- Well today's subject's a good one,
golf swing made simple, how can we do that?
I'm Adam Bazalgette, Two-Time PGA
Teacher of the Year award winner, founder of
Scratch Golf Academy right here in Naples Florida.
I wanna give you some thoughts that I think'll
really help you.
(vigorous electronic music)
Okay, so the golf swing made simple.
Well, I'm gonna show you two factors, straight hit
and solid hit, and I'm gonna give you drills for each
that I think you'll find really really simple.
These might be great playing thoughts for you
out on the golf course. These will, I hope,
will really make this thing a lot
more simple. If you like the video,
please subscribe to the channel, we've got a lot
of free content there, more coming your way we hope,
and of course ScratchGolfAcademy.com is my home website,
have full courses in every aspect of the game,
and a full course on the full swing that includes
an entire course on iron, so you might want
to check that out. Okay, let's get started.
Okay, so as we look at how to make a golf swing simple,
one of the two things really rounding off that you
have to do to be a good golfer, you have to hit
the ball solidly certainly, you have to create
some distance out there, and of course the other thing
you have to control your direction reasonably well.
So, we're gonna look at the first of the two keys,
we're gonna give you one simple key to try
to make this swing simple in each category.
Let's first look a little bit at direction.
Let's assume, for this video,
and this segment of the video that you have a decent grip
and a decent set-up, we're not gonna get exhaustively
into every element, that's important for sure.
One of the keys to hitting the ball fairly straight,
maybe the biggest key, is getting on a decent plane
with the golf club. If your plane matches the design
of the club well, it doesn't come this way or that way,
you're gonna hit the ball reasonably straight.
Now certainly you've got to hit it solidly,
certainly you have to have some club face control
at the bottom, that's very very important,
but I find that most people, if they have
a decent grip on the club, and they're on
a decent swing plane, with a little bit of practice they
get pretty good at directional control in terms
of those other variables.
So let's have a look, what's a simple key,
and I'm gonna go to one of the simplest.
Listen, swing plane, people make this out to be like,
super complicated and a life's work to get it right.
It is not that difficult. One of my mentors,
Fred Shoemaker out in California has
this wonderful drill he teaches people
that I think is just a winner, and I want to
share it with you here, and that is what he calls
"Mapping out the right hand".
Now, for the right-handed golfer,
that's my trailing hand, and you could
kind of correspond if you're a left-handed guy
playing right-handed, you could kind of figure out
how to make this work for you as well,
but here's what we mean.
Fred contends, and I've seen this,
this holds true for people, that if you give someone
a decent pivot, and you can do
that without the golf ball, get a golf ball if you can,
or if you don't have one at the house,
just pretend you have one in your hand.
Get a good pivot, and then say to yourself,
look, if I had to toss this golf ball
from underneath my body out there,
like I'm skipping a rock, much like a golf club
if I had to do that, once I make my pivot
where would I put my right hand?
Very instinctive for most people to do that
and not at all difficult, and here's
how you get it to where you can use it
for your golf. Make your pivot,
find that spot, find that spot you think
is perfect for throwing the ball there,
and then what you do is you reach back
with your lead hand, now, for most people
they're not gonna be flexible enough
to quite get where they'll place their right hand,
so what we do is I'm gonna bring
that right hand in a little bit,
and that becomes my spot, that's the one I wanna map out.
And believe me, it is easy to do. The brain works so well
with these little mapping positions,
it works much better doing stuff like that
than a formula of 'turn and do this',
and all that jazz here. So try this,
pivot, get your hand in the spot, reach,
that becomes your spot.
Now after a little while what you wanna try
to do is once you familiarized yourself
with it, is blend the two, the pivot
and the toss, where you can reach.
So you start to map that spot right there,
where you say 'Hey, for my body I can
reach my left hand there, that's
a good throwing spot' and just put it in there
until you're comfortable with it.
And again, it just isn't that difficult to do,
and it's very brain friendly. Now, hey listen,
this may not make you Justin Rose,
or put you on the PGA Tour, but believe me,
it will get you in the neighborhood of good playing.
Gary Player, one of my personal favorites,
possibly yours as well, used to talk about
or I've heard him talk about this,
he had a key of taking the car,
which was his right hand, and putting it
in the garage at the top, he just felt that slot there,
and that was his back-swing key.
