COMPLETE DRIVER GUIDE: From Start to Finish

Summary

In this comprehensive guide by Giles Gill, we delve into the intricacies of mastering the driver in golf. The video covers essential concepts, setup fundamentals, backswing techniques, and strategies for executing a consistent and powerful drive. Key elements such as angle of attack, swing plane, and strike location are dissected to provide a clear understanding of what makes a great driver shot. Through practical tips and engaging commentary, Giles ensures that golfers of all levels can lower their scores and gain confidence off the tee.

Highlights

• Understand and implement key concepts: angle of attack, swing plane, and strike location. 🏌️‍♂️
• Detailed setup guide, including grip and posture, to ensure a solid driving foundation. ⚙️
• Drills and exercises to practice for a more effective and consistent swing. 💪
• Learn to navigate through the backswing, transition, and downswing with ease. 🔄
• Develop a reliable go-to shot for narrow fairways or when precision is paramount. 🎯

Key Takeaways

• Master the driver to drastically improve your scores by ensuring powerful, straight drives. ⛳
• Essential concepts include angle of attack, swing plane, and strike location for optimal driving. 🏌️‍♂️
• Practice different drills to develop key skills such as width in your swing and proper body pivoting. 💪
• Understand the importance of setup, including grip, stance, and posture for a successful drive. ⚙️
• Have a go-to driver shot for times when precision is more crucial than distance. 🎯

Overview

Giles Gill's detailed driver guide explores every facet required for enhancing your golf drive. Starting with a deep dive into vital concepts, such as angle of attack and swing plane, Giles lays the groundwork for understanding what constitutes a successful drive. These concepts are crucial for optimizing your launch, perfecting your swing, and maintaining consistent ball flight.

The video then progresses to focus on the setup, a crucial aspect often overlooked by golfers. By mastering the grip, stance, and posture, players can create an ideal base from which to execute their swing. Giles presents engaging drills to cement these fundamentals, offering a blend of visual and instructional knowledge to bolster understanding and skill.

Finally, the guide delves into the mechanics of the backswing and downswing, emphasizing the importance of body pivot and arm movement. Practical advice is given for hitting a go-to drive, a strategic shot for when precision is more important than distance. This holistic approach ensures golfers are equipped to tackle any challenge from the tee.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Video Overview The introduction covers a poll conducted among subscribers to choose the topic for an in-depth video. The selected topic is a 'how-to driver' video. The speaker discusses the joy of hitting a perfect drive in golf, staying long and straight in the air, which can help improve golfing scores. The video aims to teach how to achieve this perfect drive.
• 00:30 - 10:00: Concepts and Fundamentals 1 This chapter serves as a comprehensive guide focused on improving your golf driving skills. The video aims to be an all-in-one resource to help players achieve better performance with their drivers, ultimately leading to lower golf scores. It begins with detailing the key concepts crucial for mastering the driver. Following the conceptual understanding, the chapter delves into the fundamentals of setup, providing simple, clear checkpoints and baselines to ensure success with driving. The chapter promises a progression of ideas and techniques to enhance your skills effectively.
• 10:00 - 25:00: Setup Basics The chapter focuses on the golf swing setup, specifically breaking it into two main components: how the hands and arms work, and how the body pivot functions. The discussion progresses through swing mechanics from the transition and downswing, emphasizing body movement, to impact, release, and follow-through, aiming to cover the entire process comprehensively. Additionally, the chapter will include guidance on executing a 'go-to' driver shot for narrow fairways or high-pressure situations.
• 25:00 - 35:00: Backswing - Hands and Arms The chapter discusses the key concept of 'angle of attack' in golf, specifically during the backswing involving the hands and arms. It explains how the angle of attack refers to the path of the club head as it strikes the ball, whether it is descending, level, or ascending. The chapter also notes the difference in technique when using a driver, given that the ball is teed up, requiring a more 'sweeping' motion.
• 35:00 - 40:30: Backswing - Body Pivot The chapter titled "Backswing - Body Pivot" delves into the specifics of hitting the driver, whether it's off the deck or from the tee. The focus is on achieving optimal launch angles, ball flight, and distance. To accomplish this, understanding the angle of attack is crucial. Successful golfers maintain an angle of attack anywhere from -1 to +3 degrees, debunking the common belief that one must always hit the ball upwards.
• 40:30 - 45:30: Transition and Downswing The chapter titled 'Transition and Downswing' discusses the importance of maintaining a certain range in swing angles to ensure good performance in golf. It highlights that surpassing certain degrees of upward or downward swing can lead to control difficulties. Staying within a -1 to +3 range is recommended for achieving optimal distance, solid contact, and predictable flight. The chapter also introduces the next key concept related to swing mechanics.
