How to Swing a Golf Club // Being Basic with Paige Beginner Golfer Series

Hi everyone, it's Paige and we're back for another episode of Being Basic with Paige. In the last episode, I showed you what you need, the tools that you need to hit a golf ball. But how do you actually hit a golf ball? I'm going to show you right now, so keep on watching. So you're on the range, you have these clubs, what do you do? So I would recommend grabbing a more lofted club. We're going to grab the pitching wedge and we're going to talk about the basic setup. Grip, posture, stance, ball position, alignment. So when you're first grabbing the club, there are a couple ways that you can grip it. So we have the 10 finger grip, where as you can see, both my hands are just gripping the club, but they're touching. Next we have the overlap, where you take your pinky and you overlay it on your pointer finger and your middle finger right where that groove is. This is the grip that I do. I recommend this one or the next one I'm going to show you because you feel more connected. And if you start with the 10 finger grip, then you're going to have to change it later on. So you might as well just start with either the overlap or the interlock. And the interlock is where you interlock your fingers, pointer finger, your pinky finger, and they interlock. Most of the best players actually tend to use this grip. This is Tiger Woods' grip, so it feels like a stronger grip to me, like you have more control over it. With an overlap, you don't have as much control with your right hand. That feels most comfortable to me, but it's personal preference. So hit some with an overlap and then hit some with an interlock to see what you like best. Next, we're going to work on your posture and your stance and ball position. Ball position is really important. So you want to do just slightly forward of center. Full transparency, I have horrible ball position. I put it really far up. So do not copy anything that I do, but it should be just forward of center. As you can see, this is where the alignment sticks are actually going to come into play here. So in my last video, I talked about my alignment sticks or my two sticks. This is really going to help with your ball position and also your alignment. You want to have good alignment and good ball position right away because it's going to help your swing plane. I'll get into that a little bit later, but if your alignment is off, you're going to end up adjusting your swing to push or pull your ball in one direction to get to go where you need to. When you're lined up square, your swing plane will be down the line and you'll be practicing the correct way instead of trying to over adjust what you're doing with your body. So you're going to end up putting one stick down a little bit behind the ball and this is your toe line. So when I say toe line, it is right along your toes and this is going to help your alignment. So there are flags out in the distance on every single range. They're at different distances. Pick any flag out there. It really doesn't matter. We're going to line up to that one. So we're going to pick that white flag out there and I'm going to move this stick this far left of it. So you take your other stick, you run it up along the outside of this stick along the inside of that stick and use your most dominant eye and this stick should be pointing slightly left of your target. Not a lot. So I'm slightly left of that flag. So if I would put this stick down, this would be running at the white flag. This would be just left of it. For ball position and practicing, you want to lay the stick down right behind the ball in a straight line. This way you can see where your ball position is when you're setting up to it. So you know that if I'm here, you can see that red line is too far forward. So this means that the ball is too far forward in your stance. You want it just slightly forward of center. I recommend having both of the sticks down because golf is so difficult to visually, to visualize it. So if there's not a stick down here, you can't really tell where your position is, but you know right away where your ball position is. And I think this is really important to have when you're first starting. So you have your ball position just slightly forward of center and you have your stance shoulder width apart. You don't want it too wide because then you're not going to have, you won't be able to move your legs properly and you don't want them too narrow because you're going to feel unsteady over the golf ball. So we have shoulder width apart, just slightly forward of center. We picked our grip. I would say just leave a small little bit at the end of the club so you don't want your hand falling off of the club and you don't want to be all the way down as well. So you have just a little bit showing at the end. From here, you feel like you're sitting back into a chair. Not all the way, not too much knee bend, but just that feeling of when you're kind of moving back almost into your heels. You don't want to be too far on your toes or too back on your heels when your toes are moving forward. So you just slightly sit back. As you can see, my body's still up and down, but I have an athletic stance. And from here, you just bend over slightly. You don't want to have a sway back or you don't want to have a rounded back. From here, you want your arms just to fall. You don't want to feel like you're reaching for it or you're too close. So one thing I like to do is just kind of let my arms fall, shake them out. They feel comfortable right here. So that is the stance. I'm just going to say that the golf swing is very complicated. It's fairly difficult and there's so much information