Drills that will help lower your scores.
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00:00So, if you're one of those golfers that really struggles with releasing the club, actually
00:12how you strike the ball when you're doing these kind of short chip shots, I've got a
00:16great little drill just to give you the understanding of how the club passes the body.
00:21Now, what we see, we see two types of poor release patterns when we're talking about
00:26these kind of short shots.
00:27The first one is we've been told at some point that we don't want to use too much wrist,
00:32so what we tend to do is get very wooden, very kind of stiff with our whole upper body
00:38and our arms, and we actually try and then hold the club off.
00:42This is what we call a block release.
00:44The opposite can happen when we get too kind of wristy, and actually we get this kind of
00:49what we call this open sort of early kind of release pattern here, where we actually
00:54return the club at the wrong kind of the wrong way.
00:58So, the drill looks like this.
00:59What I want you to do is take your left hand off and just place it onto your lead thigh,
01:03and I just want you to grip the club as you would normally with your trail arm, and I
01:07want you to feel like it's really nice and soft, and you're just going to practice making
01:12some swings where the club comes up, going to let it just naturally drop, let gravity
01:16do its thing, and actually just get used to brushing the ground.
01:20You can see the club is now releasing past my body.
01:24It's exposing the bounce.
01:25If I do it on the ball, just as a practice, it's here, let it drop, and let it naturally
01:30kind of release.
01:32If I then take another normal shot, put my hands back on, a nice way to just transition
01:37from this is then just with your lead arm, just try and do exactly the same thing, but
01:41let's just grip this nice and lightly to start with.
01:44Just do a couple of practice swings, let the club drop, let it go past your body, and then
01:50let's just try and do one onto the ball.
01:55That's a great way to give you the understanding of how the club releases past your body, stops
02:00you thinning it, stops you hitting all those terrible shots, and start enjoying some good
02:04chips.
02:05This is a game that we call darts.
02:07Very simply, all I want you to do is to take six balls, and I want you to throw them around
02:11the green at very random positions.
02:14Don't change their lie.
02:15Literally throw them and hit from where they finish.
02:19The real pressure comes from this is you're only allowed to do this one time.
02:23You're only allowed to do this once a day, or however many times you come down and practice.
02:27You can't have another go at it.
02:29I want it to resemble you on a golf course with a score, trying to get the best score
02:34that you could possibly do.
02:36All I've got set up here is a little circle, just as a bit of a visual.
02:39It's kind of a four-foot circle that I'm kind of imagining.
02:42All I want to try and do is how many balls can I get at random positions around the green
02:47close to that hole.
02:48If I have a little go, let's see if I can just get one.
02:57I mean, that wasn't bad as a shot, but I'm going to now take these balls.
03:01I'm going to throw them at different locations around the green, and I'm going to see what
03:04score I can get, how many I can get in that circle.
03:08If you're one of those golfers that really struggles to make a good strike, one of the
03:12things that could be happening is you're decelerating the club throughout the downswing.
03:17That's one of the things that I see a lot of high handicappers do.
03:21They take the club so far back for such a short shot, the brain is very good at making
03:27its own calibration, and it kind of just goes, well, if I make a normal swing and I flush
03:32it, I'm just going to nut it over the back.
03:34What they do is they then naturally start to slow down.
03:37Unfortunately, what then happens is the club is then decelerating to the point of when
03:42it strikes.
03:44What really good chippers do is the complete opposite.
03:46The club is actually accelerating past the ball, so the fastest point of the swing is
03:52just past the golf ball.
03:54One of the really nice drills that I like to practice, I've just got six balls here
03:57at the green, and all I'm going to try and do is take a nicer, shorter backswing back.
04:02I'm going to feel like I'm accelerating through, and I'm going to do a slightly longer finish.
04:07It's not going to be too far back, nice and short, longer finish through.
04:12The whole idea with this is the club is accelerating towards the target.
04:17One of the problems that some people do when they try this for the first time is actually
04:20they go really too short, and they sort of stab at it.
04:24I still want you to keep your nice tempo, your nice rhythm, let that club fall, but
04:29always make sure you're accelerating through to the target.
04:33This is a nice little drill just to give you a good kind of understanding of how you can
04:37select and choose different clubs based on the shot that you're just about to face.
04:42What I've got here is I've just got two markers, two cones, one really short, and then one
04:48really closer to the hole.
04:50The idea being is just with four balls, I want you to throw the first one and really
04:54get this childlike instinct of actually what have you got to do to get the ball to start
04:59to land close to that first orange marker, and then roll the rest of the way.
05:04What I'm going to do is try it, first of all, at just a nice little throw, close to there,
05:09and let it roll out.
05:11What I want to see is can I get the club to do that same kind of height and get that same
05:16kind of release?
05:17I'm going to practice going through some different clubs, and actually let's see if I can mimic
05:22and copy that exact same flight.
05:26It was nice and low, it's going to land, hopefully, close there and release out.
05:34I've just hit that slightly a bit too hard, but I'm going to try the next one.
05:37With the next one, I just want to see is can I get the same thing to go higher and stop
05:41faster?
05:42Again, if I was to do this shot, I'm going to throw it nice and high, get it so it's
05:48going to hopefully stop ready to be close.
05:50I'm pretty good at throwing, it's the shot that's the problem.
05:54I then get a nice lob way, so I'm going to try and get a nice high one, and I'm going
05:58to try and do the same thing, get the club to mimic and copy what I've just did.
06:04Get nicely underneath it, and let it release up to the flag.
06:10Try this with loads of different shots, different distances, and just get used to throwing one
06:14first so you can really feel what you need to do, and then take different clubs, try
06:19different clubs, and give this a go, I promise you it'll really help with your game.