- 9 hours ago
In the first episode of Game Improved: 10 year-old Josh Jackson gets a golf lesson from Nick Dougherty
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00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappin here from Golf Monthly and welcome to Wentworth Club and the first in a
00:04special three-part series in which we've got three normal amateur golfers and we're going to give
00:10them to Nick Doherty for the day to see whether Nick can help them play better golf. So we're
00:15here at Wentworth and we're going to head out onto the west course, they're going to play
00:18three holes with Nick and then they're going to get some individual one-on-one lesson time
00:22to see what advice Nick can offer them to help them shoot lower scores. So our first golfer
00:28is a 10-year-old junior who plays off a handicap of nine, very impressive golfer. The question
00:33is how will Nick help him improve? Let's go and find out.
00:47Right Josh, so first question, what's your handicap? I'm off nine. And how long have you been playing
00:54for? Because you're only, what, 10 years old? Yep, so I've been playing since I was two. And I take it
01:00your handicap has come down pretty quickly this year. So we're filming this in end of September.
01:04What would it have been at the start of the year, do you think? So start of the year, it was about 14.
01:11Okay. So it's come down quite a lot because of summer and playing a lot of golf. Yeah, and I've seen you hit the
01:17ball quite a bit and I can confirm you hit it very nicely. But how's your feeling about where your game is at?
01:22What's your strengths? What do you think your weaknesses are? I think, yeah, golf is good at
01:26the moment. I'd say my strength is probably my driving. I could probably still improve my wedges,
01:32chipping and putting. So you're going to have access to somebody who used to be on the European
01:36tour. He's one of the best pundits in the game. What do you think you'd like to learn from Nick?
01:40What are the questions that you want to answer? Probably a few questions about being on tour.
01:45Oh yeah. I'd say I'm quite interested about that. And how hard is it to get there?
01:51Well, it's a very exciting proposition in front of us. Right, let's head out to the golf course
01:56for me, Nick.
01:58That would do it.
01:59Well it'd be like the first one is on tour. We'd have more tees and you'd go, you're
02:05We'd have more tees and you're going to make a circle around, perfect, two, a little bit
02:35more backswing. Using that bounce is the thing, you throw more speed at it but you keep using
02:39the bounce. Get that foot open, get that knee over that foot. Nice. That's it, plenty of power
02:47into it. Lovely, what a shot. To go down the slope, so the only way, so you almost want
02:53to feel like you're soft in your knees as you go down the slope, yeah? You're back where
02:57the rock is the rock, rock. So feel that in there, look at the nice thing, step away not
03:01too close to the ball. Right Nick, so let's start with Josh. We firstly played three holes
03:11and what were your first impressions of the way that Josh hits the ball? He drives it like
03:14I wish I did when I was playing on tour. Phenomenal. Really great golf swing, good attitude as well.
03:21I think for Josh, the most important stuff was getting the most out of the skills that
03:26he already has. Playing off nine, you know, is still immense at this age and he's progressing
03:32nicely. He's going to get naturally bigger and stronger. So the rest of it should take
03:36care of itself. So for him, I think it was a little bit more about selection of shots maybe,
03:41maybe a bit more strategy orientated in how he could improve whilst he just naturally develops
03:46in all the other areas. So what would be the general advice then in terms of strategy? Is there
03:50anything in there that you can offer people that they might be able to take into their own game?
