What is your golf equipment telling you about your swing? In this video Neil Tappin and Alex Elliott discuss some of the warning signs you should be on the lookout for.
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00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappin here from Golf Monthly and welcome to West Hill Golf Club
00:08and this video in which we are looking at the five important clues your golf equipment
00:12is giving you about the way in which you're swinging the club. We're going to look at
00:15everything from the wear marks on your glove and your grip, tee marks on your driver and
00:20also any marks that you might have on your wedges. They're really important clues about
00:24the way you're delivering the club to the ball. Now the advice in this video comes from
00:28Alex Elliott. He's a PGA professional. His tips are really simple and concise, really
00:32easy to follow. Guys, if you're new to the Golf Monthly channel, please do hit the subscribe
00:36button to make sure that you don't miss any of our videos. Hit the like button if you like
00:39what you're watching and also please do leave comments below. Is there anything you've missed
00:42or is there any more information or advice that you're looking for? Let us know. We're
00:46more than happy to help. Right, let's head over, meet Alex and find out what these five
00:50important clues are from your golf equipment.
00:54Okay, so number five on our list relates to your glove and the clues that might be there
01:01for you to see with your glove. What are the areas of wear on the glove that people need
01:05to be aware of and need to try to avoid? Two main areas really. One is that excessive
01:11wear through the palm. Right. And then usually we see it as kind of a combination. We get excessive
01:15wear here, then as a result we get excessive wear along the thumb as well. In the thumb. So,
01:20yeah, look at your own glove. Take a moment. Get your golf equipment out. Have a look at
01:24the gloves. See if you've got any wear in the thumb and in the palm. Why is that not
01:28good? Ultimately, if I demonstrate now with a golf club, if I get a grip or take a hold
01:33of a club when it's too much through my palm, I want to rely on the thumb and the forefinger
01:37to kind of take the weight. But ultimately, it stops us creating a lot of wrist set or wrist
01:42hinge throughout the swing. And a common thing that I see is that a lot of the time that we
01:46get this, we then got to sacrifice bending of our lead arm to complete the swing. Ultimately
01:50because we can't set the wrist. Hinge your wrist properly. Exactly.
01:53Fine. So what about the sort of general state of your golf glove? Firstly, at what point should
01:59people chuck a glove away? At what point is it redundant? And secondly, how long should
02:04it take you to get to a point where it's redundant? I think if we look at it and said, if your glove
02:08was wearing very quickly, then we might be gripping it too hard and we might then have issues in
02:13our grip and just general wear and tear happens too quickly. I would say, one, it depends
02:17on how much rain you're playing. Yeah, how often do you play golf?
02:19Yeah. I would say nine, 10 rounds. And that should be somewhere that would be probably very
02:26taking care of their appearance and wanting to have a nice fresh glovery time. You could
02:29probably get a bit longer. Yeah. But I'd say probably two or three a season would be a
02:32good. Yeah, fine. So more either, I mean, nine, 10 rounds, that's quite, if you're somebody
02:37that is really into your golf equipment, you want your stuff to be. If you're not, so also don't
02:41forget, you can store old gloves in your bag and use them when you practice. That's a
02:44good thing to do. Exactly. Exactly.
02:46So look out for wear and tear on your glove. It could hold some important clues as to what
02:50you might be doing wrong in your swing.
02:54Okay, so the next one on the list relates to wear marks on your golf clubs. On my golf clubs,
03:00without question, commonly, my wear marks tend to be slightly more towards the heel than
03:06they are towards the centre, which is a dangerous place to have your wear marks. And Alex, you're
03:10got a driver there. What's the thing for people to be wary of with the wear marks on their driver?
03:16I think if we say people too wary with driver that seeing the ball flight could just be due
03:20to your strike. And if you've got a kind of a wearing of your strike towards the heel or
03:25towards the toe, this could have a massive impact on your ball flight.