• 45:30 - 55:10: Impact and Follow Through The chapter titled 'Impact and Follow Through' discusses the common concern about feeling a difference between the driver's swing and the player's own swing. One significant factor contributing to this difference is the swing plane. The swing plane for a driver tends to be flatter. The explanation begins with defining a swing plane, which involves drawing an imaginary line from the hosel of the club through the base of the Alpine. The chapter also contrasts this with the swing plane of an iron, noting that it is much steeper and explains how these distinctions affect a player's swing.
• 55:10 - 59:30: Go-To Shot: Controlling the Situation In this chapter, the focus is on understanding the different swing motions required for irons and drivers in golf. It explains that due to the shorter shaft of irons, players tend to swing more vertically, which involves a steeper swing path. Conversely, the longer shaft of drivers necessitates a more horizontal swing motion, such that the club works around the player. This leads to a different feel between the two types of clubs, emphasizing the importance of adjusting the swing to control the situation effectively with each type of club.

COMPLETE DRIVER GUIDE: From Start to Finish Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 a couple of weeks ago I put a poll out to all my subscribers asking them what in-depth video they wanted to see next these were the three options and they ended up picking a how-to driver video now if you want to see the other two videos if you want me to film them let me know in the comments down below there is no better feeling in golf than absolutely roasting a drive down the middle of the Fairway it's long it's straight it stays in the air forever and ultimately not only does it feel great but it's gonna massively help you improve your scores if you can get the ball in play off the tee your scores are going to plummet so in today's video
• 00:30 - 01:00 we're going to have a huge how-to Guy this is going to be your all-in-one video you're not going to have to go anywhere else and it is guaranteed to help you hit driver better so you can shoot lower scores so let's just quickly run through exactly what we're going to cover in today's video we're going to start off by looking at Concepts what are the key Concepts that we need to have to make sure that we can be successful with this driver after that we're going to jump into the setup running through the fundamentals and giving you some super simple and clear checkpoints and bass lines for you to have from there we're going to progress
• 01:00 - 01:30 into the backswing and we're going to sort of split it up into two areas number one how are the hands and arms working and then number two how is the body pivot working after that we're going to go transition and downswing again really focusing on that body movement and then we're going to get all the way into impact the release and all the way into the follow through so we're really going to give you that A to Z now as well as that we're also going to go through the final piece which is my favorite piece which is how do you hit a go-to driver's shot you know when the Fairway gets narrow when you get tight Under Pressure how did you just get the
• 01:30 - 02:00 ball in play we're going to go through that as well so grab a coffee grab a stronger drink if you like grab a water let's sit down and let's go through everything key concept number one that we are going to run through first is angle of attack now firstly what is angle of attack angle of attack is the name we give for how is that club head traveling as it hits the ball Now is it going to be traveling on the way down is it going to be traveling level or on the way up if a weather driver we're going to be a lot more sweepy now the main reason for this is the ball is teed up you know whatever and Driver unless
• 02:00 - 02:30 you've got the the dod the driver off the deck shot in the bag you're going to be hitting driver for T that means we can get into a position to where we can really sweep it we can then optimize out our launch angles our ball flight our distance everything so what are we looking for in terms of angle of attack what is our sort of Baseline numbers well we will see golfers be very very successful from anywhere from -1 to positive three so straight off the bat a lot of people say oh you have to hit up you have to hit up well to be honest
• 02:30 - 03:00 once you get past a certain point the match-ups then become very difficult so for example if you're hitting five six seven degrees up Suddenly now you're gonna have to have some crazy swing directions it's going to be very difficult to control so by having a range of -1 to positive three that's going to give us that sort of nice Goldilocks range to where we're still going to get great distance fantastic distance in fact we're still going to be able to make solid contact and we're going to have a very predictable flight because we're not going to have two extreme numbers key concept number two that we're going to go through is Swing
• 03:00 - 03:30 plane now this is a question I get asked all the time is I feel like my my driver swing is very very different to my own swing one of the biggest reasons for this is because the swing plane is a lot flatter now firstly what is Swing Point well if I was to set up to this ball right here and I was to draw a line from the hustle of the club right through the base of the Alpine that is our swing plane now if I grab an iron so I have a 99 right here and I set this up in the same position you can see how this swing plane with an iron is going to be a lot steeper the line is going to be a lot
• 03:30 - 04:00 steeper this is why when we hit irons we find that we actually swing a lot more up and down reason being is the shaft shorter so we're a little bit more bent over and as a result the club's going to want to work up more now when it comes to a driver obviously the shaft is longer quite a bit longer this then means that as we swing the club is naturally going to want to work a little bit more around us so it will feel very very different with a driver it's going to feel a lot more around and also so
