- 7 months ago
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
01:45get 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,
02:08if your glove was wearing very quickly, then we might be gripping it too hard and we might
02:12then have issues in our grip and just general wear and tear happens too quickly. I would
02:16say, one, it depends how much rain you're playing. Yeah. How often do you play golf?
02:20Yeah. I would say nine, 10 rounds. And that would be somewhere that would be probably very
02:26taking care of their parents and wanting to have a nice fresh glovery time. You could probably
02:29get a bit longer. Yeah. But I'd say probably two or three a season would be a good.
02:33Yeah. 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. So look out for wear and tear on your glove. It could
02:48hold some important clues as to what you 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
03:11got driver there. What's the thing for people to be wary of with the wear marks on their
03:15driver? I think if we say people to wear with driver that seeing the ball flight could just
03:20be due to your strike. And if you've got a kind of a wearing of your strike towards the
03:24heel or towards the toe, this could have a massive impact on your ball flight.
03:28So 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.
03:38Because we've got a driver here and we've got all modern drivers now very forgiving. They've
03:41got 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. And then you'd end up possibly putting some drills into
03:59play or working on your swing thinking that you're coming over the top of it when actually
04:02that's not the case. Exactly. Exactly that. And then the same thing would happen from the toe.
04:06People that are hooking the ball excessively could just be that they're catching this
04:10ball out the toe, the toe kicks back a little bit, the ball works like cogs and gears in
04:14the opposite direction, causes that ball to move right to 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?
04:25Foot 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. So foot sprays
04:34would be your best option here. And just seeing actually, well, where am I striking the ball?
04:39Because with all modern drivers, because they are so forgiving, it's hard to know where you
04:42hit it from. Yes. Yeah. So actually getting, okay, well, I'm a little bit towards the toe.
04:47I'm towards the toe. Yes. Guilty 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 ball
04:59up on the middle. I would then place a tee just inside this and I would try and take
05:03out 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. I think we can all agree that striking the ball from the centre of the club face is
05:20fairly important 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 tone it in so that you get it a little
05:28bit more centred a little bit more often.
05:31Good shot. Now, one of the most obvious signs to look out for with your golf equipment is
05:42the tee marks that get left on your driver after you've hit a shot. Take a look at the
05:46sole plate of your driver. You'll probably see where the tee is running. And Alex, what's
05:50the thing that people need to look out for here? The most common fall that you think
05:54people need to look out for? So most common ball flight is left to right, slice, whether
05:57that be for a right-handed player or a left-handed player as well. And these tee marks will generally
06:03run from the heel all the way across to the toe on a sort of diagonal motion.
06:08Okay. Now, good question here for you then is why does it start in the heel? Why exactly
06:13does 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
06:21will be travelling from outside the line to inside the line. So we could imagine like
06:25we're grating across 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.
06:51If that's the case, how do you work on it? A really nice, simple drill and what I always
06:56try and get people to react to kind of a scenario in front of them. If we imagine that I've placed
07:01a tree in front of you, a lot of people that would have an object in front of them would
07:05actually go, oh yeah, I know how to move it from right to left around that. I can do that.
07:09So I go, right. Okay. If we picture, we've got a tree in front of us, what would we do?
07:12How would we manipulate our swing to do so? Okay, fine.
07:15A lot of people would make that adjustment. Okay. Aim a little bit up the right and they
07:19would naturally swing a little bit more to the right and have a slightly different release
07:23pattern as well. Okay. And if you got it right, that would mean that the tee mark started in
07:27the toe and then went towards the heel. Is that right?
07:28Yeah. I would say that I would generally want to see it go the opposite way. Some people may have
07:32that if they're a draw of the ball or hook the golf ball, they may have it traveling from toe to heel.
07:38But I would say that drill would probably hopefully get people close to neutral, even though it
07:42feels quite excessive, it probably gets them quite neutral, maybe even just a little bit
07:46off to the right. Okay. Go on then, Alex, hit one more for us.
07:49So we're imagining we've got our tree just in front of us. We're going to try and feel
07:52that we create the opposite. Remember before the tee marks are working this way across the
07:57golf ball, we're going to try and feel the absolute opposite.
07:59Good shot.
08:05Right. So the next one on our list relates to your wedges and 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, how steep you are
08:19into the ball. And there's going to be two clues. It's going to be the divots on the ground and then
08:24where the marks are on your wedge. Talk us through it. First off, I see a lot of people that struggle
08:29with that kind of steep contact in the back of the ball or like one that fires out really low
08:34and spinny and out of control is that a lot of the time people get this steep angle of descent
08:39into the ball. So the club would almost get stuck in the ground and we create a big divot. And when
08:44this ground is wet, we also take a long, large divot as well, especially over a pitching distance.