03:29So what you're saying is that you could end up seeing the ball drawing or fading when actually
03:34your swing isn't the problem. It's actually the strike that's causing that. Yeah, exactly.
03:39Because we've got a driver here and we've got all modern drivers now very forgiving. They've
03:42got the centre of gravity low and far back. This creates gear effect in the driver. So
03:46if I was to hit one out the heel now, this would cause the heel of the club to kick back
03:50a little bit, the ball to work in the opposite direction, and we might actually start seeing
03:54a slice or a big fade curvature.
03:56And then you'd end up possibly putting some drills into play or working on your swing thinking
04:01that you're coming over the top of it when actually that's not the case.
04:04Exactly that. And then the same thing would happen from the toe. People that are hooking
04:07the ball excessively could just be that they're catching this ball out the toe, the toe kicks
04:12back a little bit, the ball works like cogs and gears in the opposite direction, causes
04:16that ball to move right to the left curvature.
04:17Okay, fine. So how do you work on the quality of strike? What's something that we all need
04:22to do from time to time? Doesn't matter what handicap you are, how do you do it?
04:26Foot spray, really, really easy. Or even when you go to a driver fitting, you can get this
04:29face tape that you put on it. Now that will affect the ball flight because of friction,
04:33so foot sprays would be your best option here. And just seeing, actually, well, where am
04:38I striking the ball? Because with all modern drivers, because they are so forgiving, it's
04:42hard to know where you hit it from.
04:43Yes, yeah.
04:44So actually getting, okay, well, I'm a little bit towards the toe.
04:47I'm towards the toe, yes.
04:48Guilty of that all the time.
04:49Yeah, and so what, then you can just start to make compensations in your own kind of games.
04:54I guess another, a drill, an easy drill that I would do. So imagine I would tee the golf
04:58ball up on the middle. I would then place a tee just inside this and I would try and
05:03take out the inside tee and that would hopefully move my strike from the toe into the middle
05:08and vice versa, tee a ball up and put a tee just peg just outside the golf ball and try
05:13and take out the outside tee peg as well. And again, moving that strike from heel to the
05:16middle.
05:17I think we can all agree that striking the ball from the centre of the club face is fairly
05:20important when it comes to golf. There's some great tips there from Alex to help you
05:24first identify where your strike pattern is and then to hone it in so that you get it
05:28a little bit more centred a little bit more often.
05:31Good shot.
05:39Now one of the most obvious signs to look out for with your golf equipment is the tee marks
05:43that get left on your driver after you've hit a shot. Take a look at the sole plate of
05:46your driver. You'll probably see where the tee is running. And Alex, what's the thing that
05:51people need to look out for here? The most common fault that you think people need to look out for?
05:55So the most common ball flight is left to right, slice, whether that be for a right-handed
05:58player or a left-handed player as well. And these tee marks will generally run from the
06:04heel all the way across to the toe on a sort of diagonal motion.
06:08Okay, now a good question here for you then is why does it start on the heel? Why exactly
06:13do the tee marks begin on that path? Because it would suggest that we've got a path that's
06:17travelling from out to in. So if I showed you here over-exaggerated, this club head would
06:21be travelling from outside the line to inside the line. So we could imagine like we're grating
06:26across this ball and that tee is slashing across the sole of your club.
06:30So question then, if the person watching this hits a fairly consistent fade, is that a problem?
06:37No, I mean, what I would say though, the more your path is out to in, the more diagonal
06:42that these tee marks will probably become. Fine, so if yours are particularly aggressive,
06:46they're going kind of sideways across, then it is something you need to sort of work on.
06:50If that's the case, how do you work on it?
06:53A really nice simple drill and what I always try and get people to react to kind of a scenario
06:59in front of them, if we imagine that I've placed a tree in front of you, a lot of people
07:02that would have an object in front of them would actually go, oh yeah, I know how to move it
07:06from right to left around that, I can do that. So I go, right, okay, if we picture we've got a tree in front of us,
07:11what would we do? How would we manipulate our swing to do so?
