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In this video, Neil Tappin is joined by John Howells, head professional at JCB Golf and Country Club to look at 8 beginner golfer mistakes and how to fix them.
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00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappin here from Golf Monthly and welcome to the beautiful JCB Golf
00:05and Country Club and this video in which we're going to take a look at the eight biggest
00:09beginner golfer mistakes and how to fix them. These are either all traps that you might
00:13be falling into when you're out on the golf course or simple swing mistakes that might
00:17be costing you. Now the advice in this video comes courtesy of John Howes, he's the head
00:21pro here at JCB and he offers some really simple and effective ways to get yourself
00:25back in the game if you are making a few of these mistakes. Right, let's head on to the
00:29golf course and get started.
00:35So one of the things you are going to need to do if you're getting into golf is figuring
00:38out how far you hit the ball with every club in the bag. And John, I think the key bit
00:43of
00:43advice here is that it's not your best shot with every club in the bag, it's your, it's
00:47a sort of true reflection of how far you hit the ball, isn't it?
00:50Yeah, absolutely. I think all too often we have players and students that will know they
00:55hit a shot once upon a time, they might have hit that seven iron 185 yards, but it was
01:01downhill, downwind, maybe caught a little bit of a flyer for example, and the shot is
01:05going to go an awful lot further in that situation. But what we need to do is really have a,
01:10I
01:10would call like a normalised shot, which is just a shot that is on a calm, flat day with
01:16no extra help from certain conditions.
01:19Okay, so that begs the question, how can people go out and get that yardage?
01:22Well, the best thing to do is to do it away from the golf course, you should do it either
01:25at your practice area or at the driving range. A practice area is ideal because you could
01:30actually hit a shot out onto the range with maybe your seven iron, a series of 20 shots,
01:35put your bag in the middle of that grouping of shots and then laser that yardage from
01:39where you hit from.
01:40Okay, yeah, really simple, really effective. What if you can't go out to the range? What
01:43if it's a sort of normal driving range set up?
01:46Obviously, it's going to be a little bit more challenging, probably going to have to do it on the
01:49golf course late in an evening, something like that, go out there onto a golf course,
01:52maybe even just hitting to the fairway in a flat situation where it's, you've almost
01:56kind of controlled some of those variables.
01:58Okay, so let's say then you have your yardages for your clubs. When you get out onto the golf
02:03course, then you need to add in all the different factors that might be going on. And this is
02:08a really good example of that. So this is the 17th hole at JCB, it's the signature hole of
02:12the golf course, plays slightly downhill, over water, trouble everywhere. How do you figure
02:17out your yardage on a hole like this, Jon?
02:19Absolutely. So first of all, I've taken the Bushnell laser and I've lasered the flag
02:22at 195. Now, I know my six iron in normal conditions will go about 182, but I've got a situation
02:30here where I'm downhill, a good sort of five, six degrees. So that's going to take some yardage
02:34off. And I've also got a little breath of downwind, which is also going to help me. So I'm
02:40factoring in the fact that I'm downhill using a little bit of educated guesswork. And I know
02:45that six iron is going to be about the right number.
02:47Right. Okay. And if you were playing uphill, the opposite sort of rules would apply, right?
02:51Yeah, absolutely. You're going to have to use, again, a bit of educated guesswork. You
02:55can use your Bushnell to sort of train yourself. There are certain Bushnells that will allow
02:58you to factor in how much degrees uphill or downhill and how much that's going to add
03:04on to the actual number that you're playing. But for most people, it's going to be a bit
03:08of educated guesswork. Okay. So the moment has arrived. John, I think
03:13it's time for you to hit this one for us. Absolutely. Let's give it a try. So I'm just
03:16thinking middle of the green here, Neil. I should think so too.
03:28Lovely. Starting at the centre of the green and pretty much staying there. So there you have
03:33it's some really handy advice on how to pick the right club.
03:40Okay. So the first one on our list is something that costs players and it can cost them in
03:45terms of accuracy and the quality of their strike, John. And it's about the way in which
03:49you turn your body in the backswing or whether you sway in the backswing, right?
03:55Yeah, exactly. So all too often with amateur golfers, we see a lot of hip sway, this kind
03:59of lateral movement, which I think people with the best intentions, they're trying to make
04:03a nice weight shift. Yes. But they probably overdo it.
