane.
So now with a regular grip, we're not gonna get into details
on the grip here, there's other videos on that,
but it's gotta be under the pad of that left hand.
Now, bear in mind, wrist cock is nothing more than downward
pressure on the handle, pushing it down gently.
That makes the club go up.
So as you start to get this feeling, back and forth
on this small scale, just gently add a little bit
of downward pressure, not this, and you'll start to get
the feeling for how the little takeaway becomes the wrist
cock and starts to really set on plane.
You just gotta camp out with it a little bit.
You'll get the feel.
Let me try a shot I've got nine iron on a tee,
I wanna make it as easy as possible, so I'm gonna get
a little sense of this thing here, all right here we go.
No manipulation, little downward pressure and just pop
the ball out there.
Couple more practice swings and so on until you're getting
the same feel of how the club stays in orbit.
Okay, let's look at the downswing.
So two terrific players here, Paul Casey on the left
and Adam Scott on the right.
Now, I'm telling you I do this all the time in golf lessons.
I'll film someone, draw a line from the club to the ball
and I mean, not only does the club kinda go there,
it goes straight towards the golf ball,
but not these guys.
It comes down.
And let's put a line on Adam's swing here,
and as we start his transition again, the club comes down
well below that line.
People go at that ball because it attracts their attention
and they try to hit it.
Let the club work down first.
You will be doing a lot better.
Now here's a favorite drill.
This breeds awareness, you'll see what I mean
as we go through.
Awareness is the key, by the way.
When people have faults in their swings that they never
feel, just someone tells them about them,
it's probably not gonna shift.
So here's the drill.
Nine iron off tee, I've got my regular grip now,
go above the ball and kind of get this motion going.
At whatever scale you need to do it, I'm gonna go about
that scale there.
I feel just an uninterrupted flow of the club.
And on a predetermined swing, I just lower down
and clip the ball.
When I say predetermined, I just decide okay, this
when I'm hitting it.
Here's the key.
That lovely carefree feel of the club does that shift
when you decide to hit it.
Do you suddenly get a sense of golf ball, strike the ball,
that's what makes you move at the ball.
You've just gotta hang out with it till you can do
basically what I felt like I did there,
which there's just no difference between the swing
and when I decide to hit the ball,
other than that instinctive lowering of the club.
You're on your way then, you're feeling the right things.
Of course, you've gotta then hit some shots,
come back to the drills, just keep washing it in there
you can do this thing if you put your time in.
So golf swing plane made easy,
I hope that's helpful for you.
Work on these things, they don't come automatically,
but you can do it, please subscribe to the YouTube channel
if you like it, we've got a lot of free content there
and of course, scratchgolfacademy.com is my home website.
Full courses there including one and one coaching with me.
(upbeat music)