- Welcome, Adam Bazalgette here,
founder of Scratch Golf Academy.
I'm with someone you no doubt recognize,
Eric Cogorno of Cogorno Golf, very popular on YouTube.
We're teaming together here to do a few videos.
This one I think's a really good subject,
two keys to avoid hitting behind the ball,
and in this one we're gonna really tackle a foundational key
Eric's gonna give us some really cool stuff here.
We've been talking about this off camera.
I think you're really gonna like it.
Now I'm actually doing another video on this,
the rest of the story, so to speak's,
gonna be over at Cogorno Golf,
and we'll give you a link to that.
You can check that out.
(club striking ball)
(ball tapping club)
(upbeat music)
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So let's get started, this is gonna be a good one.
So we're gonna talk a little bit about the critical nature
of where the body is, not only in terms of weight shift,
but how much rotation.
Show us how that works a little bit,
and how that would leads to where you may hit the ground.
- Yeah, Adam I think one thing that we would see
with golfers is there's a high correlation
with where their body is in space,
and where their club hits the ground.
- No doubt about it.
- And so if we wanna overly simplify this,
and we kind of look at where the sternum location is,
more or less where I'm gonna point my sternum back,
away from the ball, or in front of the ball,
and where it is left and right,
those two things combined have a big influence
on where that club's gonna hit the ground
- No doubt about it.
- If we don't wanna hit behind the ball,
and we wanna hit ball first, ground second,
we have to have that sternum in a certain location
to be able to do that.
- Right.
So why don't we look at a couple of pros.
We'll show you what it should look like.
They don't all do it exactly the same,
but we'll give you some outlines,
and we'll get back out here and Eric will show you.
Well if you don't recognize this player,
he was a premier ball-striker on the tour
for a long, long time, New Zealander Grant Waite.
Maybe best known for the famous Tiger Woods bunker shot
at the Canadian Open from, what was it?
220 or something that beat him,
but a premier ball striker.
Let's have a look and see how he does it.
So if we draw a line up from that left ankle,
hey, his head's not in front of the golf ball,
but his body weight is clearly well towards that target foot
and as he strikes the ball there,
let's look at his chest from two different angles.
Let's get him just slightly, slightly closer to the ball.
His chest is looking way over there, or if you like,
in the blue shirt, well in front of the ball.
You do that tandem of body movements,
you're not gonna have any problems.
- Okay, so now we have an idea of what good ball-strikers do
and where their body is in space.
Again, like Adam said, they don't do it all exactly the same
but it's some correlations we can draw.
Now specifically what we're talking about
is avoiding hitting behind the ball.
And so I put a little alignment rod here Adam,
just kind of straight in line
with where the golf ball's positioned,
and like anything else a little over-exaggeration,
you know in the beginning could be okay.
So just to draw a quick visual,
basically what we wanna do here is checkmark a couple boxes.
If you're someone who hits behind the ball,
and you're not sure why,
hey where do I start to be able to hit more in front of it,
well you can start to check mark these boxes,
and what we're gonna start with
is where that sternum location is pointed
relative to the golf ball, or the stick.
Now really there's two ways I could get my sternum location
more forward towards the target, in simple terms.
If I put this little stick on here in front of me,
I could get this club more in front of the line
by simply shifting more towards the target in some capacity,
and I could get it more in front of the golf ball
if I turn, right? - Right.
- So, either the shift component, I'm exaggerating,
or the turn component would put that sternum location
out in front of the ball,
but the key here is finding a mix of those two.
And so the bad version out of this would be hey,
if I make a backswing and I'm all the way back here,
my step, chest, and center are back here,
and I get to impact, and I'm still all the way back here,
issues, right? - It's not gonna work.
- And so I not only have to have some amount
of little down and forward motion,
but see that, when I go to the top, and I come down now
I do my down and forward upper body motion,
my sternum's still back here.
- Right. - Right, and so I need
to still get that out in front of the golf ball
with a little bit of turn there.
- Right.
- And so I would say--
- So would you say the beginning of that downswing
you're really emphasizing more middle part of your body
hips, weight shift there, not necessarily top of the body,
head as much. - Yeah, I'm glad you said that
I skipped over that, in that when I'm doing this here,
I'm not feeling this right? - No.