04:06Right. Okay. So what does it look like then? What's the wrong position look like at the top?
04:09From this kind of camera angle, basically, as we do our backswing, what we see is people
04:14kind of doing this weight shift where their right hip kind of laterally moves away from
04:19the target. They get this big weight shift, but they haven't really made much turn in their
04:23hips. Right. Fine. So what's the best way to think about it to get yourself out of that
04:27mode and get yourself into a better rotation?
04:29So we've got to replace that hip sway with rotation. So if I put the alignment stick just
04:35through my front two belt loops, I'll just have to breathe in a little bit. But basically
04:39what I'm trying to do is get this feeling that as I do my backswing, I'm turning and trying
04:46to match this 45 degree angle that I've put on the ground here. So I'm getting the hips
04:51to match that white stick that's on the ground. So I'm making a nice big turn. You could see
04:55that if I drew a line from my right hip down to my right ankle, I'm turning within that
05:00line as I do that backswing. It's going to help me on multiple fronts.
05:03Okay. And you've got another drill as well.
05:05Absolutely. Yeah. So we can try and then once we've got this feeling of a hip turn, we could
05:09just slide in a little blocker. Maybe just pop it on the outside of my right hip and do
05:15exactly the same thing. Now I'm going to get a bit of feedback from a touch. If I'm swaying
05:20into that yellow stick, then obviously I'm going to feel that during my golf swing. You
05:25can see I've done it incorrectly there. And I'm trying to basically give myself very, very
05:29narrow margin for error here and just turn inside of that right hip line. And you should
05:36see through the camera there that as John turns, there is still a weight shift, but it's
05:40kind of a more of a natural shift that happens as the rotation of the body takes place as opposed
05:44to really thinking about, oh, I've got to get my weight onto my right side at the top,
05:48which is a good thought in some ways, but can lead to the wrong kind of action.
05:52I think people overdo it, don't they? They're good at doing it, but they overdo it.
05:55Yeah. So if you tend to hit slices or you're catching shots, a lot of the time thin or fat,
06:01give these two drills a go.
06:06Right. So we have some strategy advice for you. And if you are looking to try and get your
06:10handicap down, there is a few things you can do to get your ball safely around the golf
06:15course, which is absolutely crucial. John, what's the advice here for people?
06:19Yeah, absolutely. So I think all too often people take dead aim at the flagstick. And I
06:22think what's a lot more realistic is if you can think about the shot pattern that you hit,
06:27it's kind of probably the size of a football centre circle. The middle of that is obviously
06:32where you're trying to hit it. But if you think about your right most miss and your left most
06:35miss, that's going to give you quite a big shot pattern. Now, what we need to try and do
06:39is sort of centre that shot pattern so that all potential shots that you might hit are
06:44in a safe location, i.e. not in the bunker, not in a water hazard. We want them all to
06:49be pretty much on the green. Yeah, it's a really simple way of looking at it. And actually the
06:52scenario that we faced with here on 17 is a good example of that, because the flag is over there
06:58on the right hand side of the green. It's a bit of a sucker pin, isn't it? Yep. So if
07:01you're playing
07:01away from the flag, have a very positive mindset, pick a spot, be really positive with it, and then go
07:06for it.
07:07Absolutely. Okay, so John, I think one of the mistakes I think we all make when we start playing
07:14golf is trying to help the ball up into the air. It can lead to really inconsistent strikes. Can you
07:20tell us what people should and shouldn't be trying to do when it comes to impact? You're absolutely
07:25right. I see it a lot. And I think it often comes down to the concept that people think
07:29that they're trying to give it all this lofted impact. The setup position and the impact position should
07:35actually be different, as you can see me demonstrating there. The setup should have the
07:39shaft pretty well neutral or, you know, 90 degrees to the ground as you look at it here. But as
07:44I
07:44approach impact, I'm looking to get that shaft leaning forwards a little bit so that I can hit
07:49down on the golf ball and get that nice compressed strike. Yeah, because it's that combination of the
07:53speed in your swing and the angle of the tack down into the ball creates the backspin that you need
07:58to
07:58get the ball up in the air. It's not actually hanging back and delivering lots of loft to the club.
