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In this video, Neil Tappin is joined by PGA Professional Alex Elliott to look at the 5 biggest golf swing mistakes and how to fix them.
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00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappin here from Golf Monthly and welcome to West Hill Golf Club
00:04and this video looking at the five biggest golf swing mistakes and how to fix them.
00:09I'm joined in this video by Alex Elliott, he's a PGA pro and he's got some really simple
00:14and effective advice for what we think are the most common mistakes that might be costing
00:18you hitting slices or hooks or just hitting shots slightly fat or slightly thin, whatever
00:23your issue, hopefully there should be something in this video to really help you out.
00:32Right, so the first one on our list of biggest golf swing mistakes is the grip and it's something
00:38you're going to need to pay attention to. Alex, what do people need to look out for here? What
00:42are the biggest faults in terms of the grip? I think if we start off firstly with the palm,
00:47we all sort of hear this one banded around quite a lot. So if you're a golfer, if you're right
00:51-handed,
00:51you struggle losing that ball off to the right and really don't feel you get a big bang for your
00:55buck, then we're going to tend to see this golf club run through the lifeline. Yes. Where we're
01:00actually told to put the putter actually, for most people. So essentially when we've got the club in
01:05the palm, we're going to see it very similar to as I've got here and if you just waggle that
01:11golf club
01:11up and down, it's going to feel quite heavy. And what happens in this scenario is that when you
01:15return the club to impact, the way in which your body works, you're going to more than likely
01:21would turn it slightly open, aren't you? Slightly open or a tenter would drive and potentially add
01:25a lot of loft. Right. So like our ability to create a good efficient hit is dramatically reduced. Yes.
01:31So if you have a fault in your grip that isn't a weak grip, but a strong grip, what does
01:37that look
01:37like? So a strong grip would be, let's say two to three knuckles, maybe even four knuckles showing
01:42really our logo of the glove pointing to the sky and sort of this look to how we're set up
01:47to the ball.
01:47Yeah. We're going to see that real hook curvature. So finishing off to the left for right-handed
01:51player, finishing off to right for a left-handed player. And that for me is where we're going to
01:56really struggle to control the golf ball, especially in firm conditions like it is now. Like having that
02:02strong grip, we're only going to see sort of lowish ball flights, a lot of hook spin on it. Exactly.
02:07So what does the absolutely technically good grip look like and how can people set it? The one thing I'd
02:12say
02:12with this, Neil, is that we've got to be sort of, I always think of people improving their grip by
02:17edging it back slowly because your grip matches how you release the club. So we need to make sure
02:22it's not going from one extreme to the other. Okay. The only sort of caveat to that is if you
02:25do have
02:25it in the palm, get it in the finger straight away. But if you are weak, edge it stronger. If
02:29you are
02:30really strong, edge it a little bit weaker. Okay. But that common ground where I want you to end up
02:34in the end would be a nice simple routine for this as well. If you're out on the golf courses,
02:38grip it sort of in the middle of my shaft, as I've done here, tilt it slightly away,
02:44place it in the fingers. And you can see that I've got it right at the base of my fingers,
02:48meaty part on top, quick test, club feels light, club down to the ground. We can see sort of two
02:54and a half knuckles. Yep. Fingers on in my right hand and both of these creases should be somewhere
02:59around my right shoulder. Quick question for you, Alex, if you get the left hand grip right,
03:04will the right hand grip then automatically be correct? I think so. Yeah. You can,
03:07you've got a better chance. Right, fine. So focus, are we saying focus on the left hand grip?
03:11I think your left hand grip... I think the right hand is... Yeah, the opposite way.
03:14Vice versa. Yeah. Simply whatever one you have your glove on, get that right,
03:18will tend to have a better chance of hitting some good shots. Okay, good. And if you get it right,
03:21then you should hit some nice neutral flighted golf shots, a bit like this one. No pressure.
03:27So yeah, nice, simple routine in the fingers, meaty part on top. It's going to give you a much
03:32better chance of returning that golf club back to relatively good to our path.
03:41A bit like that. Very good.
03:47Okay, so next up, alignment. And it sounds easy enough, doesn't it, to get your alignment right?
03:52But it's something that can go wrong quite easily and something that even the best players in the
03:56world are constantly checking, making sure they get it right. So, Alex, how do you get it right?