07:14Okay, fine.
07:15A lot of people would make that adjustment, okay, aim a little bit up the right,
07:18and they would naturally swing a little bit more to the right and have a slightly different release pattern as well.
07:24Okay, and if you got it right, that would mean that the tee marks started in the toe
07:27and then went towards the heel, is that right?
07:28Hopefully, yeah. I would say that I would generally want to see it go the opposite way.
07:31Some people may have that if they're a draw of the ball or hook the golf ball,
07:34they may have it travelling from toe to heel.
07:37But I would say that drill would probably hopefully get people close to neutral.
07:41Even though it feels quite excessive, it probably gets them quite neutral,
07:45maybe even just a little bit off to the right.
07:47Okay, go on then, Alex, hit one more for us.
07:48So we're imagining we've got our tree just in front of us,
07:50we're going to try and feel that we create the opposite.
07:52So remember, before the tee marks were working this way, across the golf ball,
07:57we're going to try and feel the absolute opposite.
08:04Good shot.
08:09Right, so the next one on our list relates to your wedges
08:11and where the wear marks are around about the sole.
08:14So, Alex, what we're going to talk about in this part is about angle of attack,
08:17how steep you are into the ball.
08:19Definitely.
08:20And there's going to be two clues.
08:21It's going to be the divot on the ground and then where the marks are on your wedge.
08:26Talk us through it.
08:27First off, I see a lot of people that struggle with that kind of steep contact in the back of the ball,
08:32or one that fires out really low and spinny and out of control,
08:36is that a lot of the time people get this steep angle of descent into the ball.
08:39So the club would almost get stuck in the ground and we create a big divot.
08:43And when this ground is wet, we also take a long, large divot as well,
08:47especially over a pitching distance.
08:49So one would be a steep divot, so a very deep divot.
08:53And then secondly, we'd probably start to see a little bit of wear around this leading edge
08:57because that's in a lot of contact in the ground.
08:59We start then to see a lot of wear around this area.
09:01Okay, fine.
09:02So if you were using the sole of your wedge as so many coaches are now teaching the short game,
09:08you would get more of an even wear across the bottom of the sole
09:11because you'd be using that sole a little bit more often.
09:13I mean, that would be kind of the overall general statement.
09:16The thing that we know with wedge is we get a bad line,
09:18we might have to manufacture a shot and be a bit steeper.
09:21Fine.
09:22But as a general rule of thumb, yes.
09:23For a basic sort of short game shot like the one we're facing here.
09:26Now, one thing I would say is that over the years,
09:29people have been told that in order to get spin,
09:31in order to get that one that bounces up and then checks,
09:33you want to be steeper into the ball, you want to kind of drive it in there.
09:36But actually, that's not what you're advocating.
09:38I mean, to create spin, it's something called spin loft.
09:41So it's a difference between the loft you've got on your face and your angle of attack.
09:44So it's the vector that you create between it.
09:46Now, there is a mean point at which you go beyond this point,
09:48it'll drop off a scale and you won't create any spin.
09:51But generally, more loft and either moving face up,
09:55so adding more loft or steepening angle of attack and keeping the same face will add spin.
10:00The thing you've got to understand here is that if you move your angle of attack and face by the same amount,
10:05or you're going to change your trajectory.
10:08Changing one of these vectors will create some spin.
10:10Okay, fine. So show us how you play this particular shot.
10:13Granted, this is probably like, as a playing point of view,
10:15it's probably one of my worst areas of my game.
10:17But the analogy that I like to use, because I'm one of the people that do get steep into the back of the ball,
10:21I like to think of the bottom of this club being the wheels of a plane.
10:24So I like to feel like I just get the wheels of the plane just touching down.
10:27Right. Okay. Just brushing the ground.
10:28Yeah. So not crash landing.
10:29Yeah.