- That's happening much more with my lower body action,
and it's sort of a consequence of that,
and so what I would begin with
is to have two little feedback sources.
Hey, my goal is to not hit behind the ball,
and I'm gonna replace that with a positive goal
of make the club hit in front of the line.
No doubt a lot of people have seen a line drill,
right, before, so this is nothing new,
but maybe how they're going about doing it, and so I--
- One little interjection, maybe from this camera angle.
You can cheat this drill by coming over the top a little bit
and it will hit you hit further forward, but don't do that.
You'll arrive at some negative consequences.
We're assuming the club's coming at the ball
in a reasonable direction.
These things then apply perfectly, go ahead there Eric.
- Yeah, and so I might start to do some here,
and just start with chip shot length.
Now maybe if I don't have an alignment rod,
I've got a piece of string, tape, whatever the case may be,
but I'm just gonna try and get the club head
hitting in front of the line,
and just bottoming out a little more forward,
and what I'm feeling is my sternum location
being slightly forward from my lower body motion,
so I pour pressure into my left leg,
and I feel that my sternum location's gonna turn some amount
so by the time I get to impact,
I'm really feeling like my sternum, I'm gonna exaggerate,
like it's a little bit more out in front of the golf ball.
Now if I over do these things,
and I'm coming from an over the top swing or as it may be.
I may certainly need to address those.
- That's why Eric said don't unwind that body too early
in the downswing.
You start spinning your shoulders at the ball
trying to get it open to early,
you're probably coming over the top.
- Right.
- So it's bump the weight, and then get the rotation.
- Bingo.
Yeah I like that.
I think pressuring to my lead side
would be check mark number one.
Hey, can I think about just that one thing,
and not hit behind the ball?
That would great.
- If I could just jump in with something,
you know we talk off camera before we do these things
and we're just comparing notes of people we teach,
and the kind of things people suffer from.
A lot of people, they already know to shift their weight.
Now we're getting some good information,
and some details on it.
They just don't do it when they hit the ball,
and to me if there's a single source of problems,
if you're one of these golfers, you say,
I've been told for 10 years to shift my weight,
is that you are almost certainly thrusting the club
and the arms down too early, and too fast in the downswing.
I promise, you thrust that down, it will push weight
towards the ground, it is very difficult to move,
and if you doubt that, see how relatively easy it is
to move without a club in your hands,
it should be pretty much that easy if your timing is right,
if you're not thrusting the club down.
So, just take that if needed,
and take that little pill there.
- Yeah, exactly.
I think there's a bunch of caveats to someone doing this
depending upon where you're starting from,
but I think just to start, hey, I'm hitting behind the ball,
I need to stop, what are the things I need to focus on?
Where's my sternum location?
Getting in that forward and turn,
would be a great starting point,
and obviously in our other video we talk about
there's so more to this.
And then where we would start with this,
is just hitting some little shots.
Get the club head in front of the line, right,
and start with that.
See if you can check mark those boxes.
- So you might even start without the ball,
you've got the magic line.
Once you've dinked it there a few times,
then take it to the ball.
- I really like doing X in a row for people, building blocks
so if we put a line down there,
and you've been hitting behind the ball,
you need to start with one, right?
Can you do one in a row?
And then when one gets easy, build to three, build to five.
You're doing something right, right,
and then you gotta check like you said,
you're not cheatin' some other pieces like that,
but an excellent place to start
to avoid hitting behind the ball.
- It isn't impossible to do,
I mean people sometimes spend their golf life
hitting the ground behind the ball.
It doesn't need to be that way.
Just do what Eric's telling you, you're patient,
you do some practice swings,
you can solve this problem I promise you.
Well thanks Eric, that was fun.
It's great to have you here at Mediterra in South Florida.
Now again, there's two videos on this.
The body motion probably is the first key perhaps,
because it's the instigator in the downswing,
but if you don't know what to do
with your arms in the swing arc,
you're still gonna have problems,
so if you go to Cogorno Golf, we've got the other video,
and I'm gonna really get into that with Eric's help there
of what you need to do with the right arm
once you've gotten the feel of what to do with your body,
so hopefully you'll check that out.
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