- 18 hours 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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00:04Hello 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
00:35button 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.
00:56Okay, 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, yeah,
01:20look at your
01:21own glove. Take a moment. Get your golf equipment out. Have a look at the gloves. See if you've
01:25got any wear in the thumb and in the palm. Why is that not good? Ultimately, if I demonstrate
01:30now with a golf club, if I get a grip or take a hold of a club when it's too
01:34much through
01:34my palm, I want to rely on the thumb and the forefinger to kind of take the weight, but ultimately
01:39it stops us creating a lot of wrist set or wrist hinge throughout the swing. And a common
01:44thing that I see is that a lot of the time that we get this, we then got to sacrifice
01:47bending of
01:48our lead arm to complete the swing. Ultimately, because we can't set the risks.
01:52Hinge 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?
02:06I think if we look at it and said if your glove was wearing very quickly, then we might be
02:10gripping
02:10it too hard and we might then have issues in our grip and just general wear and tear happens
02:14too quickly. I would say, well, it depends on how much rain you're playing.
02:18Yeah. How often do you play golf?
02:19Yeah. I would say nine, 10 rounds. And that should be somewhere that would be probably
02:26very taking care of their parents and wanting to have a nice fresh glovery time. You could
02:29probably get a bit longer, 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 that
02:37is really into your golf equipment, you want your stuff to be, if you're not. And also, don't
02:41forget, you can store old gloves in your bag and use them when you practice. That's a good
02:44thing to do.
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.
02:56Okay, 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 a driver there. What's the thing for people to be wary of with the wear marks on their
03:15driver?
03:16I think if we say people too wary of a 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.
03:28So 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.
03:38Exactly. Because we've got a driver here and we've got all modern drivers now very forgiving.
03:42They've got the centre of gravity low and far back. This creates gear effect in the driver.
03:46So if I was to hit one out the heel now, this would cause the heel of the club to
03:49kick 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.
03:57And 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.
04:03Exactly, exactly that. And then the same thing would happen from the toe. People that are
04:07hooking the ball excessively could just be that they're catching this ball out the toe,
04:11the toe kicks back a little bit, the ball works like cogs and gears in the opposite direction,
04:15causes that ball to move right to left curvature.
04:17Fine. So how do you work on the quality of strike? What's something that we all need to do
04:22from 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 face tape
04:30that you put on it. Now that will affect the ball flight because of friction, so foot sprays would
04:34be your best option here. And just seeing actually, well, where am I striking the ball? Because
04:40with all modern drivers, because they are so forgiving, it's hard to know where you hit it from.
04:43Yes, 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.
04:50And 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
05:07and 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 middle.
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 tone it in so that you get it a
05:28little bit more centred, a little bit more often.
05:37Good 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?
05:55Common. So 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.
06:08OK. Now, a good question here for you then is why does it start on the heel? Why exactly
06:13does the tee marks begin on that path?
06:15Because it would suggest that we've got a path that's travelling from out to in. So if I showed
06:19you here, over-exaggerated, this club head would be travelling from outside the line to
06:24inside the line. So we could imagine like we're grating across this ball and that tee is slashing
06:28across 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 win, the more diagonal
06:42that these tee marks will probably become.
06:44Fine. So if yours are particularly aggressive, they're going kind of sideways across, then
06:49it is something you need to sort of work on. If 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
07:03that
07:03would have an object in front of them would actually go, oh, yeah, I know how to move it
07:07from right to left around that. I can do that. So I go, right. Okay. If we picture we've got
07:11a tree
07:11in front of us, what would we do? How would we manipulate our swing to do so?
07:15Okay, fine. A 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
07:23release pattern as well. Okay. And if you got it right, that would mean that the tee marks
07:26started in the toe and then went towards the heel. Is that right? Hopefully, yeah. I would
07:29say that I would generally want to see it go the opposite way. Some people may have that
07:33if they're a draw of the ball or hook the golf ball, they may have it travelling from toe
07:37to heel. But I would say that drill would probably hopefully get people close to neutral. Even
07:42though it feels quite excessive, it probably gets them quite neutral, maybe even just a little
07:46bit off 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 that we
07:52create the opposite. Remember, before the tee marks are working this way across the golf
07:57ball, we'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 and where the wear marks are around
08:13about the sole. So Alex, what we're going to talk about in this part is about angle of attack,
08:18how steep you are into the ball and there's going to be two clues. It's going to be the
08:23divots on the ground and then where the marks are on your wedge. Talk us through it.
