90% Of Bad Shots Are Down To This ONE Thing!

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[Music] Hi there, it’s David John the Resourceful Coach. And what I’m going to talk a little bit about today is the one thing I see when I’m coaching people’s swings and working on their games. This one thing that’s causing 90% of bad shots. Get this one thing right, it will make a massive difference to your game. And it’s simply your setup. I would say when I give a first lesson to most people when we’re working on their technique, 90% of the time I will change something within their setup that is causing the problem. And we’re going to highlight those five sort of setup points today and go through them and show general errors that I see that you might be making, very simple ones that could be causing a massive problem to your shots and a massive problem to the results of your game as you’re going around the golf course. So, we’re going to put them in order of play. Which is the most important? The most common thing I get, people come to me and they say, “Number one, I don’t seem to be able to aim.” So, we’re going to talk about body alignment. Body alignment seems to be the biggest error. And when you sort of look at it, it then influences other parts of your game, parts of your swing as you’re setting up. So, it’s really important that the best way to look at golf. Golf is a game of aiming. So, it’s really important that we aim the golf club correctly, we get our body set up correctly to allow you to swing the club the way you want to. So, I would say 90% of golfers when I go through the correct alignment, everything we’re going to do is as orthodox as we can do it. We’re not promoting a draw. We’re not promoting a fade. We are looking to hit a pretty straight shot. Is most people don’t realize what I’m going to say. Okay. So, we’ve set ourselves up. We’re on the practice ground here, but in the distance, we’ve actually got the seventh flag. We’re just going to use that as something to aim towards. And most of you guys, to help you with your alignment, if you haven’t got these sort of alignment sticks, you can use golf clubs or anything to lay down on the on the ground to help you to line up correctly. And the most important thing in golf, let’s just take a ball, is we want to aim our golf ball towards the intended target. That that’s the goal. We want to hit the ball towards that flag. So, we’re going to draw a line using one of these alignment sticks straight through the ball going towards that flag. Okay? And I think most people sort of get that idea. That’s not the problem. It’s what we do with our body that creates the biggest problem. And this is problem number one. So, what people start to think is they’ve got to aim everything at the target. So, what they do, I’m going to put another stick down and I’m going to put this approximately how far I’m going to stand away from the ball. And I’m also going to aim that one at the flag. Okay, let’s just make sure those two things are correct. So, that one’s good and that one’s good. And hopefully you can see on the video here these what we want is a situation that just needs to be a little bit more across is they’re not running parallel to each other. And that’s the key word I want you to have in your mind. What people think they should do is yes, aim their club at the target, but now they should be aiming their body at the target as well. And that’s the biggest error. That’s the biggest mistake. Think about what we want to do. We want to make a golf swing that is going to swing through the ball towards the intended target. If I’m now aiming my body at the target, what’s actually happening is my swing will want to run parallel to my body. So, if I’m aiming my body at the target, I’m now actually swinging more to the right of target. So, what do we want to do? This is the key thing. What we should be doing is the body should be running parallel to where I want to go. So, as a right-handed golfer, the expression I use, we call it parallel left. And that basically means that my feet are running parallel to where I want to go. A little bit like a railway track. Okay? If I stand this way, one rail is there. You can see from this arm, that rail is there. They’re not pointing at each other. They are running parallel to each other. So, as a right-handed golfer, because I’m standing to the left side of the ball, more on the red stick, what’s going to happen now is I’m now aiming what we call parallel left. My feet is running parallel to where I want to hit it, but left of the intended target. And that for most people is like, wow, light bulb moment. Didn’t realize that. Always felt like I had to aim everything at the target. And if we’re talking about body alignment, what we want now is three other things. We talked about our toe line, but what we want now is the knees, the hips, and the shoulders also to be running nicely on that paral line. So, we’re getting as many consistencies as we can get. Now, if we get these things wrong, it starts to influence other parts of the setup. And what I noticed the most then two other things start changing when people get their alignment incorrect is it starts to change their ball position which could now factor the shot and it changes where they’re aiming the club. So we’re going to look at these as we go along and how each one can then affect the next and suddenly you’re creating more and more problems as you go along. So, the second thing we’re going to look at, if I’ve