DON'T LOOK At The Ball - The Key To GREAT BALL Striking

So, the golf ball. If when you're hitting shots, you're looking at the ball, you're trying to hit the ball, or you're thinking of the golf ball, we need to change that. That could well be holding you back. We're going to explain why. We're going to take a quote from Jack Nicklaus, and we're going to give you some super simple drills to help you basically hit the golf ball better, further, and more consistently, kind of specifically looking at the iron. So, place the ball back on the tee, and let's take a look at, you know, a really common impact condition that we see with the best players versus the golfers that struggle. You might be in that category. When we look at the great players, you know, what do we see at impact? We see the kind of handle forwards. We see the arms in a really good structure. Everything looks powerful and kind of where it should be in good alignment. When we look at those that struggle, and say you might have videoed your golf swing and sort of seen this, we often see the handle too much in line with the ball. Then post-impact, probably where we see the issues more often, we see kind of the lead wrist has buckled, elbows have started to kind of separate, and it's this kind of cramped look, which we know doesn't give us the best strike. It doesn't give us the most consistent delivery. So why is looking at the ball partly down to that? Well, as golfers, we can get obsessed with the ball. We think about it. We know we've got to hit it, and that can lead to us a lot of issues. So what Jack Nicklaus used to say is he used to call this the finish to his golf swing. That would make sense, finish. But he would call the follow through this part of the golf swing here. Now you can see at this part of the golf swing here, my lead arm and the club are in a straight line. The golf club could not be any further from my shoulder. My elbows are still very close together and my arms are extended. Jack Nicklaus would say that he used to hit shots trying to get to the follow through. This was his focus point, not the golf ball. Now, if the lead arm and the club were in a good alignment here, that would probably mean that when he made contact with the ball, the lead arm was slightly in front of the golf club. So Jack Nicklaus would arrive at impact with a handle length forwards, the lead arm out in front of the golf club, and he would be working towards the follow through. This is the point in his golf swing where everything was as extended as it could be. He could not have that golf club any further away from him. Now, if you're thinking of the golf ball, that's your focus, you're trying to hit the ball. What's going to happen is you're going to get the golf club head as far away from you as it can be at impact. And we know that's not right. We know that we should have some shaft lead and the hand should be forward. So if we think about other sports, I'm going to use football, soccer, depending on where you are in the world. If that was a football and I was trying to kick that as far as I could, when I make contact with that ball, what would my leg be? Wouldn't be straight. It would be in the process of straightening. So when would my leg be straight after I made contact with the ball? If, not sure why you were going to do this, but if you had a punch bag here and you were trying to hit that, when would you make contact with that bag? What would your arm be? Would your arm be straight? No, your arm, when you hit that bag, would be bent in the process of trying to straighten. The same applies with golf. We do not want to have expanded all of that energy by the time we get to the ball. If we don't want to do that, we actually need to change our focus. We need to change where we think about getting that energy out to. If my focus was this follow-through position that Jack Nicklaus talked about, it would enable me to delay, delay. I'm thinking about the area there. And as I try and get to that area, I've actually created perfect impact conditions. So thinking about the golf ball can really hold you back. So let's go through a couple of really simple drills that can actually help you, you know, take this into your golf thing. Now I'm going to use the alignment stick for this. You don't have to, you can use a golf club. If you use a golf club, just flip it around so you're holding the sort of club head in. And you're very simply going to take a set up and you're going to make some half action, half follow-throughs, not particularly long. And you're going to listen for the noise that the alignment stick makes. I hear that noise in this area here. Maybe, you know, foot and a half after the ball, foot and a half before the ball. If you're hearing that noise, big cross, that's wrong. That's not what we want. That is you extending everything to be in line with the golf ball. If I do it correctly, it's here. Golf ball, and then forward to around about this point. It's moved maybe some two to three feet. How did I move it? I just changed my focus. I changed when I was trying to get this end of the alignment stick as far away from my chest as it could be. So as I go back and I create these angles, look how close that is to my chest. Much closer than it is at this point. At that point, that is as far away from my chest as it can be. So all I did is I changed when I tried to make that happen. I tried to make that stick move away from my chest and that gives me that very, very different noise down here. There's a really interesting point there about the release. What was I trying to do? I was trying to get the end of the alignment stick, or in this case, it's the club head, to move away from me. So notice how when I do that, I get this. What I'm not trying to do in the release is flip the club past the hand. That would be very different. That would look more like this. If the arms are buckled. So I'm actually trying to physically take the club head and move it away from my chest and have it at an extended point at the golf ball. So here's a little drill I want you to do. And this is where you're going to start. You're going to take your setup, ball on a peg, mid-iron in hand, and you're going to hit some little shots, getting to follow through, which is here. And I'm talking really, really short swings. Ball has not carried more than about 20 yards, but look at where I am. This is my follow through. Get here. Trust me, this is going to be the best thing for your golf game. It's really hard to get here, but if we can do that, it changes everything about impact. Your whole mindset will change. Don't think of the golf ball. Think about your follow through. It's going to make a difference. Now, the next drill is brilliant. I'd urge everyone to try this drill. So here's the drill I'd love you to try. Hopefully you've got these things pretty handy, probably in your golf bag, if not somewhere you can get hold of them. An alignment stick and a bag towel. Pretty simple. Now, it's taken me a couple of seconds to set this up, but you can see I've got the alignment stick in at a, well, you can say maybe a 40 degree angle. And then the towel just kind of lay over the top of it. Now, as I set up to my ting, you need to do this without the ball to begin with. You're going to take my normal address. And I need to make sure to keep my head still here. But watch what happens if I rehearse that really nice follow through position that we were looking at. My club makes contact with the towel because I've got a little bit of rotation. And again, the club head is away from my chest. If I start to think about the tee or the ball, and I start to focus on hitting that, then what happens is I end up getting really cramped and I actually can't reach the towel that's out there. It's not going to work. So your job without a ball to begin with is to make a little swing. Really need to make sure that we're not lunging here. We're not moving the head forward, but making that nice follow through and clipping the towel. So it should look like this. Clip the towel. Perfect. Do it again. Clip the towel. Perfect. Getting some feedback. You know, if you haven't got any way of capturing your swing or slow motion, this is a great way to do it. Now, there's no reason why you can't add a ball in. The ball, as you can see, might clip the towel. So, but it's great to have that external focus as you're trying to do this little exercise. So this is the key part. What am I thinking about? I'm not thinking about the ball. I'm thinking about achieving my follow through position, just like Jack Nicklaus said. Okay. Don't think the strike was great, but the ball was hit. I removed the towel. That's perfect. We're looking to create an environment here where we can learn. How am I learning? Well, I hit the golf ball. That's a tick. I hit the towel. That's a tick. Did I generate some new feels? Yes, that's a tick. I'm starting to build my awareness of what I should be doing. And I'm using exercises and drills and my environment and external cues to do that. Creating a learning environment. Standing on the golf course, just thinking about what to do can help. It's not going to go the whole way. We actually need to create the scenario where we can do it. So once you've done a couple of those, obviously we do ultimately want to take it to the golf course. And then you can take those feels that you've generated and basically don't think of the golf ball. Think about your follow through. Copy Jack Nicklaus, it worked pretty well for him.