08:27First off, I see a lot of people that struggle with that kind of steep contact in the back
08:32of the ball or one that fires out really low and spinny and out of control is that a lot
08:37of the time people get this steep angle of descent into the ball. So the club would almost get stuck
08:41in the ground and we create a big divot. And when this ground is wet, we also take a long,
08:46large divot as well, especially over a pitching distance. So one would be a steep divot,
08:52so a very deep divot. And then secondly, we'd probably start to see a little bit of wear
08:56around this leading edge because that's in a lot of contact in the ground. We start then
09:00to see a lot of wear around this area.
09:02Okay, fine. So if you were using the sole of your wedge as so many coaches are now teaching
09:07the short game, you would get more of an even wear across the bottom of the sole because
09:11you'd be using that sole a little bit more often.
09:13That would be kind of the overall general statement. I mean, the thing that we know
09:17with wedge is we get a bad line, we might have to manufacture a shot and be a bit steeper.
09:21Fine. 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
09:28say is that over the years, people have been told that in order to get spin, in order to
09:31get that one that bounces up and then checks, you want to be steeper into the ball. You want
09:35to kind of drive it in there. But actually, that's not what you're advocating.
09:38I mean, to create spin, it's something called spin loft. So it's the difference between the
09:42loft you've got on your face and your angle of attack. So it's the vector that you create
09:46between it. Now, there is a mean point at which you go beyond this point, it'll drop off a scale
09:50and you won't create any spin. But generally, more loft and either moving face up, so adding
09:56more loft, or steepening angle of attack and keeping the same face will add spin. The thing
10:03is if you move your angle of attack and face by the same amount, or you're going to change
10:07your trajectory. Changing one of these vectors will create some spin.
10:11Okay, 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
10:17areas of my game. But the analogy that I like to use, because I'm one of the people that
10:20do get steep into the back of the ball, I like to think of the bottom of this club being
10:23the wheels of a plane. So I like to feel like I just get the wheels of the plane just
10:26touching
10:27down. Right, okay. Just brushing the ground. Yeah, so not crash landing, and not aborting
10:31the landing and scooping it, just feeling like I'm going to get it brushing the ground.
10:35Okay, good. Hopefully, like you're playing this.
10:36Yeah, nice analogy. I like it. Very nice. Spin. Very good. And you'll see, I think through
10:51the camera you should be able to see there's a divot there, but it isn't too bad. It's not
10:54too deep a divot. No, 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
11:04hitting down a little bit too much into the back of it. Clubs gets caught in the turf.
11:09All sorts of bad things can happen. Try and shallow out that angle of attack. You could
11:12hit 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? It would be where my top hand, my thumb meets the golf
11:32club
11:32here. Now, if you're someone who excessively has excessive grip tension, so say for example,
11:3710 out of 10 was strangling it and you've had that with the driver, we would start to see sort
11:41of a wear pattern in that same place. Another thing it would be if your grip was moving a
11:46little bit as well. So 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
11:53could hang on to the golf club if you did that.
11:55It does. Ultimately, when we grab the golf club, our thumb works slightly upwards, so
12:00it kind of retracts in slightly. So anytime that some people kind of have a long thumb,
12:05it's kind of what I call, it's not as stable, so it can move a little bit more, a bit
12:09more
12:09rigid. So this again would add to wear on that area of the club. But for me, it's where
12:15people have excessive grip tension, which is one of the main points.
12:18Yes, which is what I was wanting to ask you about. So as far as grip tension goes and grip
12:22pressure, what's the advice?
12:24A really nice simple one. Imagine your grip now is a tube of toothpaste and it's open at
12:29the end. We don't want to squeeze the toothpaste out. We want to just put enough tension onto
12:33that grip where we've got our hands lightly on the club.
12:37Why don't you want to grip it too hard? I mean, all fine, but why don't you? What's the problem
12:43with gripping it so hard?
12:44The big thing is release. If you were to grip it really hard now, this tension then travels
12:48up your forearms. So 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.
12:56Okay.
12:56Other points are in terms of actually creating a turn join the backswing, that tension
13:00travels up the body. Up the body, right. So you can find the tension spreads from your
13:03hands up through your arms and then before you know it, you're not actually turning very
13:07effectively. Yeah. And if we've got that tension on the range, we turn to the first tee as well. And
13:11that's where we're
13:12probably going to be most nervous.
13:13Okay. Go on then. Hit one for us.
13:15So I'm trying to feel like I'm gripping a tube of toothpaste.
13:22Good shot. So there you have it. Those were our five most important clues that come from your golf
13:28equipment about the way in which you're swinging the club. If you've liked what you watched, please do hit the
13:32like button and also leave some comments below. Have you got any questions about anything we've talked about in
13:36this video? We'd be more than happy to help out and give some answers where we can. And have we
13:41missed
13:41anything out? Are there any signs that your golf equipment is giving you about your swing that you'd like some
13:46information on? Again, we'd be more than happy to help out. But for now, from West Hill, it's goodbye.
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