got my alignment incorrect, how that could affect my ball position and how that then could change how I’m hitting the ball and the strike that I might be getting as I play that shot. So, here’s our second part, ball position. Really, really important because again, as we go through the shot, all of these parts of the setup can influence the shot that you’re going to get. So, it’s really important that we get them right. So, what we’re going to do here, very simple little exercise, simple thing to show you what we’re looking for is we’ve got our ball that we’re going to play. And we’ve set this up as we did from the other camera. It’s all perfect. We’re nicely running parallel. And I want that ball to be reasonably central in my stance. So, I’m just going to use two more golf balls to highlight that. I’m just going to put a ball on my toe there. Ball on my toe there. And what you should be able to see from the camera angle there is that ball that I’m going to hit is pretty central. You can see my toes there would be running parallel to where I want to go, but that ball’s pretty much in the smack in the center of my stance. So, here’s where the ball position now can change if that alignment is incorrect. So, I’m now going to change the alignment. I’m going to change that round. So, it’s now aiming at the intended target. And mentally, because I’m working on ball in the center of my stance, what I start to do is I get my feet going, as I said, on the red line there. And I’m into position. Then you can see how nowhere near the two other balls. If I now put them in position in line with my toe, okay? Because that’s that’s correct to my alignment of my body, but not correct to the target. Can you see how now it looks like I’m playing that ball way off my back foot? To you as a golfer, you won’t feel that. You’ll feel like you’re aiming correctly because your stance is correct, but because your alignment is wrong, it’s now causing a problem. Now then, what does that cause? is it causes two more faults. The biggest fault in the swing, as we said, you make these errors. You’re going to manipulate. So, what happens then is your brain says, “Oh, subconsciously, I’m aiming right. I better swing back.” And you end up hitting off your back foot. Because you’re trying to get back to what should be the correct position here. Okay? Because you realize, yeah, if I swing this correctly, I’m just going to hit this straight right. So, that’s the first fault I see. And you see a lot of golfers hitting off their back foot in that position. And that’s a real problem. You’re going to top it. You’re going to hit the ground. You’re not going to get any consistency in your ball striking. The third thing that changes then in your setup, okay, we’ve shown that’s a swing fault, but what changes in your setup is you subconsciously now think, well, that club isn’t aiming where I want to go, so I better close the club face. I now better get it more back on the yellow line, which looks logistically the right thing to do. Looks lo, sorry, logically the right thing to do. So, you get that club in that position. But now what’s going to happen is you’ve now got two faults. And if the club is aiming at the target and you swing down a parallel line to your feet, you will probably start to create a bit of an overdraw, a bit of a hook as the ball goes through because your swing is going to the right, the club face is pointing left and you’re going to impart side spin on the ball or spin axis as we call it now. So it’s it’s really important to understand just by getting that alignment wrong, look what has happened to my other areas. My ball positions changed, my club face has changed. So, that’s really important. And what I’ve done is from what would be a neutral position there, I’ve closed that face. So, just bring that up to the camera. And amazingly, without even realizing, if you change it from what feels like a good grip and a neutral club face, and you now close the face, you’ve now changed the fourth part. Now, the relationship between your hands and the club has changed. So your grip relative to what you want to do has now become more of a hooker’s grip. So just by getting that alignment wrong, that one thing wrong, we’ve now got a poor ball position, we’re now aiming the club incorrectly and we’re holding the club incorrectly. So you can see how one thing can change it dramatically. And this is all down to really, as we said, the alignment, the setup, getting that in the right position. So hopefully you can see on the camera there, all of a sudden in that position, what are you going to do? If you look down at the club in that position on the ground, you’re going to mentally start to think, well, I’ve got to I’ve got to adjust. I’ve got to make some adjustments here because now I’m swinging with a very closed club face. I’ve got to make an adjustment. So, you can see just one thing wrong. Bad alignment has changed four things in my setup. But what we’re going to do now, I’m going to hit a few balls and show you these things and how they will affect the shot. And then how I’ve got to manipulate things. And that leaves us our fifth and final part, which is your posture, which may not start in a bad position, but we’ll definitely be doing lots of different things as we swing, which is why you get that inconsistency on your strike. So, let’s hit a few balls, learning from just that one bad alignment, how it’s going to change my swing so dramatically. So, what we’re going to look at