08:02Exactly right. So John, you've got a drill for us. Can you just talk us through what the drill is
08:08and
08:08how people should should be doing it? Yeah, for sure. So what we're going to do in this drill is
08:13get yourself into that adjusted impact position where basically we turn our hips a little bit,
08:18we put a little bit more pressure onto our left foot. My right heel for a right-handed golfer might
08:23just come up in the air a little bit and I'm going to start the swing here, do a tiny
08:27little back swing
08:28and then try and return back to that impact fix that I had at the start. So let's give it
08:32a try.
08:37Yeah, lovely. And you can see the strike is just perfect there. It's the ball and then the ground,
08:43which is exactly what you're looking for. And then I think if you can, I guess, build up the swing
08:47from
08:47there, keeping that impact position in mind, that will really help. Yeah, build it up over time,
08:52trying to try to start with small swings like I did there and then build it up into a three
08:56-quarter
08:56length backswing and then eventually up into a full shot. But it's about getting that concept correct,
09:01first of all. Yeah, so if you're looking for more consistency of strike, you're looking to eradicate
09:06fat shots or thin shots from your game, this drill is a great one to use.
09:14Right, so chipping. John, what's the biggest mistake that you see when people will start out with the
09:19chipping that's costing them? Well, typically, people will set up in a way that doesn't really
09:23give them a chance of success. So what we often see is a situation where the club is de-lofted
09:29like this, where I've got the handle way in front of the golf ball and I've got the ball way
09:34back in
09:35my stance, almost opposite my right foot. The problem with that, Neil, is obviously I'm going to now
09:39chop down and I'm going to get that leading edge of the club to dig into the ground, which isn't
09:44really
09:44going to be an effective way to chip. Yeah, you need to catch the ball absolutely perfectly,
09:48otherwise you're going to hit it, you're going to duff it really, aren't you? Or you're going to
09:51thin it over the back. You've got a very small landing area to land that club on the ground
09:55in that situation. So then, John, how do people get to use the right part of the club in order
10:00to
10:00strike their chips more effectively? Yeah, so what we need to do is use the bounce on the bottom of
10:04the club. On every wedge, there's a little bit of bounce at the bottom. That's the difference between
10:08the trailing edge and the leading edge. And if we present that in the correct way at setup, i.e.
10:13not having
10:14the shaft leaning super far forward, let's get it a little bit more neutral as you look at it from
10:19this perspective. And we're trying to actually return it very simply to that position that we
10:24started in. We can now start to utilise a bit of that bounce on the bottom of the club and
10:28our landing
10:29area is a lot bigger to actually get the club to land on the ground. I see, do you have
10:34any drills that
10:34you can show us? Absolutely. Let's try this one. So what I want you to do first of all,
10:40is just set up to the grass just here. And I'm going to put these two sticks in perfect vertical
10:46alignment, okay? Okay. Now if you do the one, the incorrect one first of all, just to show people
10:51what that's like. So typically what we're going to do there is we're going to hit the yellow stick
10:55before the white stick. That means that we've got an awful lot of shaft lean and we're going to dig
10:59the club into the ground. Then if someone was struggling with that, what I would try and get them
11:04to do is almost hit the sticks simultaneously. So let's try that now. I'm trying to hit the white stick,
11:09maybe even a fraction before the yellow stick. So now we're starting to see that the club is
11:14interacting with the ground in a much more efficient way. Right, yeah. Sort of surfing the
11:17turf, I like to call it. Yeah. It's that feeling that I get when I'm doing that is that my
11:22sort of
11:22the club head's sort of almost overtaking the hands. It's certainly catching up with the hands
11:26through impact. It's the one area that's very different to long game, isn't it? Yes. It's one area
11:30where we do want to throw that club a little bit and try and get the bounce being used. So
11:35you've got a
11:35couple of balls on T's here, John. What's that for? So what I would do if someone was struggling
11:39with their chipping, I would start with them up on a high T and just get them to do this
11:43sort of
11:43action, just nipping the ball off the top of the tee. So why don't you set up to that big
11:47tall tee,
11:48first of all. And yeah, you've got a nice setup there. We've got a nice vertical sort of shaft
11:53alignment and your job now is to imagine those two sticks there and almost try and hit the bottom
11:58stick before the top stick. Very nice. That was a really nicely nipped chip shot. Over time we would
12:04progress to bringing that tee height down a little bit lower and still trying to just interact with