out there that it's hard to know what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing. Especially when you're first starting, just swing it. Have fun with it. Don't be so worried about the positions you need to be in or what you're doing. So we're in the good position and one thing I like to do is you turn your shoulders. You're not moving anything. It's connected. You just turn this way and all you do is feel like you're having a bit of a wrist cock. A wrist cock is when there's a break in your wrist and the club actually goes up a little bit more and you want your arms to be soft, not locked out, and not too bent. So the way that it works is it's almost like this. That's how your golf swing is going to work. So it's like this moves, that moves, this moves, that moves. So when you're taking it back, it's like that bends, that bends, that bends, that bends. So if one arm is straight, the other one's bent. You want to turn around it, have an athletic stance and almost let the club head fall down. You don't want to rush it from the top and get too excited about hitting it. You want the fastest part of your swing to be from here to here. You can turn the club over and you want to hear the whoosh at the end of it. If you hear the whoosh up here, you're casting and you're doing it wrong. Casting is when you're throwing your hands. You don't want to do that. You want to do that. Let's talk about legs now. When you're doing your arms, which we kind of talked about where it bends and straight, you don't want your legs to just not move at all. And so you look like this. You want to have some movement, but you don't want to be swaying this way. It's like a turn. So you're like setting in this leg and turning into this hip and then you're turning and pushing into this hip. So I like to feel like, you know, when you're jumping or you're getting ready to like turn and run, that's kind of the feeling that you want where you're getting in this turn and run and then you're exploding into it. You can grab your hip pocket and push it forward as well, but it's a real athletic movement. So think of things that you do in your real life, jumping, running, playing basketball, whatever you like. That's kind of like that movement you need to have. You don't need to be completely stiff with it. So we turn back into our leg. You don't want to feel like it's rolling on your outside. You want to feel like it's staying on the inside. So we're at the top of the swing. You want to not feel like you're going past parallel. So you're not, you don't want to be too long. You don't want to be too short. It's like that child story, um, where they're like the porridge with the little Goldilocks, where it's like too much, this too much that you want to find right in the middle. And that's like what golf is. And that's why it's so difficult because it's like, you don't want to be too short. You want, you don't want to be too long. You want to be just right here. And it just takes time and repetition to find that, but don't be discouraged. And I know I'm saying a lot of information right now, and I'm sure you're very overwhelmed with it, but it's not as bad as you think it is. And that's what I keep saying, like, just go out and have fun with it and be athletic. But these are just kind of helpful tips that you should keep in mind when you are progressing, when you feel like you're getting a little bit more comfortable hitting the golf ball, all you need to do is take some practice swings first. You want to find impact. Impact is the most important thing. So what you can do is you can put a tee in the ground and you want to try to hit the tee. Okay, we hit the tee and do that as many times as you feel like you get comfortable. And then let's work on brushing the grass. You don't want to hit it fat or thin when the ball is here. And ideally you want to hit it around here and it kind of pushes into the grass and ends up taking like a divot. That's where the grass flies out and you just see dirt. That's what a divot is. If you hit it fat, it means you hit it behind the golf ball, which right here, and you start a divot too soon. Or if you hit it thin, you hit up on the golf ball and you leave no divot. So to find impact, all you want to do is practice swings and try it. This is where the stick is good. You want to try to hit it right here every time. Much harder than you think it is, but your body is going to figure it out eventually. And after a while, and you get consistent with hitting the ground, grab a golf ball and start hitting. I recommend teeing them up at first because it's a little bit easier to start hitting golf balls when they're teed up compared to on the ground. So let's grab a tee, put it in the ground and leave about just a little bit. You don't want to push all the way down because there's no use for a tee then. And you also don't want to have it too high because that's going to enforce some bad habits. So just like that, put the ball on top and then hit. Set up to it and what do you need to do to hit the golf ball? That's all you need to focus on. Easy, right? As you can see, that is a lot of information. I mean, I'm out of breath just talking about it. The golf swing, like I said, is very complex and it's difficult to learn, but luckily you have me and I have a ton of other videos and more videos to come to teach you about the golf swing, what you need to do. So don't forget to like this video, leave a comment, subscribe to my channel, and I can't wait to share this golfing journey with you. I am so excited about it that you're trying to pick up golf now. It's not as hard as it seems. Don't be discouraged. We're doing this together. Coach Paige is with you. I'll see you next time.