• 04:00 - 04:30 around on the way through versus with an iron it will naturally feel like it's a little bit more up and down so don't fight it allow the driver to naturally swing a little bit more around you relative to the iron and the third key concept is Strike location now there are two key things in play when we're talking about strike location so those two key factors are number one what we class as trampoline effect and number two gear effect so let me just explain both of those so if we have the club face right here if we were to hit it in
• 04:30 - 05:00 the middle of the face we would see the ball really ping off the face and this is what we class as the trampoline effect of the driver now we have a number in golf called smash Factor smash factor is the difference between Club head speed and ball speed so how fast is that ball pinging off for every mile an hour of comet speed so roughly the legal limit is about 1.5 miles an hour of ball speed per one mile an hour of clubbed speed now the only way you can ever get close to that number is if if you
• 05:00 - 05:30 actually hit it in the middle of the face as soon as we start to move more towards the tone more towards the heel we're going to see that trampoline effect decrease so the ball is actually going to Ping off at a slower speed this means that you could have a really high club head speed but if you can't hit the middle of the face you're never going to see it actually translate into ball speed which is the key thing that matters when we're trying to hit it far now the second fact is that play is gear effect now gear effect is how the club reacts as we hit the ball so whenever we hit the ball out the toe we're going to see the face ping open this way and
• 05:30 - 06:00 whenever we hit the ball out of the heel it's going to Ping close this way and when it comes to gear effect if we hit the ball out of the heel for a right-handed golfer we're going to find that that ball wants to curve left to right in the air and it's going to have a lot more spin on it and if we hit it a little bit more towards the toe right there we're going to see that the ball is going to curve a little bit more right to the left and it's going to be a little bit more knucklebally so it's going to drop out of the sky a lot faster so as we can see if we don't hit the middle the face not only are we
• 06:00 - 06:30 going to reduce the trampoline effect which means we're going to get less bull speed per mile an hour Club at speed but we're also going to start to curve it and put a lot of side spin on the ball so if you want to be a great driver of the golf ball or just a great golfer in general aim for a middle contact now you can buy something like a foot spray a powdered foot spray and spray it on the face when you hit a ball it'll then leave a mark wherever you've done it so now let's dive into the swing and to start us off we have to look at the setup so we're going to run through sort of an A to Z and give you a whole load
• 06:30 - 07:00 of bass lines and checkpoints for you to go with so the first thing that we're going to talk about is the grip now the grip is crucial it's the only connection we have with the club we get it wrong it's going to hurt our swing and it's going to be very difficult to produce any speed or consistency in terms of presenting good Loft good club face positions so I'm not going to do sort of a how-to grip because that would take far too long what I am going to do is run through two keys that I want you to make sure that you have now there are loads of different types of grips and I'm not here to say look you have to have a neutral grip because if you look at the best person World none of them
• 07:00 - 07:30 have the same grip some are stronger some are weaker some have a strong left hand a weak right hand you see everything out there but they all do have a couple of key things in common and the first one is where they grip it in their lead hand you don't see tour Pros grip it in the Palms if I was to turn to this angle you can see how that's very much in the Palm now the reason why they don't grip it in the Palm is number one if you imagine like a hammer as soon as I grip it in the Palm it's going to be very hard to use my wrist correctly and using the wrists are crucial for being able to set the club up on plane generate any cupboard speed
• 07:30 - 08:00 but also to control the face now when we also get into this palmy position you can see how the V created between my thumb and index finger here is pointing way up to my lead shoulder this is actually going to promote as we swing down a very open Club face so again if you're a slicer of the golf ball if you feel like you don't have a lot of clubhead speed or a lot of power a lot of oomph to your swing we need to check that left hand grip so what are we looking to achieve well if I hold the club up in front of me at a 45 degree angle making sure the toes pointing up to the sky guy I want to be seeing that
• 08:00 - 08:30 the base of the fingers go on the side of the grip not the bottom of the grip the side of the grip now from there close the fingers up first you can see I'm really holding it in the fingers then wrap that heel pad right over on top in this position you can see from the frontal view the sort of snuff box on my wrist joint here is right on top to slightly down the right side of the grip that's a great indication that I've got the club in a good position now second great checkpoint is actually I should be able to take the bottom three fingers off and just hold it with my
• 08:30 - 09:00 index finger and the heel pad off my hand if I can do that pretty stress free as you can see right now just talking naturally I can hold it there that's a great indication that your hands in the right position now the second key to a great grip is to make sure that the hands are working together we don't want them to be working independently and this is one of the things I see a lot of amateurs get wrong they either have the hands very stretched out so there's a lot of space between the fingers or we see the left hand round to the left side the right hand underneath and you can
• 09:00 - 09:30 see how you can see my left thumb right there and ultimately this is just not an optimal position to produce a consistent swing the hands tend to fall apart as soon as we add any speed so what we want to be seeing is obviously lead hand in a great position but we want to be seen when you grip it all the fingers are nice and close together so they're not obviously overlapping each other but they're nice and tight whether you do an interlock overlap or baseball grip that we just want all the fingers together and as well as that from the front view here now you can see how my palm is covering my left thumb and ultimately
