Lesson With Nick Dougherty To Improve your Game - Episode 1
In the first episode of Game Improved: 10 year-old Josh Jackson gets a golf lesson from Nick Dougherty
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00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappan here from Golf Monthly and welcome to Wentworth Club
00:03and the first in a special three-part series in which we've got
00:07three normal amateur golfers and we're going to give them to Nick Doherty for
00:11the day to see whether Nick can help them play
00:14better golf. So we're here at Wentworth and we're going to head out onto the
00:17west course, they're going to play three holes with Nick and then they're
00:19going to get some individual one-on-one lesson time to see what
00:23advice Nick can offer them to help them shoot lower scores. So our
00:27first golfer is a 10-year-old junior who plays with a
00:30handicap of nine. Very impressive golfer, the question is
00:33how will Nick help him improve? Let's go and find out.
00:47Right Josh, so first question, what's your handicap?
00:51I'm off nine at the moment. And how long have you been playing for? Because you're only
00:55what, 10 years old? Yep, so I've been playing since I was two.
00:59And I take it your handicap has come down pretty quickly this year, so we're
01:02filming this in end of September, what would it have been
01:05at the start of the year do you think? So start of the year it was about
01:1014. Okay. So it's come down quite a lot because of summer and playing a lot of
01:15golf. Yeah and I've seen you hit the ball quite a bit and
01:18I can confirm you hit it very nicely but what's, how's your feeling about where
01:22your game is at, what's your strengths, what do you think your weaknesses are?
01:25I think yeah golf is good at the moment, I'd say my strength is probably my driving,
01:29I could probably still improve my wedges, chipping and putting.
01:33So you're going to have access to somebody who used to be on the European
01:36Tour, he's one of the sort of best pundits in the game, what do you think
01:39you'd like to learn from Nick, what are the questions that you want to answer?
01:42Probably a few questions about being on tour. Oh yeah. I'd say I'm
01:46quite interested about that and how hard is it to get there?
01:52Well it's a very exciting proposition in front of us. Right
01:55let's head out to the golf course and meet Nick.
02:22We'd have more tees and you go, you're going to make a circle around.
02:26Perfect, two. It's a little bit more backswing. Using that bounce as the
02:32thing, you throw more speed at it but you keep using the bounce, get that foot
02:36open, get that knee over that foot. Nice. That's it, plenty of power into it.
02:44Lovely, what a shot. To go down the slope,
02:49so the only way, so you almost want to feel like you're soft in your knees as
02:52you go down the slope. You're back where the rock is, the rock,
02:55rock. So feel that in there, look at the nice thing, step away, not too close to
02:58the balls.
03:02Right Nick, so let's start with Josh. We firstly played three holes
03:07and what were your first impressions of the way that Josh hits the ball?
03:10He drives it like I wish I did when I was playing on tour,
03:13he drives it like I wish I did when I was playing on tour.
03:17Phenomenal, really great golf swing, good attitude as well.
03:21I think for Josh, the most important stuff was
03:25getting the most out of the skills that he already has. Playing off nine,
03:28you know, is still immense at this age and he's progressing nicely. He's going
03:32to get naturally bigger and stronger, so the rest of it should take care of
03:36itself. So for him, I think it was a little bit more
03:39about selection of shots maybe and maybe a bit more strategy orientated
03:43in how he could improve whilst he just naturally develops in all the other
03:46areas. So what would be the general advice then in terms of strategy?
03:50Is there anything in there that you can offer people that they might be able to
03:53take into their own game? I think this is helpful for
03:55juniors in particular because we all remember being juniors, those of us that
03:58have played from a young enough age. When you get to a level where you start
04:02to spin the golf ball, it becomes something that's very
04:05addictive. And it's a feel good, and to be fair,
04:09it's a testament to quality of strike and
04:12Josh has that. But sometimes it will lead him to play a more challenging shot
04:16than the one he needs to. The name of the game is how many shots did it take,
04:20not how pretty did they look. So I think one of the things with
04:23Josh that I wanted to try and instill was
04:26pick something that we could reproduce more regularly
04:29with in terms of shot selection around the greens. So for that, we used the idea
04:33of landing it a set point on the green, barring
04:36something weird going on with the green, like the elephant's graveyard at
04:39St Andrew's, some of that, which might influence your shot. Normal green in front
04:42of you, trying to land it roughly a couple of
04:44yards on every time, and then using that landing point then to
04:47tell us what sort of shot should we be playing here, so what club.
