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