• 09:30 - 10:00 from there my hands are in a nice one sort of unit right there and they can then work efficiently around the body this is going to help you use your wrist correctly generate a lot more Club head speed but also be able to square the face up a lot more consistently next up let's talk about body position when it comes to the driver and again this is crucial because this sort of sets the foundation for how we're going to Pivot and move the club correctly so I always like to use a rectangle as a guide now what do I mean by that well if I set up to this driver right here I I want to
• 10:00 - 10:30 draw a line straight down from the edges of my shoulders obviously a little line at the bottom little line at the top that's the rectangle right there now we can use this for a multitude of different ways of checking your setup position first way is we can use it to check your stance width we want to be seeing when we draw this down that the edges of your shoulders line up roughly with the inside part of your ankle if you're too wide you're going to see a lot of space between the edges of the shoulders and the inside of the ankles and if you're too narrow obviously you're going to see the ankles inside of
• 10:30 - 11:00 that now the second reason why this is really awesome is because if you're that golfer where we see you get the spine tilt wrong so either you get a little bit excessively tilted towards the target you can see now how that skewed the Box up relative to my feet but also if you're that golfer who tries to get too much side Bend which I also do see because they hear you know you want to do the reverse K but then they way overdo it you can now also see how that skewed that rectangle relative to the lower body as well so we want to make sure that if we have a nice subtle amount amount of tilt to where the upper
• 11:00 - 11:30 body is leaning slightly away how the edges of the shoulders are touching the inside parts of the ankles and that we have that little bit of tilt just away from the Target now the final thing we can use this rectangle for is the pelvis if you see your pelvis is back closer to the trail line that's a no-go we want to be seeing the pelvis in the middle to slightly closer towards that lead line that's going to give you just that subtle amount of tilt right there ultimately it's going to put you in a great position no driver setup video would be complete if we didn't talk about ball position and shaft lean this
• 11:30 - 12:00 is sort of the the piece that I see a lot of golfers get wrong at a dress and it's a bit of misinformation out there so here's the thing ball position is based off of anatomical positions and to keep it simple essentially the lowest point of our swing is underneath the left side of our body so basically the left armpit to left shoulder joint with that being said to keep it simple let's just position the ball add a dress underneath the left armpit left shoulder join really simple position but biomechanically makes complete sense this is what we see a lot of the best
• 12:00 - 12:30 players in the world at impact they do line up their left armpit with the golf ball so if I step up to this position right here and I position that roughly underneath the left armpit you can actually see how that's not off my left heel it's actually about a golf ball inside the left heel so if you are that golfer who is playing the ball off your left toe off your left heel stop because it's not going to help you it's actually going to cause a lot more hindrance you're actually going to find that you're going to swing too far to the left it's going to affect your low Point your strike your club path everything so you want to make sure that at address
• 12:30 - 13:00 once you're in this good position the ball positions underneath the left armpit if you're set up correctly that'll actually be about one golf ball inside the left hill now the final piece from the frontal view is actually to do with shaft lean and again I see so many golfers get this wrong in the sense that they have their hands way too far back in this position to be honest your best bet when it comes to shaft leaner the dress is to have the hands pretty much level with the ball in reality we see tour Pros anywhere from level to maybe be a degree or two back but if you just
• 13:00 - 13:30 aim for having the hands level that's going to put you in a great position to then where you can have a solid grip and you can then deliver it back in a great impact position so that's the setup from the frontal view I know there's a lot of detail in there but now you've got some guides that you can follow so let's now run through the setup from the down the line View and I see people get three key areas sort of wrong in this position number one posture number two distance away from the ball and the third one is alignment so we're going to run through these things right now the first thing I
• 13:30 - 14:00 want to run through is posture but I kind of want to do it in reverse I want to give you the drill first and then I want to run through the checkpoints that we'll then use to make sure that the posture is correct so the drill that we're going to use I want you just to stand nice and tall and have the club up in front of you in this position now from there have your legs straight and your hips level and make sure your weight is 50 50 between your toes and your heels now lower your arms down until you feel that connection with the inner part of your arms and the answer part of your chest and just let the arms just sort of naturally droop there keeping your legs straight and your hips
• 14:00 - 14:30 level just softly round forwards until the club touches the ground now from there gently unlock your legs and that will put you in a great athletic posture so what are some great checkpoints to ensure you're in a great posture position the first checkpoint is your balance point so where are your armpits your knees and the balls of the feet are they in one straight line if they are fantastic that's exactly what we want to be seeing the next key checkpoint is where is the back edge of your butt
