In this video Neil Tappin is joined by PGA Professional and Golf Monthly Top 50 Coach Alex Elliott to discuss the 5 best on course swing tips. As we head into the competitive part of the season, these tips are about having just the right level of technical thought to play your best. These tee-to-green tips should help you find a swing that delivers good shots under pressure.
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00:00 Hello everyone, Neil Tappan here from Golf Monthly and welcome to this video in which we're going to
00:03 look at the five best on-course swing tips. Now these are all things that will help you as we head
00:09 into the competitive part of the season, nothing too technical but they're all designed to help
00:13 you think clearly on things that are really going to help you swing the club better and score better
00:18 as well. Now the advice in this video comes courtesy of Alex Elliott, he's one of the Golf
00:22 Monthly top 50 coaches and as I say his advice is really simple and really effective. Right we're
00:28 here at the London Club, let's get started. Right so the first one on our list relates to how you
00:39 prepare for golf shots. Now Alex you've got a line on the ground here, put an alignment stick on the
00:44 ground, why have you done that? I want you to think about this in every single shot, a thinking zone
00:49 and a playing zone. Like golf is one of those sports isn't it where some advices don't think
00:55 about anything, think about this, think about that, whereas I want you to think about two zones where
01:00 you can be a little bit more swing aware, you can think about what swing thoughts or what you've
01:05 been working on with your PJ Pro and then once you step across this line you sort of let the shot
01:11 dictate the swing a little bit more. Okay so tell us then, so if this was you in this scenario and
01:17 you're trying to hit the shot that we're facing here, it's a tricky par five, you need to get a
01:22 good drive down here, what's the first part of the thought process for you and then what's the
01:25 second part? So I'm selecting my club, so in this case it does require a driver on this par five,
01:31 I would then be stood behind my golf ball because I'm taking into account one the shot that I'm
01:36 about to play, straight down target, that's going to help my alignment, but I'm also thinking about
01:41 my two swing thoughts right now. So for me I get a little bit slidey, so I'm making two practice
01:46 swings exaggerating almost no slide and just a lot of turn, so I'm thinking about my swing but I'm
01:54 actually practically putting it into play as well. Right so this is stuff that you would have that
01:58 you're working on at the range, you're focusing on that here, 100% and then you step over that line
02:02 and how does it change? So once I've stepped over that line, what I like to do Neil, this is a
02:06 really good point actually, is stand directly behind my ball though, okay, because then I'm
02:10 actually getting a view of what my ball to target line is, so I'm stepping across this line, I'm
02:15 leaving that baggage behind and all I want you to look at is what shot am I going to play? Now
02:21 for many of us if we're a higher handicapper that might seem a little bit unrealistic, but how I'd
02:26 bring this to life for you is, imagine you're in the trees and you had to hit a low shot, your
02:31 environment would dictate what shot you're about to hit, yeah, yeah, yeah, so I want that to be as
02:34 best you can, picture it, almost play a bit of a shot tracer out in your mind and then when you're
02:39 pulling the trigger, you've got a better chance of playing the shot. Beautiful, slight fade, straight
02:47 down the middle, yeah and I think if you can employ this tactic, it means that you don't have to be
02:52 without any technical thoughts on the golf course, because a lot of people struggle
02:55 with having either too many technical thoughts or too few, this just gives you the structure
03:00 that you need to be able to put it into play in the best way possible and if you do that,
03:04 you should be able to hit shots a little bit like Alex has just hit there. Okay, so for this one,
03:09 we're talking about the longer shots that you need to hit from the fairway, shots that so many
03:13 golfers, myself included, really struggle with, you know, your sort of 200 yard plus shots and Alex,
03:19 what's the advice to help people get a bit more performance out of their clubs in a scenario like
03:24 this? I think first off, I would say for higher handicap golfers, have more hybrids in your bag
03:30 than long irons, just a little bit easier, a little bit more forgiving and they help you get
03:34 it in the air. Yeah and I think for most people watching this, they probably, a lot of people will
03:38 already follow that tactic, so how do you get the most out of them, how do you make sure that you
03:41 get the strike that you're looking for? Well, I think the misconception with these is we see it
03:45 look a bit like a wood with a hybrid or with our longer irons, maybe they get a bit chunkier
03:51 and we put the ball a bit too far forward but then we feel the need to help it up in the air. Now,
03:57 actually in golf, it's a bit counterintuitive to do that, I want you to think about it the
04:01 opposite way. I want you to move the ball, half a ball further back than you would naturally
04:06 okay and focus on making a little bit of a divot target side. So a nice little analogy here,
04:12 I've got this tee down on the ground, is think about you've got an out of bound side behind the
04:16 golf ball, an inbound side on the target side of the golf ball and to start with, just try and make
04:22 a bit of a bruising divot on that target side, yes, and then take that same swing thought of
04:28 the ball a little bit further back and making that divot on target side into your shot. Now,
04:31 this requires a little bit of trust, trust in the fact that the technology at work within the hybrid
04:35 is going to help get the ball up in the air, so I recommend you do this at the range because the
04:39 more shots that you hit where you feel like you're sort of slightly hitting down on it,
04:43 the more comfortable you'll be in a scenario like this on the golf course. But as Alex says,
04:48 have this as a swing thought on the course, it could help. Alex, the stage is set, we've got
04:52 225 yards over water to a tight flag, I can't imagine what could possibly go wrong. I'm going
04:58 to try and aim at the bunker here. Okay, good idea. Here we go, so again I've moved it a little bit
05:03 further back and I'm just focusing on where I'm contacting that ground.