04:02Firstly, don't aim your shoulders at target. Right. Which might sound like, to you watching
04:06this right now, a comment where you go, well, of course you do. If you're going to throw something
04:11or fire something, you'd be sort of looking at our alignment. And a lot of you will be standing there
04:14going, right, I'm aligned to target, stand up, check. Oh, I look a little bit left here.
04:21Start to adjust ourselves. So it looks like our eyes are perfect. Well, in reality,
04:25it's going to be aiming to the right. It's the club face that you need to worry about,
04:28not your body alignment. Definitely. So what's a good way of checking it?
04:32In practice, out on the golf course? Yeah. I would, like we've got set up here. So
04:37I would do these simple things when you're hitting balls in the range. And if you play on your own
04:41in
04:41an evening, just throw them down on the ground. But then we'll also talk through a scenario you can
04:45use in a competition. So everything, Neil, has got to start from a ball to target line. Yes.
04:50So I would stand behind at the start of a range session and simply pick out my ball to target
04:56line, place the alignment stick down there. Then I can walk in and it's making sure that our feet,
05:03knees, hips and shoulders all run parallel to this. And when you do stand up, your shoulder line will
05:09be working parallel left to target. Yeah. So it's like you're almost like you're on a set of train
05:14tracks. Exactly that. And then you're out on the golf course playing a competition. You know you
05:19have a tendency to aim a bit right. How do you make sure that you don't do that? Simple, simple
05:23trick.
05:24We all got logos on our golf balls or some others even put lines on our golf balls from a
05:29button. Use
05:30this line to advantage on par three tees and when you're hitting some drives away. Okay. Stand behind
05:35the golf ball again as if you've got an extension of what we did during practice. Place that down
05:41parallel lines and we can simply again build our stance from this as opposed to building it from this
05:48way to the ball, build it from the ball upwards. It's called a ball to target line for a reason.
05:53Yeah.
05:53And I think the important point to make here is that if you are devoting some time to your alignment,
05:58it won't be wasted. There's a whole host of other good things that will happen once you've got your
06:03alignment spot on.
06:09Right. Next up, the slice. Alex, most of us know how it feels. Most of us, it's very demoralizing when
06:14it happens. What have you got here? I can see you've got a drill for us. Yeah. I mean, it
06:19might look quite
06:20strange you're putting this out on the range, but honestly, I've used this analogy with people who
06:24come for lessons and this is really nice and simple. If I gave you a tennis racket, but we don't
06:29have
06:29that right here because it's not something that you can attach quite easily to a golf shot. So let's
06:33use our right palm. Okay. Okay. So if we're a slicer and our golf ball was sort of at this
06:38height,
06:39we'd work like this. Yeah. And we'd go, well, of course the ball would work this way. Yeah. Okay.
06:43So if we did the opposite to that in golf posture, but then we just stand upright to hit this
06:49ball
06:49away like tennis, I want to take the ball away as far as I could, we'd make sort of this
06:54motion.
06:55So that would be my club traveling a little bit more into out, my club face being a little bit
07:00more closer to square, if not close to my path. And this would be quite an easy motion for a
07:05lot of us
07:06to make with the ball that height. Yes. So question then. So it feels like a fairly simple resolution.
07:13So how does it look with the golf club in your hands, Alex? And how, what should people
07:17be wary of the kind of body movements that they're making that are causing them to cut across it?
07:22Like I say, I think that the biggest reference point I would have for a lot of golfers is when
07:26we start the downswing and it, it comes so especially with driver, we want to hit it far. We want
07:31to get
07:31that distance. It's right shoulder, right hip working out, which works this way. Yes.
07:37In tennis. A bit eager to hit it quite a long way and suddenly you come over the top. Exactly.
07:40Whereas in tennis, the ball would come, we'd move in and through. And we'd make that sort of reaction
07:47to a good body movement because we're orientating it to a moving object. Now, obviously in golf,
07:52the little white ball is still. So we've got to think of an analogy and a nice simple way would
07:57be actually address the golf ball down here, swing up, feel that you meet the golf ball away. Okay.
