- Hey everyone, how's it going?
Really excited today
because we've got a live lesson with Russell
and we're going to help him with his irons.
Check this out.
- Yeah, that was nice.
So we finished on that then,
that's done.
- Cut one in at the end.
- So Russell, welcome.
Thanks for joining us at the Astbury,
it's good to have you here
and have the opportunity to help you with your irons.
Let's just talk a bit about your
I suppose your goals about your game,
what handicap are you
and what you'd like to,
what's an ideal scenario for you today
to leave away.
You're playing this afternoon as well.
So what's the ideal scenario for you to leave with today?
- Well, I play at Newquay,
I'm 15,
I've been playing about two and a half years.
But I see I have a big mess
with my mid and long irons
where I tend to
pull the ball quite far left.
Not with just a little bit either,
it goes a hell of a long way.
So I'd like to leave today
with a bit more consistency
or something that I can go away
and really work on
to take that left out the equation
cause of course the playoffs is
there's no no dice for going left.
- A lot of danger lap you mentioned there, yeah.
And we've already seen Russell hit a few shots already
and he sinked some beautiful golf shots,
but every now and again,
we see one that creeps in
and misses the green a long way left.
So, we're going to take a look on the video today,
have a look at the launch monitor data
and really understand what he's doing.
He's got a great golf swing,
considering he's been playing two and half years Piers.
- [Piers] Unbelievable.
- So, I think when we look at this,
we can see some big changes in the ball flight
without having to make some huge changes in the golf swing,
which is going to be nice for you.
Ideally, anyway.
- We need to look it Andy cause the ball striking
is really good, isn't it?
It's just the left shot
that we just need to get rid of.
So, exciting. - Okay.
Well let's hit some shots then,
and we'll have a bit of a chat about your game
and see and then we'll go through it
and we've got 180 yards,
so it's a perfect six iron for you Russ.
- Yeah.
- Okay, there we go.
So that's a great example of that miss for you.
- Yeah. - It's not too bad though
considering a couple of others have been further than that.
- Yeah.
It's minimizing that
minimizing that left,
the big left,
is something that
it costs me loads of shots around.
And if I'm going to go to the next level,
which is where I want to be,
that's the sort of stuff I need to.
- And I think that the
beauty of what we're gonna see with Russ today,
his good shots are like really, really good.
They're starting at the flag,
not really moving
and finishing pretty good,
but what we're seeing is the bad shots,
like the one he's just hit there,
starts left
and finishes along my left.
So if we can,
if we can improve the bad shots
and make his dispersion a bit better,
then we're going to see a difference.
Obviously you have some coaching already then Russ,
we mentioned that earlier.
- Yeah. - And you've been working on,
just talk us through what you've been working on.
- So, for a long time,
I've kind of come over the top,
which I notice is something a lot of people struggle with.
So with my coach in Newquay, Josh,
I've been really working on
sort of taking the club back
to a position where
I can shallow it out.
So I'm not over
sort of turning,
but then really tuck in the right elbow in.
So I can come from the inside
and really finish stretching to target
rather than
doing all sorts of other stuff
to overcompensate.
So, that's something I've been working
really hard with over the lockdown period
and over the last two weeks. - And you can tell.
You can tell, that's good.
That last part actually looks pretty good.
- Okay, well I tell you what,
let's look at
I'll tell you what we look at the golf swing first,
and then we get some numbers off you.
So, I want to just show you through this Russ actually,
cause there's a lot of great things in your golf swing.
If we look here,
pretty good setup,
but if we just take a look on the way back,
I just want you to get an understanding
of sort of where we are.
Nice backswing.
On the way down here,
take a look at where the angle's coming from.
So if we look at this sort of
when the club's parallel to the ground,
you'll see the club head
is pretty much in line with the hands.
That's a great position to be in,
where the club
is parallel to the ground.
It's in line with the hands,
pretty close to the swing plane there
and then
down to impact
and then through.
So you swing the club
in a really nice direction.
So you've done a great job
of trying to get it more from
what you said was from the inside.
- Yeah.
- Cause you've been fighting the over the top, yeah?
So do a great job there.
So, when we look at this,
then we go, okay,
well, if you're swinging the club
in a really nice direction,
where's the left shot coming from?
So Piers,
we'll go to the data
cause I think this will really tell us the
this will tell us the story
of what's going on really.
- Okay.
Let's start with the club path,
which is obviously
kind of you working at
trying to get the club under the plane,
will have a big influence on that club path.
Normally your club path would have been to the left,
today every single shot you've hit,
the club path has actually been to the right.
So you and Josh,
perfect work,
well done.
The big issue for us though really,
when we look at this,
is where the club face is looking relative to that path.
Because every shot that you've hit,
is an average of 6.3 degrees left of your path.
So the club face is closed to your path
every time you hit the golf shot.
Which is obviously causing the ball to go to the left.
And if we look at the dispersion,
the average we've got here,
even with our big right shot there,
the average is still 10 yards left
on the pitch.
So that means it's 30 feet left of target
when it's hitting the ground,
and then it's probably going to bounce even further left,
especially if you're on the green,
it's just gonna roll off the green.
So,
basically,
club path is great.
Did a great job with that.
But your club face is closed,
which is causing it to want to go to the left.
- So this is what we sort of mentioned about
having the launch monitor is that
it's understanding well, okay,
how do we change this?
So, you working at path
now
isn't necessarily going to change that
because your path is already to the right.
What we need to really address is
squaring that face up.
So if we can do this,
that's what's going to take out
that left side of the golf course.
The key thing is,
well, how do we do this?
- Yeah.
- That's what we're going to go through now.
So if we just
come and just stand in front of us here.
Now,
because you've done a lot of cricket,
generally when we see somebody
who's done cricket,
we'll see them do this.
Shaft forward,
strong grip.
Now, when we do this,
we see a lot of left shots.
And you mentioned these sort of cover drives doing this.
And this is where this is stemmed from really,
but you've done your best to try and
iron these out.
Now,
with Russell,
if Russell had been playing 15 years,
had you been playing 15 years,
we might not look at changing the grip,
but because you've been two and a half years in,
I think it's worth looking at that because
how we just adjust the hands on the club
is going to make a massive difference to the consistency
of your club face.
So the first thing we're going to just experiment first
and see how it does.
If you just stand ahead of me there,
is just,
and you'll notice this from Russell's setup
when you look at the camera,
you'll see how much the shaft is leaning forward address.
So as we do this,
this delofts the face,
and it's so easy to get the club in a strong
or the hands in a strong position.
So what we're going to do,
which is going to feel really strange,
is bring this club
back to more of a neutral place.
So the shaft is going to be more neutral.
We're going to get the left hand,
not quite as far around.
This is going to feel really strange by the way.
And,
but hopefully what we're going to see with us is just,
it's just gonna be really hard to the golf ball left.
And then we can then start to work
at sort of getting that out.
But if we take that out of the equation today,
then it's going to be a big thing.
So just bringing the shaft back
is going to make a huge difference to start with.
The more you just neutralize the grip off a little bit,
we'll hit some shots.
The first few are going to feel horrendous,
but over time this,
it'll start to feel a little bit more comfortable
and certainly today,
hopefully as well.
And we'll just see what the numbers produce.
- Okay, brilliant.
- So let's jump back in.
- This is
obviously going to say this to people watching,
now this is definitely a trial and error phase.
Now we need to figure out whether this grip,
how much we need to move it
and how quickly the changes will take place,
if that makes sense.
- We don't need to go massive change today,
but if we can just go shaft more neutral
and not as far around,
I don't mind a slightly strong grip.
If we go too radical too early,
we're just going to hit the ball like
50 yards, right?
So it's like, well,
let's just start with having a shaft
a little bit more neutral at the start.
Maybe we can hit a fraction.
I don't want to do too much
cause we'll have too severe the opposite way.
So you can even keep a slightly strong left hand grip,
I'm okay with that. - Okay.
- But let's just get the shaft back a little bit.
It's going to feel strange, yeah.
Can you keep it back for us?
Good. - All right.
- There we go.
Okay, so I'll tell you what,
before you hit a shot,
have a swing
cause it's going to feel a little weird.
- So I'm almost
the feeling I've got here is that
the shaft is almost leaning back.
- Yes. - I know it isn't,
but in my head,
in my mind it feels, "Oh God, you've really far back."
- Yeah.
And what we'll really do here,
the last Piers mentioned,
it's about experimenting here.
We're just really trying to find what's most consistent
so we can deliver that club face.
We'll hit some shots,
we'll look at it,
what works,
might need to change the grip a little bit more,
but we'll get an indication.
And we know now he's club path is good
so he can almost forget about that almost.
(Andy giggles)
- Yeah not bad.
Not bad.
- So the fact that it's gone left again,
we can neutralize that grip a little more.
So there you go.
So now it spills back
and we've got a couple of knuckles on this,
on the back of that hand.
- Wow! - Hello.
(Piers laughs)
Hello.
- Really like that one.
A little higher as well, yeah.
Which is the key thing.
Do you know what?
Sometimes we can just go with
the idea of this really
is that we saw the face the path closed.
Let's get the face to path open a little bit
by really neutralizing the grip
and having the shaft more back.
Even more with this grip force.
That's it.
The thumb is going to feel pretty much-
That's it.
That's going to feel strange now, yeah?
- Yeah.
- Okay, good.
Got to feel strange, which is good.
(Russell grunts)
That's fine.
This is expected as well
if I changed my grip to something like that
or some radical change it's going to be
it's gonna upset a little bit.
There you go.
Okay.
So, good.
Start from there.
That feels weak?
That, yeah? - Yeah.
- Okay, good.
And if we can see the right thumb.
Can we get it just over the left?
There you go.
That's it. - Okay.
- There you go, okay.
Now look at the difference in height.
- You did notice that when you hit that.
- Yeah. - Massive difference.
- And it felt
up the middle.
- One thing you said to us before as well
that you hit the ball quite low
and quite flat.
- Yeah.
- That's a different option for you now, that is.
- Yeah.
- I think it's always worth being able to hit the ball high,
but then just doing something different,
new technique to hit it low.
- Yeah.
- And also there's something that
Russell mentioned on the car park
when we got here this morning.
It was just having this
flat sort of land angle coming in.
That one was really high and coming down soft
so much more consistence.
Consistent when you're judging distance on that as well.
Okay, hands back.
Really nice.
- Oh, wow.
- Good. - That was nice.
That's a beautiful shot.
- Really nice.
- One thing to understand Russ is
the start direction
is influenced by the face.
So if the face let's say your ball starts left,
well your face is left at impact,
but the path is right
and that's what creates to the left
and then the further left.
So,
if we can just get that face a little more open,
your start direction
and your curve is going to be so much different.
And you'll see now Russell's already going through a
more of a routine now of
shaft more neutral,
grip more neutral.
- Just a quick question.
- Really nice.
- Excluding the first shot,
what have you not done since?
- I've not hit the ball left at all.
- We've gone left but we haven't gone off the green.
- Yeah.
The left miss,
when it started,
obviously we've gone a little bit further since,
but it's not gone real wild.
It's sort of turned real left.
Little bit left,
can work with a little bit but,
the amount I was going,
it was a nightmare.
- And we said this on,
again before we turned the cameras on with Russell,
we said
the interesting thing about this lesson Russell is that
we're going to be able to make some big changes
to the ball flight
without really changing the golf swing.
So it's not like we're always making these huge
big adjustments cause your swing is good.
The key thing that we're really doing,
which most people forget to look,
they're looking at what
this is so influential
of what happens to the ball flight.
So if we can look at what this is doing
in more detail,
sometimes we don't have to change these
big looking things.
And like I say your swing is good
and we should see a big difference
as we've already seen there,
without actually getting you to think about your swing.
- Okay, should I give you some numbers here Andy?
- Yep.
- Okay, so look.
face to path before,
so your club face we know before was
let's just get the exact number,
6.3 degrees left
of where the club path was.
So he's going to go left,
considerably.
The shots now
are
1.7 degrees left.
So straight away,
the beauty with this is
you're still keeping the club face left of the path
so you're still able to play a draw,
but you're just not out of control flat hooking it now.
The height has gone up a lot
and we can just see the dispersion on this.
This is crazy.
I mean, this is
that's your dispersion now.
If I actually go to
where it was on the other shots,
that's where you were before.
Look at all the shots left.
- Yeah. - All the shots left
and suddenly
that's the difference.
So a lot tighter dispersion
and the good news is,
when the ball hits the ground now,
it's got a chance of stopping.
- Oh wow. - I mean that is just so good.
There's a height difference.
It looks nice going up now.
- It looks great going down there and
- Beautiful.
It's so good. - 180 yards.
- 176 carry.
- And it stops. - And it stops.
- It's not going,
like I said before it's not going to
170 carry.
Well I've not really hit a really good one
with a six iron,
it's carried
and then gone
190.
- Yes.
- Because I'm getting straight out there.
- Absolutely.
- Okay, so what I'm going to do then Russell hit a shot
I want to show you the difference
between how that looks
because
on camera cause it's a big difference.
- Okay and just so good.
- That's pure.
Look how long that one's gone as well.
- Now you're in trouble
because it's gone too big.
- So,
see the difference in how that shaft looks there.
- [Russell] My hand's nearly over my left knee there.
- [Andy] Exactly, yeah.
So well over
and like I say,
it doesn't really change the golf swing,
it just changes the face angle.
And then you've got to,
you'll even see again,
you mentioned the sort of left elbow
having to sort of
have that cricket shot there. - Yeah.
- [Andy] And you've got to fight that,
which is okay, which is doable sometimes.
But you look at how different that looks now.
- [Russell] Yeah.
- [Andy] You're just inside that lead thigh.
- [Russell] Yeah.
- [Andy] And that's just, that's really,
the beauty of this is
is that we haven't had to change the motion.
- [Russell] Yeah.
- [Andy] We've just got to get your feeling comfortable
with the grip and
- [Russell] Yeah.
- That changes everything addressed.
- Yeah. - Just going to show you that
if you have a look at that again.
So just a good thing with this
is you can see actually the ball flight,
we'll just come into that.
Isn't that something nice to watch.
(all three laugh)
- Isn't it?
Isn't it? - Isn't that nice to watch?
- You see the video,
you see all the online videos and stuff.
All of the head shots into launch monitors
and into screens
and the shots rate goes up
and it's got a nice fly
and it lands.
And I wondered what mine would look like.
Just like an Exocet,
just go straight about 20 yards off the ground.
Fantastic.
That's
pure.
- Beautiful.
You gotta look at the distance.
This is where now we want to see,
it's amazing the repeatability now.
Hasn't missed the green left on one of these shots.
And,
you know,
for you now just to do this,
it's like I've just got to get into the new routine,
new habit,
it'll feel comfortable within
a little bit of time,
as long as you practice.
- Yeah.
That was a bit lower.
- I think the strike was off a little bit out there
and it was a little bit low too maybe.
- Still on the green. - Still a good shot.
Still on the green.
And he wasn't happy.
Look he's standing there already getting so hurt
he wasn't happy with that
and it's on the green.
But now look,
I think Russ that was great by the way.
Really good.
There's so many things in there.
Hopefully what
we'd like to communicate with this message as well Piers
is sometimes
you don't have to be thinking
of massive changes
or thinking about,
"Well, I've got to change this, this and this."
Sometimes it's a really simple thing.
And Ross is a good player, 15 handicap.
You make a simple grip change
and it changes the whole game
because the face,
as we always talk about Piers,
the face is
the most important thing in the golf swing
cause it really dictates where that ball is going to start.
- Yeah, and you can even see how
we're going to look at the short game in a moment,
thinking about the ball flight
and understanding if he's low and flat,
if you are watching this,
then maybe you need to look at that grip.
And if you struggle with those short
finesse shots,
then you definitely need to look at the grip.
- One last thing we're going to surprise Russ with though,
as we walked up past the 18th
at the Astbury,
he said, "Oh, I'd have so much anxiety on this,
"over the water,
"180 yards."
Guess what, we're going to go and finish on that now
and see how well he does
on that tee
under pressure.
Right then Russell 18th hole.
What a finishing hole this is,
it's just beautiful, isn't it?
Water there,
bunkers all around,
you can see the Astbury.
We got 211 yards,
downhill,
slightly down breeze.
What's the choice of club?
What you gonna go with? - Five iron.
So I've been carrying
about 178, 179 down there.
Downhill, down breeze,
no water,
no bunkers.
- I like it.
- Let's see what we can do.
Bit of a dream watching you guys on this team.
- Yeah, of course.
- The scene of all the hole-in-one attempts.
- Can we just skip over that please?
- Wouldn't be good if this one went in?
- Okay.
- It's nice.
It's actually nice coming by.
Take the carry.
(Piers groans)
- Put it in the bunker. - Maybe bunker.
But that's not left of the bunkers
as it would have been before. - No.
I would have been
in the house.
- (laughing) In the house.
- They would have been in danger.
I can play out the bunker.
- Thank you so much for coming as well.
- Thank you to you guys.
- All the way from Newquay as well.
That's a long way.
Thank you so much.
Really enjoyed that.
And hopefully you enjoyed it too.
Let us know down below in the comments
if we should do more videos just like this.
- Yes, definitely.
If you want to transform your ball striking
just like Russell,
make sure you check out our coaching plan,
click the link down there
and we look forward to seeing you soon.
Thanks.
- Well done. - Thank you.