03:53I think this is helpful for juniors in particular because we all remember being juniors, those
03:58of us that have played from a young enough age. When you get to a level where you start
04:02to spin the golf ball, it becomes something that's very addictive and to be fair, it's
04:09a testament to quality of strike and Josh has that. But sometimes it will lead him to play
04:14a more challenging shot than the one he needs to. The name of the game is how many shots did
04:19it take, not how pretty did they look. So I think one of the things with Josh that I
04:23wanted to try and instill was pick something that we could reproduce more regularly with
04:29it in terms of shot selection around the greens. So for that, we use the idea of landing it
04:34a set point on the green, barring something weird going on with the green like the elephant's
04:38graveyard at St Andrews, something like that, which might influence your shot. Normal green
04:42in front of you, trying to land it roughly a couple yards on every time and then using
04:46that landing point then to tell us what sort of shot should we be playing here? So what club? So
04:51wherever that flag is in relation to that landing point will tell us, is it tight to it? In
04:55which case it might be the 60 degree or for Josh, it'd be a 58. Is it a 52? If there's
05:00a whole load of green to work with, like maybe across the 11th, one of the holes we played
05:04today, maybe we get down to nine, eight, seven, you know, and have a nice simple action, which
05:11he does already have, but he was picking a shot that was much more basic for him. But also
05:15you could see when I set him up and again, this is something sort of tapping into things to work
05:19on through the winter and stuff. When we made him dial in on competing to land it in the
05:24right place. So competing normally is, did you get it up and down? You know, whereas we
05:29moved it to, can you hit, can you deliver this skill, which is hitting those landing points?
05:33Got it. Really good. So if he can do that time and time again, he's going to have an electric
05:38short game. I'd hazard a guess that Josh will shave a ton of strokes off his game by becoming
05:43just really, really effective at the simple stuff around the green.
05:46And what's quite interesting, and I was standing in the background watching all of this as it
05:49took place, is that that element of like having a challenge as you practice, which is more
05:53than just getting up and down, as you say, but actually, can you land it on this towel or
05:56hit it into this circle on the green? It's something that for a, for a junior golfer is really going
06:01to hopefully engage a little bit more in what you're trying to do.
06:05Practice sucks. You know, it's that, I mean, for, especially for kids, it's the boring bit. You know,
06:09they want to be out there trying to beat their pals, playing in competitions, but we've got
06:13to work at it. You know, that's how we groom these skills. So the best thing we can do and
06:18actually to get the most out of that practice is to make it more performance orientated, which
06:23is what most practice isn't. The most guilty thing I see from amateur golfers of the way
06:29they go about what they do is the way they practice. Really poor. And I've been a culprit
06:33over the years as well. Scrape hit, scrape hit, scrape hit. You're wasting your time. Unless
06:37you're purely grooving a movement, but even still, it should be conscious. You should
06:42be engaged with it because in the end you have to engage when you get out here on the
06:45golf course. If I take any amateur anywhere in the world and put them on that first tee
06:50in the BMW PGA to hit that tee shot, those feelings, how those arms feel, how they feel
06:56inside will feel completely different to if I said, there's a range, there's no one on it.
07:00Here's a couple of hundred balls. Have a good day. Because bored, almost bored, casual, like,
07:05and sometimes it might not even be good because they're just not focused at all. But the fact
07:09is you do that to prepare for this. If we can bring the pressure to the practice and in
07:15a fun way as well and create that challenge, then one, it might also shift this to feeling
07:19more like a fun challenge rather than, oh my goodness, I'm terrified the club championships
07:23next week for adults, less so for kids, you know, to being like, this is fun, it's a challenge.
07:28And also you're used to having to do it under a bit of pressure. And that means that then
07:32when you step on that first tee, there is a comfort in thinking, this isn't as different.
07:37Sure, it's different. You know, just like if I put someone in a position like I have to
07:41win on tour or to play in the Masters or teared up on the first tee at the Open in your home
07:44city, like that would be terrifying and feel uncomfortable to them. But you get used to it
07:49the more you put yourself in that position. So if we're doing that in our practice, we make
07:52the stuff on the course a lot easier.
07:54So there you have it, some really simple and effective ways to think about game plan and strategy
07:59when you're on the golf course, and also how to practice as well. Some simple advice
08:03there for Josh and hopefully for you too, to help you improve.
08:05So there you have it, some really simple and effective advice from Nick for Josh on how
08:10to improve by building a better strategy and then how to work particularly on his short
08:15game. Obviously, Nick is a player who's been there and who's done it before. And having
08:19that kind of tour player level insight is something that should really help Josh as he continues
08:25to improve his golf game. And hopefully there's some stuff in there that should really help
08:28you as well. That's it for now from Wentworth. Thanks very much for watching. We'll see you
08:32next time.
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