• 14:30 - 15:00 relative to your heels is it about a golf ball outside of your heel line if so again fantastic so those checkpoints are going to be crucial for you and they're just going to make sure that you're in a good position now the next thing I see people get wrong all the time is distance away from the ball how far away from the ball should you stand again let's keep this super simple let's give you the checkpoint if I set up here and I am the right distance away from the ball I should be able to draw a line straight down from the center of my shoulder and it should just gently brush the inside of of the button to the grip
• 15:00 - 15:30 right there if I'm too close you can see how that line is now intersecting where my hands are and if I'm too far away you can see how the Line is now way inside the button to the grip so just using that little reference guide center of the shoulder joint touching the inside part of the the button to the grip is going to be a fantastic guide for you the final one is alignment and this is where it's a little bit more personal to you and the shape that you're hitting if you're a fader of the ball obviously your alignment is going to be a little bit more to the left if you're a drawer of the ball it's going to be a little
• 15:30 - 16:00 bit more to the right now one key I would say for a lot of amateur golfers is actually focus on your forearm now this is one of the things that a lot of people Overlook and I actually think this is one of the most important parts reason being is it has a lot of knock-on effects in terms of spine angle tilts shoulder alignment loads different things rib cage alignment so what I see a lot of amateurs do is their tray alarm will actually be higher than their leader so if I zoom in on the arms you can see how you the bottom of my left arm is actually visible underneath my
• 16:00 - 16:30 right arm now this is not what we want to be seeing we actually want to be seeing the top of the left arm slightly visible above the right arm if you can do that you're going to put yourself in a better position to where your shoulders are just a little bit more squared up and ultimately from there you're also going to have some good spine tilt and it's going to be way easier for you to get that upwards angle of attack that we're trying to achieve so again just a tiny little checkpoint there that's going to help you just essentially set up in that awesome position so now we're going to start on the back swing and the first thing that
• 16:30 - 17:00 we're going to look at is how the hands and arms are moving so I want to talk about thing is let's talk about width what is width width is the distance the hands are away from the chest you're at the whole swing and I see so many golfers with driver get very very narrow in the backswing you can see as I do this it gets the club extremely long ultimately from here it's going to be very difficult to actually generate any sort of power and consistency on the way down so if we can add width that's going to look a lot more like this you can see it's shorter turned off my arm swing
• 17:00 - 17:30 it's got the club very much in front of my chest again you can see the distance has increased again with the hand width away from my chest now from this position this has given me loads of space so I can get that club accelerating on the way down I can get my body moving correctly and ultimately from there it's going to allow me to start to getting some awesome impact positions but here's the thing how can we actually train it well a lot of the time I see the issues come from the trail arm the trail arm is really the thing that that sucks the club in and starts to get it very very narrow so what are we looking for in terms of a
• 17:30 - 18:00 couple key checkpoints with the arm and some drills to help us with this well in the takeaway I see loads of people start to roll this arm to the inside and as a result you can now see from The downline View how bent this arm is this is one of the key positions where people start to get in trouble now as they go back everything from there is just going to continue to collapse get narrow and get narrower get narrower clubs now very long at the top of the backswing and ultimately from here like I said extremely difficult to get down to the ball so what do we looking to achieve in
• 18:00 - 18:30 this position well if we can keep a little bit more width or that right arm just staying a little bit straighter on the way back and not forcefully straight I don't want your arm tense I want it nice and relaxed we're going to start to find that actually everything's going to work back on plane a lot more then from there if I just continue to feel that gentle width that arm sort of pushing away from me it's gonna get me into an awesome position at the top so let's give you a little drill just to help you with the takeaway making sure you're in that good position first little drill I want to give you is just the right palm on this side so the open palm drill like
• 18:30 - 19:00 so now what I want you to do is make a takeaway where you feel like that Palm just stays down to the ground if you're that golfer who starts to get narrow early that Palm is going to point in front of you so towards the camera right there or it's even going to point really up towards the sky and again that's going to open up the club face because a whole lot of issues versus if you can just take that club back feel like that Palms pointing more down to the ground you're going to find that actually that's going to put you in the perfect position now again we can continue that now all the way to the top where you go okay Palm pointing down I left arm
• 19:00 - 19:30 parallel Palm is going to point away and at the top of the back swing Palm's going to point away from you so we're always trying to keep that Palm in the back swing pointing away from us if we can do that we're going to start to see you have some great width in there now the second drill is going to be awesome as well because it's going to allow you to over exaggerate the feeling what you're going to do is set up to the golf ball here and you're just going to hike the club up with your left hand so you've created this nice 90 degree angle right there from there take your right hand and grip it so it's 50 50 on the