05:07 Safe, pushed, not much of a divot, but I mean I was taking a good look and as you'd expect,
05:16 Alex is a PGA Pro, the divot is slightly after where that tee peg is and if you can have that
05:22 image in mind before hitting shots like this, it gives you a really positive outlook that could
05:26 really make a difference. Okay, so if you want to shoot better scores this year, then hitting the
05:32 ball onto the green from scenarios like this is, I'd say, a bit of a must. 100%. Yeah, and I think,
05:40 Alex, what would be great here is if you could come up with some advice for me to help me become
05:45 a bit more consistent from this sort of yardage, so avoiding hitting those kind of bad shots that
05:49 end up costing you a bogey when you're in actually really a good position. Yeah, I think it's probably
05:53 the most frustrating thing in golf, you feel like you've done the hard work from the tee and you get
05:56 here. Okay, so a nice rule of thumb, anytime you've got a club that's 7-iron and below, I want you to
06:02 go and commit to a round of doing this and see what results you get of playing a three-quarter shot.
06:07 Okay, right. So this example here is 144 yards, would actually be a comfortable, maybe quite a
06:14 hard 9-iron for me. I'm going to go one club more, I'm going to use my 8-iron and I'm going to follow
06:20 this process. So I'm going to firstly grip down and I would have even amount of grip at the top
06:26 of the bottom of the club, rather than being gripped right at the top. How much is that taking off the
06:30 shot do you think? For me, probably about five yards, but I don't want you to think about it as
06:34 sort of in detail as that, just think about it as giving you more control. More control, so you've
06:38 clubbed out but getting yourself more control. Exactly. The next thing I want you to think about
06:42 is just moving that ball a position back. So my 8-iron would roughly be around, let's say,
06:48 just left of my zip. I'm going to move it just to sort of on my zip, for example. And then when
06:53 you're in the shot, just make that shoulder height swing through to shoulder height swing and pose
06:59 that finish for three seconds. As simple as that. It is simple. I think it's something that we could
07:03 all do, or we could certainly all at least give it a go, as you say, in a practice round. See how
07:08 well you score. It could become one of those things that becomes absolutely crucial to you
07:12 when you're competing with a card in hand. 100%. Go on then Alex, have a go for this. Okay, so here we go.
07:19 So I've already gripped down. I'm moving that ball position back and I'm making that tail swing.
07:25 Lovely. Nice draw back towards the flag. And it just looks controlled, doesn't it? I think you
07:34 can just see from Alex's swing there that it's not rushing into the ball. It's controlled,
07:38 it's easy, and that's where consistently good strikes come from. Okay, so we're on the 12th
07:43 hole here at the International. Par 3, as you can see, stretched out behind me. And I suspect you
07:47 already know where we're going with this, but there's some really important points that we need
07:52 to make. Now, obviously, we're going to tell you to aim at the middle of the green in a scenario
07:55 like this and take the flag out of play. The question is, Alex, how do you commit to doing
07:59 that? Because a lot of mistakes come into play even when people have the right intention in mind.
08:03 100%. I think straight away, nice and simple, it's picking something out in the far ground.
08:08 So for example, we've got these alignment sticks aimed at just on the end tree here. And that
08:14 becomes a real good focus point. Anytime we just aim at the middle of the green, we can sort of
08:18 maybe get drawn into the flag. So having that discipline, aiming about something in the far
08:23 ground is where I go with it. Gives you a bit more focus. And then you're saying in practice,
08:27 you would actually lay some alignment sticks down on the golf course, would you? Yeah. If I'm going
08:30 out on my own, which sometimes I do in the late summer evenings, I would pick out hard shots like
08:36 this at my golf course and firstly put my yellow line down. So this would be my ball to target
08:40 line. Really key that we put this one down first because then we can build our stance around with
08:46 the blue alignment stick, our ball to target line. Not the other way around because what I see for
08:52 most golfers, we tend to do a bit of a bad mistake here is aim our body. This would then translate to
08:57 our ball to target line being a little bit right at that. And as you can see from this shot, that's
09:01 not going to end well. Let's say you're playing in a competition, you don't have your alignment
09:05 sticks with you. How are you focusing on this process in that scenario? I think we can thank
09:11 Bernard Langer for this one. I like to stand behind the golf ball, pick out my objective in
09:16 the far distance. So we've said this tree, but I would go to the extreme of picking out a leaf on
09:22 that tree or a branch. So aim small, miss small, have a better chance of actually getting the green
09:28 and achieving our objective of having hopefully a two-put par, but then creating an intermediate
09:33 target of a divot. So essentially everything goes back to this yellow line. And you can see in the
09:39 foreground, much easier to align yourself with something that's right here than it is something
09:43 in the distance. Right, this shot is tricky. It's at 175 odd yards, isn't it Alex? It's windy.
