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