04:50So wherever that flag is in relation to that landing point will tell us
04:54is it tight to it, in which case it might be the 60 degree, or for Josh it'd be a
04:5858. Is it a 52? If there's a whole load of
05:01green to work with, like maybe across the 11th, one of the holes we played today,
05:05maybe we get down to 9, 8, 7, you know, and have a nice
05:09simple action, which he does already have, but he was picking a shot that
05:13was much more basic for him. But also you could see when I set him up, and again
05:17this is something sort of tapping into things to work on through the winter and
05:20stuff, when we made him dial in on
05:23competing to land it in the right place, so competing normally is did you get it
05:27up and down, you know, whereas we moved it to can you
05:31deliver this skill, which is hitting those landing points.
05:34Got it. Really good. So if he can do that time and time again, he's going to have
05:37an electric short game, and I'd hazard a guess that Josh will
05:40shave a ton of strokes off his game by becoming just really, really effective at
05:45the simple stuff around the greens. And what's quite interesting, and I was
05:47standing in the background watching all of this as it took place, is that
05:50that element of like having a challenge as you practice, which is more than just
05:54getting up and down as you say, but actually can you land it on this towel
05:56or hit it into this circle on the green, is something that for a junior
06:00golfer is really going to hopefully engage a little bit more in what you're
06:04trying to do. Practice sucks, you know, it's like, I mean, for especially for kids
06:08it's the boring bit, you know, they want to be out there trying to beat their
06:11pals, playing in competitions, but we've got to work at it, you know,
06:14that's how we groom these skills. So the best thing we can do, and
06:18actually to get the most out of that practice, is to make it more
06:21performance orientated, which is what most practice isn't.
06:25The most guilty thing I see from amateur golfers
06:28of the way they go about what they do, is the way they practice, really poor,
06:32and I've been a culprit over the years as well, scrape hit, scrape hit, scrape hit,
06:35you're wasting your time, unless you're purely grooving a movement,
06:40but even still it should be conscious, you should be engaged with it, because in
06:44the end you have to engage when you get out here on the golf course. If I take
06:46any amateur anywhere in the world and put them on that first tee in the BMW PGA
06:51to hit that tee shot, those feelings, how those arms feel, how they feel inside,
06:56will feel completely different to if I said, there's a range, there's no one on,
07:00it is a couple hundred balls, have a good day,
07:02because bored, almost bored, casual, and sometimes it might not even be good
07:06because they're just not focused at all, but the fact is you do that to prepare
07:11for this, if we can bring the pressure to the practice,
07:14and in a fun way as well, and create that challenge,
07:17then one, it might also shift this to feeling more like a fun challenge, rather
07:20than, oh my goodness, I'm terrified the club championships next week,
07:24for adults, less so for kids, to being like, this is fun, it's a challenge,
07:28and also you're used to having to do it under a bit of pressure,
07:31and that means that then when you step on that first tee, there is a comfort in
07:35thinking, this isn't as different, sure it's
07:38different, just like if I put someone in a position like I have to win
07:41on tour, or to play in the masters, or teed up on the first tee at the open in
07:44your home city, that would be terrifying and feel
07:47uncomfortable to them, but you get used to it the more you put
07:50yourself in that position, so if we're doing that in our practice, we make the
07:52stuff on the course a lot easier. So there you have it, some really simple
07:56and effective ways to think about game plan and strategy when
07:59you're on the golf course, and also how to practice as well, some
08:02simple advice there for Josh, and hopefully for you too, to help you
08:05improve. So there you have it, some really simple and effective advice from Nick
08:09for Josh on how to improve by building a better strategy, and then how to work
08:13particularly on his short game. Obviously Nick is a
08:16player who's been there, and who's done it before,
08:19and having that kind of tour player level insight is something that should
08:22really help Josh as he continues to improve his golf game,
08:26and hopefully there's some stuff in there that should really help you as
08:29well. That's it for now from Wentworth, thanks very much for watching,
08:32we'll see you next time.