- So welcome back to sunny Naples, Florida.
Adam Bazalgette here,
two-time PGA Teacher of the Year award winner,
and founder of Scratch Golf Academy.
Let's have a look today at fixing your swing plane,
we all wanna do that.
I'm gonna show you something
that you may not have considered that great players do.
Let's check it out.
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Okay, so as we look at fixing your swing plane here today,
we're specifically addressing the tendency
so many people have to come across it,
and we're going to show you something great players do
on this side of the ball, that they do differently
on that side of the ball, that if you can get this
It'll make a big, big difference to you, I believe.
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So let's have a look, let's see what they're doing here
that might be different to what you've been doing.
Okay, so as get in this, here's a little piece of geometry
you've got to know in golf.
The golf ball, the target line's over here,
right handed golfer of course, anytime I'm on my side
of the target line on the inside, I'm nearer the ground.
Anytime the club's more over there It's higher
of the ground, unless you've got 15 foot long arms
you can't keep the club low and be over there,
so in to out swings are always coming from lower,
nearer my body, to higher and more out away from me,
I can't stay low on that side of the ball,
and It's the opposite for out to in.
Out here I'm going to be high, and in here
is going to be low, so let's bear that in mind,
low to high is a more in to out path.
Watch a great player or a couple
of great players doing that.
So there's Tiger Woods of course,
needs no introduction, now we don't typically see
swing playing from this view,
but let's just see this low to high look.
By the way, I just find this guy kind of interesting,
I can't imagine what he's staring at over there
that would be of more interest than what's going on
in front of us, but there we go.
So here comes Tiger down, looks like he's on a par three,
and we're gonna stop him right at parallel,
put a line on him there, and then we're gonna go
through again till he's parallel on the other side,
and you can see here, that he's significantly higher
on that side, the circle has definitely gone up.
Have a look at that again.
Pre impact.
Post impact, a lot higher.
Let's have a look at another example
of someone that's doing that,
she maybe doesn't do it quite to the same extent,
this is Michelle Wie.
As a relative youngster,
there she is before impact, and there she is after impact.
So, even though she hasn't raised quite as much
as Tiger did, you can see it without a doubt,
that clubs circling upwards as she goes through there.
So what exactly is going on here.
Well what they're not doing, this is a big caution,
they're not scooping to get the club up in the air,
definitely not.
You'll notice the players there a lot of lag,
club is behind hands, and by definition then,
the club is working down as they're hitting ball,
hit the ball, so It's going down,
and sort of away from their center.
Well a great illustration for this,
and what's going on is the broom.
And if I was to take a broom and sweep stuff forward
like that, I need some forward lean of the broom handle,
that puts pressure on the bristles, and that allows me
to move dirt forward, right.
But if I didn't have any raise of the handle
and kept pushing, I just push the broom into the ground,
if it had enough angle.
So I have to have some upward circle of the broom handle
to push everything forward, same with the golf club.
If the handle of the club doesn't raise a little bit,
if you got the kind of lag these players have,
It's going to really, really stick in the ground.
So, how are they doing that?
Let's have a quick look at something in their body motion
that is letting that happen.
So, there is Tiger approaching contact,
let's look at his body motion a little bit
as he gets down near the ball,
that's probably about the last view we'd have
of his belt buckle at that point,
now watch where his belt buckle is after he hits it.
And let's put a dot right there now.
So you can see his belt has raised a little bit.
And what's happening there is hips
are tucking underneath him, and he's creating
a little of this sort of shape
as he surges forward with his hips.
Now, you'll notice as he does that,
his head is pretty darn steady there,
he's not raising his head, but you'll also notice
that the natural upward rotation from the shoulder,
occurs and with it of course it pulls the left arm
up away from the ground so, the surge of the hips,
the slight raising of the belt, and the natural
upward rotation of that left arm,
give this hand all this sort of movement.
Okay, couple of words of caution now.
Two things that people sometimes do when they start
to try to put this into their swing, they either raise
their entire body, head going up if you like,
and we don't need that, what we saw these players do
is tuck their hips and their left side would go up,
but not the body center.
Or another common pitfall is they raise their arms,
they chicken wing it if you like.
You don't want to go about this in those ways,
so here's what I would do, I'd do a couple
little practice swings, this is a seven iron, no ball,
and I would start to feel how there's some lag,
how the golf clubs moving down away from me
with the handle forward, and then I'd simply start
to tuck slightly, let this left shoulder go up,
just a little bit in It's natural rotation,
until I can swing down comfortably,
and still only graze the grass,
you gotta get a feel for that, that's all.
So if I don't come up enough, club hits the ground too much,
obviously if I raise excessively
I wouldn't hit the ground at all, and just practice it,
till you're getting a nice, little brush,
maybe an eight iron or something, knock a few
shots out there, then start to add some speed,
as I always say, go back to the little ones though
when you're practicing impacts, you got to do it without
much speed to get the feel, then add the speed back in.
Well I hope you found that helpful, would love
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Hope this helps you.
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