So let's have a quick go at that,
then we'll look at solid contact from the other angle.
So, here we go, I'm gonna get set up.
Now, I like to choke all the way sometimes,
and practice this with my right hand only.
There's my spot, there it is.
Yep, I can kinda feel that spot now.
One other little thing here that you might find interesting,
the brain is wired such that when
you do something instinctive and simple like that,
you will never see someone when they do this,
roll the club or do something unnecessary like that,
it will always have a look of efficiency.
It goes right into that spot,
and of course that's something we want.
So let me get set up here, I've had a good feel for it.
Find my spot.
(golf club smacks)
That's a pretty decent shot there.
Felt about the same at the top,
nice and simple too, easy to do on the golf course.
Let's have a look from in front.
Okay, let's talk about solid hit then,
and we'll discuss solid hit when the ball's on the ground,
no tee underneath it, that's what
gives people the most problems.
There's two things you have to do,
round numbers, to get a pretty solid hit.
And you have to understand, these are very very simple,
and that is, where you are at address, at impact,
both your hips and the handle of the club shaft
have to be more forward at impact than they were at address.
Super simple, let me show you a couple
of very quick examples, then we'll come out
and I'll show you a couple of drills
as to how you can do this.
So there's my boyhood idol, Jack Nicklaus,
let's have a look at his hips there
as he takes his address, let's put a little line
on his club shaft, and he was always one
to forward press his club by the way,
but if you look at impact, bam. Quite a lot more forward,
both the hips and the hands forward,
head, as you see, pretty still.
Let's have a look at another great player in action here,
Adam Scott, there's the lines for him.
Again, impact, everything's forward,
and of course that allows him to hit the ball
before he hits the ground.
Any time the handle of the shaft's
forward like that as you hit the ball
you're gonna tend to hit the ground more up here,
and all this movement, all this thrust,
produces a lot of pressure in the shaft against
the golf ball, gives you good distance.
Alright, let's have a look at how you can do it.
Alright, simple way to work on that
and I'll give you a couple of
mental pitfalls I see a lot as well.
Just put a little shaft,
one of these alignment rods in this case,
and just lean it up slightly over the golf ball,
anything'll do like that, and that becomes your reference.
And I've got a short iron, this is an eight,
and we're gonna start with small swings,
and all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna feel,
keeping my head pretty still,
that I can drift past the ball with my hips,
and I can get the handle past the ball before I hit it.
It is not at all difficult.
What tends to get people in trouble,
I promise you I've watched this
so much in my teaching career,
is the attempt to hit at the ball
and to try to make solid contact,
and especially to think too much of club head.
So here's two keys for you, don't think club head,
think club shaft, that's always what you should be doing.
Believe me, move the club shaft well,
and you'll have some success with this,
hit at the ball with the club head,
you won't have success with this.
The other key I think is really helpful for people
is it's your goal at the golf as the golfer
not to hit the ball, but rather to apply pressure
to the ball, that's what you're really trying to do.
You're trying to take that club face
and put pressure on the ball so it compresses and goes.
So if you think club shaft,
and you think pressure, this is a lot easier.
As I generally say in these videos,
critical ingredient is relax, relax your mind,
be a little bit playful, don't prioritize results
straight away, and believe me, if you can't get the handle
and your hips a little bit past that shaft,
you're too mentally stuck there.
So let's try a couple of little shots, small scale.
(golf club smacks)
There we go, you can see the bottom
of the swing well past the shaft there.
That was just a fraction off the bottom of the face,
I'm not worried about that.
My goal is to apply pressure and to feel the shaft moving.
Address.
(golf club smacks)
And again, nice pressure on the club,
and just build it up to bigger and bigger swings,
then dial it down to smaller swings
if you need to go back to it,
it really couldn't be any easier.
So if you can get the car in the garage,
as Gary Player would say, and you can start
to get the feeling for how to apply pressure to the ball,
move a little bit past the ball with your hips
and your handle, your golf swing's gonna function,
it's gonna be simple.
So I hope that helps you with golf swing made simple,
how can you get simple keys and play with some freedom?
If you like the video, please subscribe to the channel,
we have a lot of free content already,
ScratchGolfAcademy.com is my home website,
and we have full courses in every aspect of the game,
and within the full swing category
there's a full course on irons, hope you'll check that out.
Thanks again for your interest in the videos,
hope this helps you play better golf.
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