09:48 I'm going to try. So here we go, being disciplined. And like we said, if you're on your own,
09:55 put these down. It's really good for you.
10:02 Beautiful. Looks pretty good. Beautiful. It's actually finishing
10:06 just to the right of that branch that you picked out there. It's perfect. Couldn't be better. So
10:12 I think that that shows if you can have the discipline around how to aim in tricky scenarios
10:17 around the golf course, that will build that positive mindset that you need to hit good shots.
10:21 Okay, so the last tip on our list is about shot selection. Really important, especially when it
10:26 comes to the short game, because there's so many different options. Alex, we've got three golf
10:30 balls set out in front of us here to explain the thinking. What is that thinking? So I use this
10:35 little mantra, and it's something that I do every time I play. If I can put it, put it, which we can
10:40 here because we've only got a little bit of fringe to go through. If I can chip it, run it. And then
10:46 last resort, get it in the air. And now a few things you've got to take into account when going
10:50 through that mantra is obviously the lie, the obstacle in front of you. But in this situation,
10:55 we've got nothing in front of us and we've just graded what club we're going to use with a
10:59 difference in the life. Okay, fine. So what's then the sort of thought process, the swing thought
11:04 for each of these shots? So putting here, I mean, it's a little bit hard. A lot of people would go
11:11 with taking back this far, go through this far to have a gauge of distance. How I do it, I make
11:16 maybe three or four more practice swings, but looking towards target. Right, okay. That just
11:21 gives you a feel for that distance. Exactly that. Just trying to see like what I think I've got to
11:26 put into the shot in order to get it to go like this. What I like about that also is that it keeps
11:30 you quite loose in your grip pressure. So it stops you getting too tense while you stood over the
11:34 ball. And that's what you're going to need if you're going to judge the distance right. Exactly.
11:37 Especially on long puts like this. If you start tensing up, you'll find it hard to get there.
11:41 We actually need a little bit of a lighter grip pressure to help us get it that far. Go on then,
11:45 hit this one for us. So it's going to move a little bit left to right as it goes over that
11:49 brow. This is tricky. I think you judged that. I think that could be pretty good. Really well,
11:57 get out of it. Go on. Very good. Nicely played. Okay, so then now you're faced with the chip and
12:04 run shot. What's the swing thought, the technical approach to the chip and run? So I'm going to
12:09 play this in my nine-nine. I use my nine-nine as my chip and run club. Seven-nine for me,
12:13 I just feel it comes off a bit too hot. Fast, yeah. Yeah, and I like the fact that nine-nine
12:17 gives you a bit of loft as well. So how I play this, I grip right down towards the bottom of
12:24 the grip. I walk in a little bit closer, trying to encourage that shaft angle to get a little bit
12:28 steeper. Pull my left foot back, put my weight on my left with the ball back, and just keep the
12:34 triangle back and through. Simple as that. Go on then. And again, just trying to get it to roll out
12:45 like a putt. Yeah, very good. Simple. And I think that's the key there. If you keep it as simple as
12:49 that, what can go wrong? I know what can go wrong. I'm sure you do too, but fewer things can go wrong.
12:54 Okay, so this is the higher tariff shot, then this is the wedge shot. How are you thinking about this?
12:58 So I've gone with my 50 degree. Many of us might carry three or four different wedges in our bag,
13:03 and this is sort of my lower lofted specialist wedge. How I play this one is very similar to
13:09 the last one, to be honest, isn't it? I wouldn't change too much apart from ball position. I'm
13:14 just going to move it a little bit more towards the middle, still keep my weight on my left,
13:18 and still keep this triangle in this sense, because I don't really need to play it too high.
13:21 You don't need to have loads of height, but you want that little bit more loft, you want that
13:25 little bit more check control. Exactly. Okay, so I'm in, picturing the same.
13:29 That's really well played. Hopefully you can see just how simple Alex has made those.
13:37 Is that going to go in? Not quite. Hopefully you can see how simple Alex has made those three shots
13:43 and that's, I think, the key here. If you can make these shots as simple as possible,
13:49 then you're giving yourself the best possible chance of getting it close and getting away with
13:52 a par. So there you have it. That's our look at the five best on-course swing tips. Hopefully you
13:58 found that useful and a couple of nuggets in there that you can take with you onto the golf course
14:02 the next time you play and it should help your scoring. If you've enjoyed the video,
14:06 please do hit the like button. But that's it for now from the London Club. Thanks for watching.
14:09 We'll see you next time.