• 19:30 - 20:00 grip and the shaft now as you can see my right arm is obviously extended down the shaft in this position it's going to allow me to make a turn where I can really feel like that right hand is pushing away from me on that shot if I can do that that's going to get me into a really nice wide position at the top now once I've done that a couple times I'm just then going to slide my right hand down into that position and sort of take a mental snapshot of what that feels like if I can do that that's then gonna tell me to go okay I know what I'm
• 20:00 - 20:30 trying to achieve there then from there when I hit a ghost shot I can feel that width with with width and that's going to put me in a great position so let me do those two drills for you one more time right palm down right palm away at the top right palm away feel that great width right there now let's do the split hands drill again fill that great width right there now I'm good to go and hit a goal shot so now let's dive into how the body should be working through the gold swing
• 20:30 - 21:00 and we call this the pivot how is the body pivoting in the backswing the transition and the downswing we're going to start by focusing on how the body is moving in the backswing and there are a couple of key things that we need to ensure we do but first thing I want to do is just set up to the golf one I want to draw a couple of lines on my body for you first one is going to be down the right hip down the left hip on the left ear so these lines are going to sort of form the basis of how we can analyze your golf swing if you make a backswing and you see that at the top of the back swing your pelvis has gone through this
• 21:00 - 21:30 Trail line you know you've gone too lateral away from the target if you go to the top of your backswing and you see you've fallen through the lead line you know you're too much on your left leg and if you see your head get too excessive maybe towards the Target or too excessive away from the target relative to that line on your head again you know you've not moved efficiently so these are going to be some great checkpoints now what do we actually she looking to achieve well if I get into that position again I draw those lines down I want to be seeing as I turn that
• 21:30 - 22:00 at the top of my backswing I am either still touching or I've created a tiny bit of space between my head and the line my trail hip has created about a golf ball worth of space between the trail line and my trail hip and my lead glute muscle is still connected to that line This ensures that I have created this nice pivot to where you can see I've gotten a great hip turn right there so a nice full hip turn I've got a great shoulder turn my left shoulder is feeling behind the golf ball and ultimately from there I've also created
• 22:00 - 22:30 this spine angle where it's leaning away from the Target now this is crucial because this now sets me in a position to where as I sit rotate I can start to approach the ball a little bit more from the inside I can get that angle of attack slightly on the way up and ultimately from there it's going to put me into a very consistent position now the other key point is just a little bit on weight where do we want to be feeling the weight now I know a lot of gold for sale I want to be feeling like I'm really in my right side you don't you will do to start with there's a little push off for sure you're going to shift that weight there but by the time you
• 22:30 - 23:00 get back to the top we actually find most golfers a pretty even 50 50 and we can back this up with some Force plate data you know by the time we get to the top we are pretty much back even 50 50 with the feet don't be that goal for this trying to get all your pressure into your Trail leg because that's just creating far too much work for you to do in the downswing now let's give you a great drill that's going to help you with this so to do this drill all you need is either two golf clubs two alignment sticks or one alignment stick in a golf club I've got one allow me a
• 23:00 - 23:30 second and golf club here so what you're going to do is set up to the golf ball in your normal setup position now as you can see as we spoke about with the ball position this alignment stick on the ground is going to be about a golf ball inside the Lead Hill that's actually the correct ball position for the majority of golfers now from there take your golf club and pop it just over your shoulders just like that and just hold it in place now as we turn we want two checkpoints number one we want to feel like as we turn we can keep this left Loop muscle over that alignment stick I don't want you just to freeze it in now I want your hips to turn but I also want you to feel
• 23:30 - 24:00 like you can get this like this club on your shoulders pointing behind the golf along the ground you can see as I do that I'm then able to generate this spine angle to where I'm leaning away from the target I've created a great hip turn and I'm actually in a fantastic position to then where I can approach the ball from the inside and ultimately start to hit up on it so the way that you're going to do this is just pop this onto your shoulders have that nice setup position then from there just feel like you keep that left glute muscle over there as you do a couple of these turns learn what it feels like to get into
• 24:00 - 24:30 this good position grab the club normally then just have one rehearsal swing where you repeat it again you're trying to feel that spine leaning slightly away from the target then after that step on in and have a hit and as you can see there definitely got that spine angle leaning away hit up on the ball was about a two yard draw but this is just going to create the foundation to where you can really just rotate and rotate again this is all about simplifying down the motion if you've got a complicated driver swing
• 24:30 - 25:00 it's going to be extremely hard to control if you can get your setup rate get that great pivot and have some good width you're going to be a great driver of the golf ball so you've now set yourself up beautifully with a great top of the back swing position and here's the thing this is going to put you light years ahead of most other golfers why because most other golfers by the time they get to the top of their backswing a route of position this means that they're going to have to make compensations on the way down and actually the downswing happens so fast 0.3 of a second that's just crazy crazy
