The SIMPLE & EASY way to swing a golf club!

In this video I'm going to show you how to swing a golf club. This is great if you are brand new to golf but also a timely reminder if you're an established golfer too. My name is Rick Shields, I'm a PGA golf coach. I'm going to make it simple and easy to understand. So I'm going to break this down into three sections. How we hold the golf club, how we stand to the golf ball and then how we swing. First off the grip and how we hold the golf club. This is so important, it's one of the most important factors because it helps control the club face making sure that it doesn't aim too far to the right or too far to the left. The simple run down, make sure your club face is aiming at your target. So if you had a mirror on the club face it would almost be a perfect reflection towards your target, your flag, your fairway etc. Once that's nice and straight, left hand on first, we're going to go fingers around the back, we're going to wrap the hand over the top, we're going to make sure that squishy bit of the hand is sat on top of the thumb. You're going to get this V here between your thumb and your index finger which wants to run towards your right shoulder and you'll see a couple of knuckles. Right hand goes underneath, fingers around first and then place the squishy bit of your right hand on top of your left thumb. You can have a couple of options at the back, 10 finger, interlocking grip or overlap, whichever one suits you best. I go for interlocking personally, I feel like it keeps my hands nice and connected. We don't want to strangle the golf club, we want to keep it nice and relaxed, like a 5 out of 10. That 10 out of 10, if we were gripping it as tight as we can, your forearms end up contracting, you end up being away from the ground more and you end up topping it way too much. So grip, go through it thoroughly so it becomes natural. Next thing is standing to the golf ball. What I want you to do is always make sure you build your whole stance around the ball, this is the most important thing, this little white thing on the floor. So once I put my club down and I've taken hold of my grip which we've just talked through, we're then going to build the stance around that. The first thing is width of stance, so as you can see there my feet are nice and close together, all I'm going to do here is take equal steps either side, so the ball, I'm hitting a 7 iron here at the moment, remains in the middle and my stance is the same width as my shoulders. I want to make sure we have that nice firm base, we don't want to go really wide because you're not going to create any real rotation or we don't want to go super narrow because you're not going to create any power. We want to have the feet the same width as the shoulders. So then if we talk about distance away from the golf ball, because again this is really important, we don't want to get super close to the ball and we don't want to be miles away. So to build this perfect stance we want to make sure, if I just allow my hand to almost slip between the grip and my legs, that's perfect, a real good check, if I just let the grip end of the club sit on my right knee, it wants to sit a couple of inches above the right knee. If we were too close it would sit really high on my thigh, if we're too far away it would sit below my knee. So we want to sit the club a couple of inches above the knee. You can see here from my setup as well, all I've done is flex the knees, I've pushed my bum backwards so I've straightened that spine angle but tilted over and my arms are just really naturally hung down, they're not really stretched out or really tucked in, from the top of my shoulder down to my wrist there's just a nice straight line, that's setup. So we've done grip and setup. The next thing is swing, there's two elements to a golf swing, this is the simplest way of thinking about it, it's making sure that we rotate the body and on the way down we allow the movement to go toward the target, you're almost, your weight distribution and it's almost similar, if I was to throw a ball, if I was to throw this ball into the screen I would turn and rotate backwards, I would get that big rotation and then I would push into my left foot and throw it as hard as I can. Those two elements we need for the golf swing and this what I'm going to show you is a great drill to get those feelings of rotation and movement. Get into your setup position that I've just shown you and what I'd like to do is lift the club up and literally put it across your chest, just from right shoulder to left shoulder and almost cross your arms. What I want you to do here as a drill is get this feeling of rotating and turning the body. Notice there my upper body is rotating, my shoulder's going down and the end of the golf club is pointing down to the ground, that way I'm creating tension in my body, I'm creating that power, I'm creating that rotation. Then the feeling is you're doing the opposite, you're rotating your right shoulder down and also notice something really important, I'm moving my weight around my left leg, I'm moving towards the target while staying balanced. Those two movements alone, practice that, even if you're an established golfer or you're brand new to golf, practice that and see how it feels, it will massively make a huge difference to your golf game and then all we've got to do, have those two elements of rotation and movement to the left but this time now we're holding the golf club and this time we're going to turn the body, still the same movement, my left arm is straight but still the same movement and I'm going to rotate the other way and move that weight around my left leg, so unbelievably important. If I hit a shot doing that, I'm going to twist and rotate and then move my weight to the left and you can see there in my finished position, I've got almost all of my weight on my left foot, 90 plus percent of my weight on my left foot once I finish. I start with 50-50, I rotate back and I've still got 50-50 and then as I start to come down, everything starts to move towards that left foot more. Those elements are the simplest way to swing a golf club, it really is. Watch this video and repeat, get natural with it and you'll improve and you'll pick up golf much quicker. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.