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 to
02:18look 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, you're sort of 200 yard
03:17plus shots and Alex, what's the advice to help people get a bit more performance out of their
03:23clubs in a scenario like this? I think first off, I would say for higher handicapped golfers,
03:28have more hybrids in your bag than long irons, just a little bit easier, a little bit more
03:33forgiving and they help you get it in the air. Yeah and I think for most people watching this,
03:37a lot of people will already follow that tactic, so how do you get the most out of them? How do
03:41you make sure that you get the strike that you're looking for? Well, I think the misconception with
03:44these is we see it look a bit like a wood with a hybrid or with our longer irons, maybe they
03:49get 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 always think
04:00about it the opposite way. I want you to move the ball, half a ball further back than you would
04:06naturally and focus on making a little bit of a divot target side. So a nice little analogy here,
04:12I've got this tee down on the ground, is think about you've got an out of bound 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
04:22a bit 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
04:40that you hit where you feel that 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
04:55a tight 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 here.
05:57Okay so a nice rule of thumb, anytime you've got a club that's 7-iron and below, I want you to go
06:03and commit to a round of doing this and see what results you get of playing a three-quarter shot.
06:07Okay right. So this example here is 144 yards, would actually be a comfortable, maybe quite a
06:14hard 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
06:20this process. So I'm going to firstly grip down and that would have even amount of grip at the top
06:26of the bottom of the club, rather than being gripped right at the top. How much is that taking off the
06:30shot do you think? For me probably about five yards, but I don't want you to think about it as sort of
06:35in detail as that, just think about it as giving you more control. More control, so you've clubbed out
06:39but giving yourself more control. Exactly. The next thing I want you to think about is just moving
06:43that ball a position back. So my 8-iron would roughly be around let's say just left of my zip,
06:49I'm going to move it just to sort of on my zip for example. And then when you're in the shot,
06:54just make that shoulder height swing through to shoulder height swing and pose that finish for
07:00three seconds, as simple as that. It is simple, I think it's something that we could all do or we
07:04could certainly all at least give it a go, as you say in a practice round, see how well you score.
07:08It could become one of those things that becomes absolutely crucial to you when you're competing
07:13with 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,
07:39it'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
07:47already know where we're going with this, but there's some really important points that we
07:52need to make. Now obviously we're going to tell you to aim in the middle of the green in a scenario
07:55like this and take the flag out of play. The question is Alex, how do you commit to doing
07:59that? Because a lot of mistakes come into play even when people have the right intention in mind.
08:04I think straight away, nice and simple, is picking something out in the far ground.
08:08So for example we've got these alignment sticks aimed at just on the end tree here and that
08:14becomes a real good focus point. Anytime we just aim at the middle of the green we can sort of
08:18maybe get drawn into the flag. So having that discipline, aiming about something in the far
08:23ground is where I go with it. Gives you a bit more focus and then you're saying in practice
08:27you would actually lay some alignment sticks down on the golf course would you? Yeah, if I'm going
08:30out on my own, which sometimes I do in the late summer evenings, I would pick out hard shots like
08:36this at my golf course and firstly put my yellow line down. So this would be my ball to target
08:40line. Really key that we put this one down first because then we can build our stance around with
08:46the 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
08:57to our ball's target line being a little bit right at that. And as you can see from this shot
09:01that's not going to end well. Let's say you're playing in a competition, you don't have your
09:05alignment sticks with you, how are you focusing on this process in that scenario? So I think we
09:11can thank Bernard Langer for this one. I like to stand behind the golf ball, pick out my objective
09:16in the far distance, so we've said this tree, but I would go to the extreme of picking out a leaf on
09:22that tree or a branch. So aim small, miss small, have a better chance of actually getting the green
09:28and achieving our objective or having hopefully a two-put par, but then creating sort of an
09:32intermediate target of a divot. So essentially everything goes back to this yellow line.
09:38Yeah and you can see in the foreground much easier to align yourself with something that's right here
09:42than it is something in the distance. Right this shot is tricky, it's at 175 odd yards isn't it
09:47Alex? It's windy, you're going to have to do it for us. I'm going to 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 list
10:23is about shot selection. Really important especially when it comes to the short game because there's so
10:27many different options. Yeah. Alex we've got three golf balls set out in front of us here to explain
10:32the 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
10:42to go through. If I can chip it, run it. Okay. And then last resort, get it in the air. And now a few
10:49things you've got to take into account when going through that mantra is obviously the lie, the
10:52obstacle in front of you. But in this situation we've got nothing in front of us and we've just
10:58graded what club we're going to use with a difference in the line. Okay fine, so what's then the
11:02sort of thought process, the swing thought for each of these shots? So putting here, I mean it's a
11:09little bit hard. A lot of people would go with take it back this far, go through this far to have a
11:14gauge of distance. How I do it, I make maybe like three or four more practice swings but looking
11:19towards target. Right okay, that just gives you a feel for that distance. Exactly that. Just trying
11:24to see like what I think I've got to put into the shot in order to get it to go that distance. What I
11:29like about that also is that it keeps you quite loose in your grip pressure. So it stops you
11:33getting too tense while you're stood over the ball and that's what you're going to need if you're
11:36going to judge the distance right. Exactly, especially on long puts like this, if you start
11:39tensing up you'll find it hard to get there. We actually need a little bit of a lighter grip
11:43pressure to help us get it that far. Go on then, hit this one for us. So it's going to move a little bit
11:47left to right as it goes over that brow. This is tricky.
11:54I think you judged that. I think that could be pretty good. Really well, get down a bit.
11:59Go on. Very good, nicely played. Okay so then now you're faced with the chip and run shot, what's
12:06the swing thought, the technical approach to the chip and run? So I'm going to play this in my 9-iron.
12:11I use my 9-iron as my chip and run club. 7-iron for me, I just feel it comes off a bit too hot.
12:15Fast, yeah. And I like the fact that 9-iron 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
12:27that shaft angle to get a little bit steeper, put 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 him.
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,
12:52I'm sure you do too, but fewer things can go wrong. Okay, so this is the higher tariff shot
12:56then, this is the wedge shot. How are you thinking about this one? So I've gone with my 50 degree,
13:00many of us might carry three or four different wedges in our bag and this is sort of my lower
13:05lofted specialist wedge. How I play this one is very similar to the last one, to be honest with
13:10you. Okay. I wouldn't change too much apart from ball position. Okay. I'm just going to move it a
13:14little bit more towards the middle, still keep my weight on my left and still keep this triangle in
13:19this sense because I don't really need to play it too high. You don't need to have loads of height,
13:23but you want that little bit more loft, you want that little bit more check control. Exactly. Okay.
13:27So I'm in, picturing the same.
13:33That'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 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
13:52with a par. So there you have it. That's our look at the five best on-course swing tips.
13:57Hopefully you found that useful and a couple of nuggets in there that you can take with you onto
14:01the golf course the next time you play and it should help your scoring. If you've enjoyed the
14:05video, please do hit the like button. But that's it for now from the London Club. Thanks for
14:09watching. We'll see you next time.