08:49So one would be a steep divot. So a very deep divot. And then secondly, we'd probably start to see a
08:55little bit of wear around this leading edge because that's in a lot of contact in the ground. We start
09:00and see a lot of wear around this area.
09:01Okay, fine. So if you were using the sole of your wedge as so many coaches now teaching the short game,
09:08you would get more of an even wear across the bottom of the sole because you'd be using that sole
09:12a little bit more often.
09:13I mean, that would be kind of the overall general statement. The main thing that we know with wedges,
09:18we get a bad line, we might have to manufacture a shot and be a bit steeper, but as a general rule of thumb, yes.
09:23For a basic sort of short game shot like the one we're facing here. Now, one thing I would say is that
09:28over the years, people have been told that in order to get spin, in order to get that one that bounces up
09:32and then checks, you want to be steeper into the ball. You want to kind of drive it in there.
09:36Yeah. But actually, that's not what you're advocating.
09:38I mean, to create spin, it's something called spin loft. So it's a difference between the loft you've got on your face
09:43and your angle of attack. So it's the vector that you create between it. Now, there is a mean point
09:47which you go beyond this point, it'll drop off a scale and you won't create any spin.
09:51But generally, more loft and either moving face up, so adding more loft, or steepening the angle
09:58of attack and keeping the same face will add spin. The thing you've got to understand here is that
10:03if you move your angle of attack and face by the same amount, or you're going to change your
10:07trajectory. Changing 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, it's probably one of my worst areas
10:17of my game. But the analogy that I like to use, because I'm one of the people that do get steep
10:20into the back of the ball, I like to think of the bottom of this club being the wheels of a plane.
10:24So I like to feel that I just get the wheels of the plane just touching down.
10:27Right. Okay. Just brushing the ground.
10:28Yeah. So not crash landing and not aborting the landing and scooping it.
10:32Just feeling I'm going to get it brushing the ground.
10:34Okay, good.
10:35Hopefully like you're playing this.
10:36Yeah. Nice analogy. I like it. Very nice.
10:48Very good. And you'll see, I think through the camera, you should be able to see there's a divot
10:52there, but it isn't too bad. It's not too deep.
10:55No, it's a nice divot.
10:56It's a nice divot. So something to look out for with your wedges. If you do struggle with your
11:00short game, the chances are you're probably a little steep into the ball. You're probably hitting down a
11:05little bit too much into the back of it. Clubs gets caught in the turf. All sorts of bad things
11:09can happen. Try and shallow out that angle of attack. You could hit a few more shots just like that one.
11:18Okay. So for the next one, you 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. Alex,
11:26what's the thing to look out for here?
11:28It would be where my top hand, my thumb meets the golf club here. Now, if you're someone who excessively
11:34has excessive grip tension, so say for example, 10 out of 10 was strangling it and you had that
11:39with the driver, we would start to see sort of a wear pattern in that same place. Another thing,
11:44it 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. I wouldn't have thought you could hang
11:53on to the golf club if you did that.
11:55It does. Ultimately, when we grab the golf club, our thumb works slightly upwards, so it kind of
12:01retracts in slightly. So any time that some people kind of have a long thumb, it's kind of what I
12:06call, it's not as stable, so it can move a little bit more, a bit more rigid. So this again would add
12:11to wear on that area of the club. But for me, it's where people have excessive grip tension, which is
12:17one of the main points. Yes, which is what I was wanting to ask you about. So as far as grip tension
12:21goes and grip pressure, what's the advice? A really nice, simple one. Imagine your grip now is a tube of
12:27toothpaste and it's open at the end. We don't want to squeeze a toothpaste out. We want to just put
12:32enough tension onto that grip where we've got our hands lightly on the club. Why don't you want to
12:38grip it too hard? I mean, all fine, but why don't you? What's the problem with gripping it so hard?
12:44Big thing is release. If 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. We're more likely to
12:54hold on to this club face. Okay. Other points are in terms of actually creating a turn during the
12:59backswing that tension travels up the body. Up the body, right. So you can find the tension spreads
13:03from your hands up through your arms and then before you know it, you're not actually turning
13:07very effectively. Yeah, 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. Okay, go on then, hit one for us.
13:15So I'm trying to feel like I'm gripping a tube of toothpaste.
13:18Good shot. So there you have it. Those were our five most important clues that come from your golf
13:27equipment about the way in which you're swinging the club. If you've liked what you watched, please
13:32do hit the like button and also leave some comments below. Have you got any questions about anything
13:36we've talked about in this video? We'd be more than happy to help out and give some answers where we
13:40can. And have we missed anything out? Are there any signs that your golf equipment is giving you about
13:45your swing that you'd like some information on? Again, we'd be more than happy to help out.
13:49But for now, from West Hill, it's goodbye.
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