12:10the tee peg only. Nice. It's hard, isn't it? Challenging you now because your depth perception of where that
12:16tee peg is obviously a little bit more tricky. Over time we could start to raise the level of
12:21that tee peg down and down and down until eventually you don't need it at all. Yeah,
12:25well there you have it. If you are struggling with your chipping, use John's technique there. It should
12:29really help you out. Right, so the next one on our list is about club face control. Obviously,
12:37if you want to hit the ball straight, you've got to have control of where the club face is pointing
12:40through impact. And I guess, John, the key mistake, the key fault here that people make when they're
12:45starting out tends to be a slice, doesn't it? Yeah, it tends to be. Most people have a poor
12:49understanding of what causes that open club face that we see with a slice. And I often see it first
12:55and foremost with the basics of a grip. Okay. Typically, people who grip the club in what we would call
13:00a
13:01weak position. So that means the left hand, the V of this left hand pointing up towards my lead shoulder,
13:07or also the right hand. Sometimes the right hand can be weak, Neil, and that points up towards the
13:12lead shoulder. That will typically mean that the club face is going to be open during the backswing
13:17and probably into the downswing. So where should those two Vs be pointing ideally? So what we would
13:21want to see is basically a neutral grip where the V of this left hand and probably the V of
13:26the right hand
13:27are pointing up towards that right collarbone. Anywhere in and around the right ear or the right
13:31collarbone. You can probably see it here on screen. Yeah. And then the club face has got,
13:37is going to want to square up through impact. And that's exactly what you're looking for. But John,
13:42I would say, I've seen people with good grips who've obviously seen videos like this and they
13:46understand what they're trying to do. They're holding the club in a pretty good position and
13:50they're still hitting a slice. What's going on then? Yeah, so you're absolutely right. And that comes
13:55down to people's intent and their understanding of what happens when the club gets moving. So typically,
14:01if we have a position in the backswing, I'll turn to the camera here. If we have a position where
14:05that left
14:06wrist gets into a very cupped position in the backswing or maybe even a cut position at the top
14:11and also even on the way down, if that left wrist is in a really cupped position,
14:14you can see just how open the club face is there and how the club face is going to be
14:18pointing right
14:19at target at impact. Okay, John, so you've shown us the cupped left wrist. How do people get control
14:24of that so it's in a better position at the top? Yeah, absolutely. So what we want to try and
14:28see from
14:28from a backswing perspective, if we've got a neutral grip, we would like to see a pretty flat left wrist,
14:35i.e. there's no real cup or no real bow, a pretty flat left wrist, even all the way up
14:40to the top of the
14:40backswing, we'd want to see that pretty well flat at the top. Now, if you're really struggling with this,
14:46I would suggest even go in full John Rahm. You can see his golf swing. He gets the left wrist
14:52and the logo on his
14:53glove actually pointing away from his chest and that gives a really strong look to the club face,
14:58which is going to be an exaggeration, but it'll probably help all the golfers out there.
15:01Yeah, so if you are someone, if you're struggling with a bit of a slice, there's a couple of different
15:04ways you can fix it. Either focus your attention on your grip, get that right and then make sure
15:09that your left wrist is in the right place at the top. You should start hitting the ball a bit
15:13straighter.
15:18So when it comes to playing from the bunker, I think a lot of golfers know that they need to
15:22use
15:22the loft on the face. They need to open up the face to get the ball out, but there's a
15:27way to do it
15:28and there's a way not to do it. Can you just talk about that for us, John? Because this can
15:32be where
15:33some of the problems occur, can't it? Yeah, all too often I see players setting up with their normal
15:37full swing grip. They basically take this grip to begin with and then they try and open the club face
15:43from a position where they've already gripped the club. Ultimately, if we do that, when we swing down and
15:48hit the shot, we're just going to return the club face back to a square position.
15:52And obviously for hitting a high lofted bunker shot, that's no use.
15:56No, and you're not going to be using the bounces we've already talked about with chipping. So
15:59how do you open the face correctly then to use it from sand?
16:02Absolutely, it's really simple. All you need to do is just twist the club open before you're taking
16:06your grip. So pop it out in front of you, give it a little twist about the shaft and then
16:10take your
16:11grip as if you haven't done anything at all different. And that's really how you do it correctly.