now is again, if we look at those faults, just that alignment, we’ve got the feet wrong, how that’s going to affect my shot. We can see the flag in the distance. As soon as I get my body into this position here, and we’ll highlight the flag in the distance, you’ll see how my body is aiming. There’s a big tree on the right side of the the the green there. I’m aiming more out towards that. Okay. And if I now make what feels like an orthodox swing, everything feels correct there. I’m not making any compensations and I make a good swing. I’m just going to hit the ball straight. Right. Okay. Lovely looking shot. But because my alignment was poor, I’ve suddenly hit that golf ball to the right. Okay. Now, what we’ve then said is, do we want to start making adjustments as we go through the shot? And that’s what we start to do because we never believe our setup’s at fault. Okay, that’s the biggest thing. When people come to me, they always say, “Yeah, it’s my golf swing. My golf swing isn’t doing it.” As we said, 90% of the faults come from this bad setup. So, my alignment was bad. We’ve played the shot down that line. And we’ve hit that ball 20 yards right of the intended target. So now I’ve got to start making adjustments. That biggest one, I’m not going to change the ball position initially cuz that looks correct, but I’m going to make the change with the club face. So now I’ve got the club face pointing at the target. Looks good, but I’ve lost all the loft. My seven iron has turned into a five iron. My grip has become stronger. Okay, it feels now like I’m aiming right, but I want to go left. I feel like I’ve got to pull myself round. So from that position, let’s see the shot that it might cause as I go through. From there, I’m back. I’m back there. I’m leaning back. Oh god. And now that’s hooked way way way left of the green. So all of those factors that we said could go wrong did come go wrong on that shot. I’ve set myself up. I’ve closed the face. That’s going to encourage the draw because I’ve then felt like I’m aiming right. I then you can see me lean back. So that’s got my body now parallel to where I want to go. So I’ve actually ended up swinging down the line I want to go. But remember I’ve shut the face. So that’s why it’s hooked way way left of the intended target. Okay. Hopefully, what you see, we talked about posture. And if you watch the swing a little bit closer, you’ll see, let’s do that shot again, is I’ve started what looks in a nice posture position. But then in trying to get back to my back foot and make that adjustment, you see how my body is in a bad posture position. Everything’s back here. I mean, do you see a tour player in this position? Okay. And we’ve hooked it way left again. So, just by getting that ball position, sorry, that alignment wrong. It changed the ball position. It changed the club face. It changed how I felt I’ve got a swing, I’ve now hit two different shots. I’ve hit the one way right where I’ve made a good swing, but I’m aiming incorrectly. And then from there, I’ve then made the adjustments during the swing and I’ve now hooked it left. But here’s the bad news. Every now and again, what will happen is you will get all those things matching up. So, you think you’re doing it right. you won’t do it as severely as I did there and you’ll end up coming back and you’ll hit it on the green. So your brain will say, “Well, I must be doing the right things.” But it’s not because if it’s not consistently doing the same shot that you want, you’re going to get an inconsistency to what we want as a result. So if we break down what we talked about, number one, get that alignment right. So important. Let’s get that back parallel to where I want to go. straight away realize everything now needs to be running on that line. Club face aiming at the flag. That’s where I want to go. Everything now in my setup, my ball position, my alignment feels neutral. It feels like I can swing the club now towards the intended target. So, I don’t need to adjust the club face. I don’t need to adjust my grip. I’m now in the correct position. And from there, if I make the swing that I did that went out to the right and I commit to that idea, this ball will go nice and straight where we want to go. Okay, tiny little bit of ground before it, but we’re going nice and straight. We’re doing what we want to do with the shot. And the key thing then is to get into that consistency of what we’re doing and playing that shot over and over and over again. And you’ll start to see the ball going a lot straighter. So hopefully what you’ve seen in that video today, we’ve done one thing, okay? We’ve made our setup correct. That’s the key thing. It’s going to increase the chance now that you’re going to be able to hit the shots as you wish to. That’s the important thing that we’re looking for. Create that consistency. People come to me and say, “I don’t hit consistent shots.” Is your setup consistent? If it isn’t, the likelihood your shots are not going to be consistent. So that’s really important that you get that sort of process right so it becomes the shot that you want it to be. So, if we break it down, that first thing we talked about, that alignment. See how by getting that one thing wrong, it changed my ball position, it changed my grip, it changed my club face, and then it changed my whole posture as I was swinging. And that’s where the inconsistency came into it. Think of that parallel line. As a golfer, as we said, we should be aiming as a right-handed golfer. