- Welcome I'm Adam Bazalgette,
two-time PGA Teacher of the Year award winner,
and founder of Scratch Golf Academy.
Today we're gonna talk about the shanks, stay tuned.
Well hey the shanks aren't a fun subject for sure
but they can cause a lot of problems
both mentally and physically in your golf.
Gonna show you today something interesting,
a lotta people hit shanks and don't even know they do it
Which of course makes it a lot less likely
they can change it.
Now if you like this video please subscribe to the channel
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Let's get started.
Now did you see that ball roll dead straight
but roll nonetheless?
That was actually a significant shank,
That and many other kind of outcomes can vary
just according to just where you hit it
on the hosel so a lot of people don't even realize
they've shanked it when they've done that
lemme show you a close up and you'll see what I mean.
So we're all familiar with the classic shank
it's partly on the club face partly
on that rounded inside corner of the ball
and of course you get the classic shank outcome,
that 45 degree type of shot.
Even if you don't have a lot of golf knowledge
if you've been around you'll know right away
it was a shank,
but what about these slightly more subtle ones?
What let's say if you hit it directly
on the heel like that, listen there's no loft there
you're gonna get a very thuddy, un-solid, stingy
kind of a hit, but it's pretty much gonna roll
relatively straight forward.
Quite a bit shorter with less energy likely
than a true top that's off the middle of the club face
or a true thin shot like that,
so you could get that outcome, that's the difference
of just a fraction of an inch really,
you could get a shot that you hit mostly on the club face
and barely touch the hosel and you'll get decent height,
certainly well short of normal distance
but it will be a, almost like a big slice
believe me though that it is a very big possibility
a lot of people do that,
it's not likely you'd open the club face so much
to just start the ball significantly right.
Worse yet of course if you get on the other side
of the equator with the center of the hosel even just a bit,
balls gonna start to top and go this way
I've seen shots, and you probably have too
where people must have hit it here
and the ball will literally ricochet back
towards their lead leg there,
so a little bit of difference in here can cause a great deal
of difference depending on exactly what side
of the front of that hosel you hit it
and some of these, as I say are pretty difficult
to detect 'cause they don't look like a classic shank.
Lemme just tell you something here and I say this a lot
but the brain is incredible with the adjustments
it can make and the ways it can fix things
and compensate, just incredible.
But believe me if you don't know something's happening
in other words if there's no clear feedback,
that mechanisms pretty much shut off
so you've got to know that
these things are happening to you,
and as I've showed you it's not always that easy
from ball flight to tell.
So let's have a look here and what we're gonna do
is we're gonna place a second ball
a little bit beyond the toe assuming I made solid contact
with the original ball,
if you don't wanna do a second ball
you could just jab a tee in the ground there,
what happens obviously if I don't touch that ball
I know I didn't shank it.
If I hit it somewhat in the heel
or near the shank I will barely tick this ball
and roll it over there, if I come in here
and slam into both balls I know
it was a major league hosel shot or shank shot,
so this is probably what you don't want to see.
You do that you're in the serious shanking category there.
Okay so now let's just say it's true
that there are all kinds of different flaws
that can lead to shanks,
some coming out, some coming in,
so there's some real things to consider there,
and at scratchgolfacademy.com my website
we offer courses in all parts of the game
including an entire course on shanking
and all these sort of problems
but let's confine our discussion today
to two things, one diagnosing the shank
and what kind of a shank you hit,
which we've just talked about there
with the close up and the two ball drill,
and the other, at least how you can use this genius
of the brain to start making some compensations
without necessarily a lot of technical knowledge.
And here's what I would do,
this is a real foundational premise to making changes
in anything in your golf swing,
and that is, whether it be club face angle at impact,
or what not swing plane, always start
by playfully making a significant adjustment
and then come in and make the adjustments
more refined and more small,
one of the things that gives people
a ton of tension when they're trying to fix a shank
is they're okay, they're inch or two off center on contact
not that big a difference, a meaningful difference,
but what they wanna do is they then
wanna to hit a perfectly solid shot
and it's too, it's too restricting mentally
it puts too much pressure on you,
do something significantly different make a big difference
get some relaxation and confidence back
and then you can make the difference a small one.
So here's a little drill I would suggest for you
here's a golf ball I'm gonna swing at,
I'm gonna place a ball, as I did earlier in the video
on that side of it,
little more space there,
except in this case what I'm gonna do
I'm gonna set up to the outside ball
and I'm simply gonna make a swing and use my intuition
to make the best contact I can with the inside ball.
So let's try that,
reasonably solid shot there,
now you may say how'd you do that,
move the club about this far in the middle of the swing?
I don't know how I did it, it's not that difficult
I know you can do it too.
So I say what this fosters is a sense of
hey I'm not out of control with my body
I can do something different,
you'd be amazed how easily and quickly
you can go over and find that other ball
even if you don't hit it dead flush,
which of course would be a quantum adjustment
from hitting the shank,
it'll give you a little bit of confidence,
it'll give you a little sense of
hey I can work this out,
and again it gives you a chance
to feel something significantly different
not slightly different and from there
you can make some progress.
Well I hope you found that helpful,
again would love to have you subscribe to the channel
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to be bringing a lot more your way
scratchgolfacademy.com's my website
got all kinds of material there for you,
complete courses in every category of the game
that I hope you'll take advantage of,
thanks again for your time I hope this video helped you.