• 25:00 - 25:30 fast so if you're having to make all these compensations just to hit the ball you're never going to be successful so it's about getting yourself in the right position there to now where we can talk through the concept of you just unwinding and hitting that beautiful long straight drive so what are we looking to see well as we get to around roughly left arm panel on the backswing this is when we start the process of the downswing so it happens before we finish the backswing and essentially what that process looks like is we are going to be pushing into the left foot so the ball
• 25:30 - 26:00 of the left foot as we do that that's going to start to shift our pelvis back towards the target again helping us create this nice subtle amount of tilt not an excessive amount but not anywhere leaning towards the target we've just got that nice subtle amount of tilt from there once we pushed into that leg then it's pretty much go time to start to rotate because the hands and arms will then start to drop into the right position then from there the left hip is going to start to push up and back the left shoulder is going to start to clear and the right shoulder is actually going
• 26:00 - 26:30 to drop down closer to the ball this is what we class is going into right Bend and right Bend is crucial because it's what allows us to keep our head back you can see if I didn't go into right Bend I would move my head forwards ultimately hit down and hit left on it if I move my body into right Bend you can see how that allows me to approach from the inside but also my head stayed back so I can hit slightly on the way up so this is where understanding the correct sequencing of starting to push into the
• 26:30 - 27:00 left foot then from there once we push into the left foot left hip is going to go back and up as the right shoulder goes down that creates this great rotation keeps the head back and ultimately from there you're allowed to then rotate through now that's the concept but here's the thing we have to translate that to a feel because we can't be thinking of that in the downswing it just happens too quick so I have the best drill that's going to allow you to develop your own feels from this concept let's now run through that drill so the drill that we're going to do is called Chopsticks so the reason
• 27:00 - 27:30 why I like to call this Chopsticks is essentially we're going to use two alignment sticks and we're going to try and hit them together kind of like Chopsticks in a way so what you're going to do is Place one alignment stick through your belt loop so you're going to have this it's pretty much 50 50. you could pull it so it's slightly away from The Target just a little bit more again this is just going to help you with this drill now in terms of what we're going to do with this one we're just going to pop it on our shoulders and again so we've got the left tip right on the left shoulder everything else is extending down away from the target so both of these sticks are just a little bit more away from the Target now as we now swing
• 27:30 - 28:00 we want to be feeling like as we come down we're going to shift and then from there as we start to rotate you want to try and hit this orange alignment stick on the back of the white one so the one on your shoulders is going to try and hit the one through your belt leaves now ideally we do this either just before or at impact what this is going to do is it's going to teach you what it feels like to have this Dynamic push into the ground and then from there learn what it feels like to start to get that right shoulder dropping down as you can see in
• 28:00 - 28:30 this position I've got some great tilts on my shoulders my hips are really solid to open and this is just a fantastic drill to start to teach you what it feels like to sequence the body so let me now show you what that would look like with a golf club in my hands I'm at the top of the backswing here again in that great structure that little bit of a shift and then they start to unwind the body you can see how that's really starting to get me hitting up on the ball swinging a little bit more from the inside let me show you what that looks like in full flow though right here so again just trying to focus on that good setup then a good body motion with some
• 28:30 - 29:00 width foreign we've done has led us to this moment this is sort of like the grand finale this is the bit that actually counts this is where we find out if it's going to be a good shot or a bad shot impact impact is super super important and it's actually technically the only position in golf that genuinely matters reason being is the golf ball doesn't know what your backswing looks like it only knows how it's been hit don't get me wrong the other parts of the Swing are very important but they're important because
• 29:00 - 29:30 they're there to set up a great impact position so what does this amazing impact position look like well if I set up in my address position right here and I go from address to impact what can we see as change well firstly the lower body has very much extended towards the target I've got more hip rotation and ultimately in this position you can see I've got more a lot more weight in my left side as well as this I've got a little bit more right Bend and this right Bend pulls my upper body back so that the left armpit is still in line with the ball if that right man wasn't
• 29:30 - 30:00 in place I would be too far forward so that right Bend is what pulls my head back pulls my upper body back allows us to hit up from the inside as well as this we'll also see that there's a tiny bit of shaft lean right there and it's nothing crazy I see a lot of people try and really deal off it with a driver it's not what we want to be doing driver shaft lean is going to be anywhere from about zero degrees to three degrees of shaft length so it's very very minimal to put that into perspective the one minute hand on the clock is six degrees so it's half of that is going to be the most that we'd want to see so really all