16:15Go on then, let's have a look. All right.
16:19So I've twisted it there, just open, ball position just forward in my stance,
16:22a little bit more squatted than normal.
16:29And you can see how much loft there is there. Without John trying to do anything particularly
16:34out of the ordinary, he's created an awful lot of loft and yet kept the motion as simple as possible.
16:40OK, so hopefully you now know how to grip the club in order to open the face.
16:45But John, one of the keys to playing bunker shots consistently well is taking the right amount of
16:49sand every time. It's something that so many golfers struggle with. I can see you've got a drill here.
16:55What is it and how does it help?
16:56So we've got two little scoops of sand here, one with ball, one without. And what I want you to
17:00understand is that really we're trying to control the depth of this divot, Neil. So if I set up just
17:05to
17:05the side, I want to make a swing where I don't actually break the ground. I don't want to see
17:10a divot being taking place because if I do that, I've gone way too low. Right, yes.
17:15So by setting up to this little bit of sand, same bunker sort of technique,
17:19I'm going to just look to hit the sand only. Yeah, hear that really nice sound that you hear on
17:25great bunker plays. Yeah, and there's no divot there. It's just a sort of light bruising of the
17:29ground, isn't it? Yeah, just nipping that sand, getting plenty of spin, plenty of height on the shot.
17:34And you can try that with a golf ball as well.
17:43Yeah, it's a really nice way of thinking about it. It's a drill I've not seen before actually,
17:47John. Hopefully, if you try it, it will help you get that consistency that you need with your
17:51splashes in the sand to get the ball out every time.
17:58Okay, John, so green reading, what have we got going on down here?
18:01So we've got this funny looking contraption. It's a perfect putter. It's a device that can
18:06actually guarantee that we're starting the ball on the same line every time. But we've got different
18:10speed markers on the device here so we can roll the ball at different speeds and see whether or not
18:16it goes in. Yeah, because there is a direct correlation between your line and the pace that you
18:21hit the ball. If you don't get both right, you're likely to miss, aren't you? Absolutely. A speed and line
18:26match up is what we need. The line is only as good as the speed that you're trying to hit
18:29it into the hole.
18:30Okay, show us how it works then. Okay, so what we've got, basically, we've figured out this putt here
18:35and we're going to roll it from the little marker on two here. And we know that if we do
18:40that, we're
18:40going to be very, very close to holding it and it's gone in nicely there. If I was to roll
18:46it at a
18:46slightly slower speed than that, so I'm going to go down to zero, just two little clicks lower on this
18:51little speed device, you can see that it breaks that little bit more and it ends up missing on
18:56the low edge. And if I now do it differently, I'll go up to a four on the little speed
19:01marking.
19:03You can see that extra bit of speed, it just kind of grabs that top edge of the hole. It
19:07probably
19:08would have gone in if the flag was out, but it caught more of the right edge of the hole.
19:12If I
19:12maybe go even quicker than that, maybe up towards a five on this little device, you can see that's on
19:17an
19:17awful lot higher line and then as a result, it doesn't actually go in. Yes, it's a really good
19:21visualisation. Even though each ball is going down on exactly the same line, the pace that you hit
19:27your putts will have a direct impact on whether you're able to make them or not. What's interesting
19:33about this though, as I look at it, I guess the temptation, I guess the mistake here that people
19:39make is that they miss on what's often called as the amateur side, which would be the low side.
19:43You'd end up hitting more times that you miss, you'd miss low than missing high.
19:48Absolutely. Why is that? Why do people tend to miss low more than they miss high?
19:51Well, I think people often see and visualise what we've laid out here, but they end up aiming at the
19:56apex ball, which would probably be about this ball here, which obviously, as you can see in this
20:01demonstration, is actually way lower than the start line, which is this white string line. So we need to
20:07start the ball a lot higher than the apex that we visualised. I think the apex is a worthy
20:13picture to draw yourself, but you've got to make sure you're aiming it higher than that
20:17on this right-to-left braking putt. Yeah, it's a really interesting subject,
20:21and these small things, it's just one of those things that if you can take it out with you
20:25onto the golf course, get used to hitting your putts high enough when you're faced with some
20:29brake like this. You should, should be able to hold a few more.
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