08:05Now you might think we're actually standing up, but what we're trying to do is get the club to work
08:10this. Right. Yes. And not the other way around. Exactly. Yeah. So we could have two or three practice
08:14swings on the course, on the range, walk into the shot. We've now got the feeling of being able to
08:20work the club through this space as if we're hitting a tennis shot away, but just more tilted
08:26over the golf ball. Okay. Go on then. Hit one for us. Let's see how it looks. So I'd really
08:29make a few
08:30waggles, tennis shot away. Imagine him hitting that ball down to target.
08:39Arrow straight. If you have a slice, it can be one of those things that takes a little bit of
08:43time to
08:43get it out of your game, but work on it. As Alex is saying here, it could really help.
08:52This one is all about starting the golf swing correctly, but let's start with the fault.
08:56Alex, what do people do that costs them in the golf swing? I think we just put it into two
09:01categories. One, not control the club face and not get the arms and body working together. So
09:06simply it would be closing it too much or open too much. Right. Okay. And that second one looks
09:14as if you're taking it away on the inside. Are you taking it away on the inside? Yeah, very much
09:18so. And
09:18I think sort of that open face, especially with longer clubs, everybody thinks it's a little bit more
09:22rounded. It's very tempting to sort of work it in this direction. Yeah. And it's something you see
09:27a lot, isn't it? So what can people do to resolve the problem? So a nice, simple routine, as I've
09:33done here is I've simply just placed my golf club down directly behind my ball. So if we sort of
09:39give
09:39those two scenarios, if I go too much in the inside, well, look how the club really works. If I
09:45wanted to
09:45push that golf club back as far as I could, I would really want to get arms and the body
09:52working
09:52together and more of what would feel like this sort of, I guess the term a lot of people would
09:56use, one piece takeaway. One piece takeaway. Yeah. You hear it a lot. So down behind the ball. I mean,
10:01look at the difference of this here. Yeah. A lot more control. Golf club's gone a lot further back.
10:06Yeah. And if you were to draw a triangle between the club head and your shoulders, that triangle would
10:10pretty much be kept in intact for a lot of that, wouldn't it? Exactly. Rather than changing your
10:15angles, changing them means a lot more compensations have got to take place. Yeah. So if you can start
10:20the golf swing correctly, the chances are the rest of the swing will follow and you'll hit better shots.
10:29So the last one on our list is standing up in the downswing. Alex, what do you mean by
10:34standing up in the downswing? I think a lot of people will see another term that they'd use is early
10:38extension. So essentially belt buckle getting higher or standing up and then we see that scoopy sort of
10:44look to our impact position. Right. Okay. Yeah. It's something you do see quite a lot. So how do you
10:49solve the issue? I think you see, I'll even with very good players as well. It's not just sort of
10:53your beginners, your higher handicappers. It's something that happens with a lot. So a simple
10:58thing we can do. I mean, I've just placed my bag here. This could be alignment sticks. If you're watching
11:02this at home, this could actually be the wall behind you. If you've got a few spare minutes each day,
11:07I think the important thing of this, Neil, is we make it flow. Right. Okay. So golf club across
11:12our chest, we don't want to just be position, position, position, because we know in reality,
11:17the golf swing's got a bit of flow to it. So what I want you to do here is have
11:20the bum just
11:21out of touch of whether it's the wall alignment stick or your golf bag, as I've got here, go through
11:26swing, try and touch it with your left pocket, back, right pocket, through left pocket. And you can
11:32really see here how I'm a lot more over the golf ball throughout the whole motion.
11:37Yes. Yeah. And you're avoiding that issue of standing up, aren't you? You're retaining
11:42that posture, that really good posture that you set at address. I can see that you're still in
11:46it. Yeah. As you reach that kind of impact position.
11:48Exactly. And just to sort of preempt a few questions that people might ask to us to stay
11:52more over the golf ball at impact. Well, our belt buckle has to work more to target to give us
11:57the
11:57ability to be here. If our belt buckle's a little bit higher, we're going to find it very, very hard
12:02to hit the golf ball in that direction or remain over it.
12:05Yeah. It's a really simple way of thinking about it. Hopefully it's sort of a non-technical fix
12:10for a technical issue that should help you out. So there you have it. Some really great advice
12:16there from Alex. Really simple, really effective. If you do have any questions, please do post them
12:21below. We'll hope to get back to as many of you as possible. But that's it for now from West
12:25Hill.
12:25Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.
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