10:30And not aborting the landing and scooping it.
10:32Just feeling like I'm going to get it brushing the ground.
10:34Okay. Good.
10:35Hopefully like your plane was.
10:36Yeah. Nice analogy. I like it.
10:44Very nice.
10:46It's in.
10:47Very good.
10:48And you'll see, I think through the camera, you should be able to see there's a divot there,
10:52but it isn't too bad. It's not, it's not too deep a divot.
10:55No, it's a nice divot.
10:56It's a nice divot.
10:57So something to look out for with your wedges.
10:58If you do struggle with your short game,
11:00the chances are you're probably a little steep into the ball.
11:03You're probably hitting down a little bit too much into the back of it.
11:07Clubs gets caught in the turf.
11:08All sorts of bad things can happen.
11:10Try and shallow out that angle of attack.
11:11You could hit a few more shots just like that one.
11:18Okay. So for the next one,
11:19you might want to grab your driver and take a look at the grip.
11:22See if there are any areas on the grip of your driver where there are wear marks.
11:26Alex, what's the thing to look out for here?
11:28It would be where my top hand, my thumb meets the golf club here.
11:32Now, if you're someone who excessively has excessive grip tension.
11:35So say for example, 10 out of 10 was strangling it.
11:38And you've had that with the driver,
11:39we would start to see sort of a wear pattern in that same place.
11:43Another thing it would be if your grip was moving a little bit as well.
11:47So your actual grip is slightly changing during the swing.
11:50Yeah, exactly.
11:51Right. Okay. I wouldn't have thought that people did that.
11:53I wouldn't have thought you could hang on to the golf club if you did that.
11:55It does.
11:56Ultimately, when we grab the golf club, our thumb works slightly upwards.
12:00So it kind of retracts in slightly.
12:02So anytime that some people kind of have a long thumb,
12:04it's kind of what I call, it's not as stable.
12:07So it can move a little bit more, a bit more rigid.
12:09So this again would add to wear on that area of the club.
12:12But for me, it's where people have excessive grip tension, which is one of the main points.
12:17Yes, which is what I was wanting to ask you about.
12:19So as far as grip tension goes and grip pressure, what's the advice?
12:23A really nice, simple one.
12:25Imagine your grip now is a tube of toothpaste and it's open at the end.
12:29We don't want to squeeze the toothpaste out.
12:31We want to just put enough tension onto that grip where we've got our hands lightly on the club.
12:36Why don't you want to grip it too hard?
12:38I mean, all fine, but why don't you?
12:42What's the problem with gripping it so hard?
12:44Big thing is release.
12:45If you were to grip it really hard now, this tension then travels up your forearms.
12:49So it's a lot less of a forearm release and arms and body working together.
12:53We're more likely to hold on to this club face.
12:55Okay.
12:56Other points are in terms of actually creating a turn during the backswing,
12:59that tension travels up the body.
13:00Up the body, right.
13:01So you can find the tension spreads from your hands up through your arms.
13:04Definitely.
13:05And then before you know it, you're not actually turning very effectively.
13:07Yeah, and if we've got that tension on the range, we turn to the first tee as well.
13:11And that's where we're probably going to be most nervous.
13:13Okay, go on then, hit one for us.
13:14So I'm trying to feel like I'm gripping a tube of toothpaste.
13:22Good shot.
13:23So there you have it.
13:24Those were our five most important clues that come from your golf equipment
13:28about the way in which you're swinging the club.
13:30If you've liked what you watched, please do hit the like button.
13:33And also leave some comments below.
13:34Have you got any questions about anything we've talked about in this video?
13:37We'd be more than happy to help out and give some answers where we can.
13:40And have we missed anything out?
13:42Are there any signs that your golf equipment is giving you about your swing
13:46that you'd like some information on?
13:47Again, we'd be more than happy to help out.
13:49But for now, from West Hill, it's goodbye.
13:51We'll see you next time.
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