Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro
During this swing tip, we are going to have a look at the six qualities that all of the best golfers have during their golf swing. I think the main one that we have to start with is how the top golfers hold their golf clubs. It’s the only connection that you have with the golf club, so getting this correct is really important. And having a good hold on the golf club will ensure that you deliver the club face back to the ball correctly to allow you to hit really straight shots. So, if we look at how to put the hands on correctly for a right handed golfer, you’d want to put your left hand at the top of the club and just place your fingers directly down at the ground and we are going to put the handle of the club across the middle joint of the index finger and to where the little finger joins with your hand.
So if you just wrap your fingers round and then place your hand on top, now the best way that you can check if you’ve got your grip correct or not is to take a coin. So, if we use a coin and you place your hand on as we just discussed, you should be able to put the coin between the thumb and the hands. Okay? There should be no big gap between the thumb and the hands. So, hold the coin between the thumb and the hands and that coin should be pointing up at your right shoulder. That means that you’ve got the correct palm position and this is really important because this will dictate your directional control. Okay. Once we’ve got the left hand on correctly and we’ve got the coin across the center of the handle and pointing up at the right shoulder, we can place the right hand on, we are going to place that initially underneath the left hand, again if we go for fingers pointing at the ground, the handle across the middle joint of the index finger and where the little finger joins the palm, we can wrap the fingers around and place the thumb on top. We’re now going to slide that right hand up so it sits on top of your left thumb. And then if we look at the back of the hands, really important to get the hands working as one unit. So take the little finger and the index finger and over and under lap them to interlock the hands together.
Some players just overlap rather than interlocking which just means that their little finger sits over the top of the index finger. But the whole point is that the hands work together as one unit. So that’s certainly the first characteristic. Okay .Now moving on and looking at what else the good players do, I think that one thing that all good players do is have a really solid pre shot routine. So before they hit the ball, they’ll take a practice swing to get a feel for the shot that they are about to hit and then they’ll stand back away from the ball and they’ll look directly at where they want the ball to go. They’ll draw a line back from their target, to the ball and they’ll pick something out just in front of the ball, maybe four feet away up to a couple of yards and they’ll just now focus on placing the club face into a position which is going to allow the ball to fly over that spot. Okay, this will allow you to now get settled really well, so once you got the club face pointing to that spot, place your feet together and ensure that they are pointing inline with the grooves and then split your stance because now your alignment is absolutely correct to that target we want to hit the ball out to.
Okay. So moving on from there, we now look at all the top players have a really, really rotational movement on their backswing. So once they’ve set up and are in position, we see all of the top players really turning on their backswing shoulders 90 degrees right of where they started to generate maximum power to come back into the ball with. Moving on from there, all of them display a really similar impact position. They all have this really straight solid stable left side as they’re connecting with the golf ball. They’ve shifted their weight on to the left side, their left hip and left shoulder are directly up over their left foot and the left arm is directly down the left side with hands in front of the left thigh, so really leading in with the club head behind the hands. So that’s the position and then they strike. And finally you’ll see all of the top players in a really well balanced finish. So they’ll strike their golf shots and really hold the finish position looking at where the ball is landing but this is also demonstrating how good their balance has been throughout the golf swing. So I think if you can look at emulating the top players and those six traits that we’ve just discussed, I think you’ll really see a big improvement in your golf swing.
2013-08-12 Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro
During this swing tip, we are going to have a look at the six qualities that all of the best golfers have during their golf swing. I think the main one that we have to start with is how the top golfers hold their golf clubs. It’s the only connection that you have with the golf club, so getting this correct is really important. And having a good hold on the golf club will ensure that you deliver the club face back to the ball correctly to allow you to hit really straight shots. So, if we look at how to put the hands on correctly for a right handed golfer, you’d want to put your left hand at the top of the club and just place your fingers directly down at the ground and we are going to put the handle of the club across the middle joint of the index finger and to where the little finger joins with your hand.
So if you just wrap your fingers round and then place your hand on top, now the best way that you can check if you’ve got your grip correct or not is to take a coin. So, if we use a coin and you place your hand on as we just discussed, you should be able to put the coin between the thumb and the hands. Okay? There should be no big gap between the thumb and the hands. So, hold the coin between the thumb and the hands and that coin should be pointing up at your right shoulder. That means that you’ve got the correct palm position and this is really important because this will dictate your directional control. Okay. Once we’ve got the left hand on correctly and we’ve got the coin across the center of the handle and pointing up at the right shoulder, we can place the right hand on, we are going to place that initially underneath the left hand, again if we go for fingers pointing at the ground, the handle across the middle joint of the index finger and where the little finger joins the palm, we can wrap the fingers around and place the thumb on top. We’re now going to slide that right hand up so it sits on top of your left thumb. And then if we look at the back of the hands, really important to get the hands working as one unit. So take the little finger and the index finger and over and under lap them to interlock the hands together.
Some players just overlap rather than interlocking which just means that their little finger sits over the top of the index finger. But the whole point is that the hands work together as one unit. So that’s certainly the first characteristic. Okay .Now moving on and looking at what else the good players do, I think that one thing that all good players do is have a really solid pre shot routine. So before they hit the ball, they’ll take a practice swing to get a feel for the shot that they are about to hit and then they’ll stand back away from the ball and they’ll look directly at where they want the ball to go. They’ll draw a line back from their target, to the ball and they’ll pick something out just in front of the ball, maybe four feet away up to a couple of yards and they’ll just now focus on placing the club face into a position which is going to allow the ball to fly over that spot. Okay, this will allow you to now get settled really well, so once you got the club face pointing to that spot, place your feet together and ensure that they are pointing inline with the grooves and then split your stance because now your alignment is absolutely correct to that target we want to hit the ball out to.
Okay. So moving on from there, we now look at all the top players have a really, really rotational movement on their backswing. So once they’ve set up and are in position, we see all of the top players really turning on their backswing shoulders 90 degrees right of where they started to generate maximum power to come back into the ball with. Moving on from there, all of them display a really similar impact position. They all have this really straight solid stable left side as they’re connecting with the golf ball. They’ve shifted their weight on to the left side, their left hip and left shoulder are directly up over their left foot and the left arm is directly down the left side with hands in front of the left thigh, so really leading in with the club head behind the hands. So that’s the position and then they strike. And finally you’ll see all of the top players in a really well balanced finish. So they’ll strike their golf shots and really hold the finish position looking at where the ball is landing but this is also demonstrating how good their balance has been throughout the golf swing. So I think if you can look at emulating the top players and those six traits that we’ve just discussed, I think you’ll really see a big improvement in your golf swing.
