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
00:59it
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
01:09was about 14.
01:11Okay. So it's come down quite a lot because of summer and playing a lot of golf. Yeah,
01:16and I've seen you hit the ball quite a bit and I can confirm you hit it very nicely. But
01:20what's,
01:21how's your feeling about where your game is at? What's your strengths? What do you think your
01:24weaknesses are? I think, yeah, golf is good at the moment. I'd say my strength is probably my driving.
01:29I could probably still improve my wedges, chipping and putting. So you're going to have access to
01:34somebody who used to be on the European tour. He's one of the best pundits in the game. What do
01:38you
01:38think you'd like to learn from Nick? What are the questions that you want to answer? Probably a few
01:43questions about being on tour. Oh yeah. I'd say I'm quite interested about that and how hard is it to
01:51get there? Well, it's a very exciting proposition in front of us. Right, let's head out to the golf course.
01:57смотрите,
01:57let's get there.
02:14Please join us right now.
02:16Good.
02:19Bye-bye.
02:20See you next time.
02:21See you next time!
02:22Bye-bye.
02:23See you soon!
02:23Bye-bye.
02:24Bye-bye!
02:25Bye!
02:26Bye-bye.
02:27We'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
02:39keep using the bounce. Get that foot open, get that knee over that foot. Nice.
02:46That's it, plenty of power into it. Lovely, what a shot. To go down the slope,
02:52so the only way, so you almost want to feel like you're soft in your knees as
02:55you go down the slope. You're back where the rock is the rock. So feel that in
03:00there, look at the nice thing, step away not too close to the ball.
03:05Right Nick, so let's start with Josh. We firstly played three holes and what were
03:11your first impressions of the way that Josh hits the ball? He drives it like I
03:15wish I did when I was playing on tour. Phenomenal, really great golf swing, good
03:19attitude as well. I think for Josh the most important stuff was getting
03:25the most out of the skills that he already has. Playing off nine is still
03:30immense at this age and he's progressing nicely. He's going to get
03:32naturally bigger and stronger. So the rest of it should take care of itself. So
03:37for him, I think it was a little bit more about selection of shots maybe. Maybe a
03:41bit more strategy orientated in how he could improve whilst he just naturally
03:46develops in all the other areas. So what would be the general advice then in terms of
03:49strategy? Is there anything in there that you can offer people that they might be able to take into their
03:53own game?
03:53I think this is helpful for juniors in particular because we all remember being
03:57juniors, those of us that have played from a young enough age. When you get to a
04:01level where you start to spin the golf ball, it becomes something that's very
04:05addictive. To be fair, it's a testament to quality of strike and Josh
04:12has that. But sometimes it will lead him to play a more challenging shot than the
04:16one he needs to. The name of the game is how many shots did it take, not how pretty did
04:21they look. So I think one of the things with Josh that I wanted to try and instill
04:25was pick something that we could reproduce a more regularly with it in
04:30terms of shot selection around the greens. So for that we use the idea of
04:33landing it a set point on the green. Barring something weird going on with a
04:37green like the elephant's graveyard at St Andrews, some of that which might
04:40influence your shot. Normal green in front of you. Trying to land it roughly a
04:44couple yards on every time and then using that landing point then to tell us what sort of shot
04:49should we be playing here. So what club. So wherever that flag is in relation to that
04:53landing point will tell us is it tight to it in which case it might be the 60
04:56degree or for Josh it would be a 58. Is it a 52? If there's a whole load of green
05:02to work with like maybe across the 11th one of the holes we played today
05:05maybe we get down to 9, 8, 7 you know and have a nice simple action which which he
05:11does already have. Yeah. But he was picking a shot that was much more basic for him.
05:15But also you could see when I set him up and again this is something sort of
05:18tapping into things to work on through the winter and stuff. When we made him
05:22dial in on competing to land it in the right place. So competing normally is
05:26did you get it up and down you know. Whereas we moved it to can you hit can
05:31you deliver this skill which is hitting those landing points. Got it.
05:34Really good. So if he can do that time and time again he's going to have an
05:38electric short game. I'd hazard a guess that Josh will shave a ton of strokes off
05:42his game by becoming just 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 took
05:49place is that that element of like having a challenge as you practice which is more than
05:53just getting up and down as you say but actually can you land it on this tower or hit it
05:56into this
05:57circle on the green. It's something that for a for a junior golfer is really going to hopefully
06:03engage 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.
06:09You know they want to be out there trying to beat their pals playing in competitions.
06:13But we've got to work at it you know that that's how we groom these skills.
06:17And so the best thing we can do and actually to get the most out of that practice is to
06:20make
06:21it more performance orientated which is what most practice isn't. The most guilty thing I see from
06:27amateur golfers of the way they go about what they do is is the way they practice really poor.
06:31And I've been a culprit over the years as well scrape hit scrape hit scrape hit.
06:35You're wasting your time unless you're purely grooving a movement but even still it should be
06:41conscious you should be engaged with it because in the end you have to engage when you get out
06:45here on the golf course. If I take any amateur anywhere in the world and put them on that first
06:49tee in the BMW PGA to hit that tee shot those feelings how those arms feel how they feel inside
06:56will feel completely different to if I said there's a range there's no one on it is a couple hundred
07:01balls
07:01have a good day because bored almost bored casually and sometimes it might not even be good because
07:07they're just not focused at all. But the fact is you do that to prepare for this if we can
07:12bring the
07:12pressure to the practice and in a fun way as well and create that challenge then one it might also
07:18shift this to feeling more like a fun challenge rather than oh my goodness I'm terrified the club
07:22championships next week for adults less so for kids you know to being like this is fun it's a
07:27challenge and 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 sure it's
07:38different you know just like if I put someone in a position like I have to win on tour or
07:41to play in
07:42the masters or teared up on the first tee at the open in your home city like that would be
07:46terrifying and
07:47feel uncomfortable to them but you get used to it the more you put yourself in that position so if
07:51we're
07:51doing that in our practice we make the stuff on the course a lot easier. So there you have it
07:55some really
07:55simple and effective ways to think about game plan and strategy when you're on the golf course
08:00and also how to practice as well some simple advice there for Josh and hopefully for you too
08:04to help you improve. So there you have it some really simple and effective advice from Nick for
08:09Josh on how to improve by building a better strategy and then how to work particularly on his short game
08:15obviously Nick is a player who's been there and who's done it before and having that kind of tour player
08:20level insight is something that should really help Josh as he continues to improve his golf game and
08:27hopefully there's some stuff in there that should really help you as well. That's it for now from
08:30Wentworth thanks very much for watching we'll see you next time.
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