• 30:00 - 30:30 of these things are just putting us into a dynamic position now from there if we were to carry it through we would see the body continue to push up everything extend underneath us into this wonderful follow through position so now that we know what impact looks like in reality everything has led to giving us that position impact is just a reaction to what's happened throughout the swing let's actually give you a drill that's going to help you go okay from this sort of waist high position all the way through to this follow through position
• 30:30 - 31:00 so it's one continuous motion we don't want to be seeing this as position position position that's that's not how golf is golf's a fluid motion so let's give you a drill that's going to take you from roughly around here all the way through into this great follow through position so to do this drill what you need is an alignment stick so what we're going to do is grip this alignment stick like it's a driver right at the end of it then from there set up as if you're about to hit this alignment stick as if it's your driver rather than actually have the tip there what I then want you to do is I want you to bring that tip so
• 31:00 - 31:30 it's outside of your Trail foot now the purpose of this drill is to try and slide this alignment stick as close to that trail toe as you can without touching it as we do that the flex on the shaft or the alignment stick is going to push our body upwards it's going to teach you what it feels like to start to get that left shoulder clearing out the way get the pelvis tucking underneath you and ultimately it's going to give you this sensation of what it sort of feels like to go from hip high all the way through into that nice high extended follow through position so
• 31:30 - 32:00 again what we're trying to do is not see impact as like a this is the position we're trying to hit it's a position that we're trying to move through in order to produce that amazing driver shot that we're trying to see where it's long straight consistent on that basis so have it there drag it through up into a higher follow through position you can see the follow through position it's got me in my weights on my left side pelvis is tucked under very natural position when I do this drill if I have to do this drill wrong I would see that the alignment
• 32:00 - 32:30 stick will go too far away from me and ultimately it wouldn't push me up so try and drag it as close as you can to your body and ultimately that's going to put you in the best possible position to learn this move as fast as possible now from there if I grab my driver and sort of recreate that same position obviously Club head off the ground and feel like I can push through I'm going to really start to feel like what it feels to hit up on the ball get my body extending ultimately getting me in that great position so we have gone through a hell of a lot of stuff today and I get it can
• 32:30 - 33:00 be overwhelming but the best thing you can do is just try and take it down and just go through it piece by piece start by analyzing your swing look at this setup and just go through it gradually at the end of the day the golf swing is a chain reaction we've got to start from the start if we fix the the links that are sort of missing right at the start then that's going to set off positive movements positive movements and then by the end of it all the chains are going to be in position however sometimes when we're out on a golf course things just go wrong we lose it maybe we're not feeling great we've got a bit of a cold
• 33:00 - 33:30 and ultimately our hand-eye coordination isn't there ball starts going everywhere so what do we do in that situation do we just pack up and leave no we've got to develop what we class as a go-to shot now a go-to shot is a shot that maybe isn't going to go as far as your normal shot but it's going to get you in place it might go 90 of the normal distance but it's going to get you in play majority of the time and that's crucial especially when things just aren't going well so how do we play that go-to shot again we've just got to get control over the situation so how do we do this how
• 33:30 - 34:00 do we take control of the situation we're going to make a couple of simple changes just to give us that element of control first one is just to tee the ball down just a little bit lower this is going to help us produce a little bit more backspin on the golf ball now straight away people like ah backspin I don't want that it's going to limit my distance yes it might take a little bit of distance off but it's going to give you more control spin is our friend in this situation not side spin but backspin that is our friend in this situation the next thing we're actually going to do is just get control over the club just a little bit more I just want
• 34:00 - 34:30 you to grip down just half an inch now this will help you steepen your swing plane the reason this will help you sleep on your swing plane is if I grip it at the end and then I grip it at half an inch down I'm going to get closer shaft's going to get a margin higher again that's just going to help me cover the golf ball just that little bit more ultimately giving me a little bit more control again over the situation the final part of this is then I want you to feel like it's a little bit more of an abbreviated three-quarter swing if we can do that we're going to find that we're going to get a lot more control
• 34:30 - 35:00 over our body and everything's just going to be way easier to sync up to time up as a little bonus tip I always like to think in this situation I'm trying to clip the T not the ball I'm not trying to hit at the ball I'm just trying to clip the tee so I sometimes imagine the ball's not even on there and I'm just trying to hit a tee now it's all well and good me telling you this but why don't I show you it so I've teared the ball down as low as I can sort of go with the teas that I have here I'm going to grip down slightly and then everything's just going to feel a little bit more sort of three-quarter on
• 35:00 - 35:30 the way back on the way through I'm then just going to focus on just hitting that t and let's see what happens foreign as I look at that flight it's come out a good half the height that's going to give me a lot more control but ultimately from there has gone extremely straight it's nearly flown straight over the 250 marker exactly what we're trying to see right there so it will shorten the distance slightly but it's going to give you a lot more control over the shot and ultimately that's the whole aim with the go-to shot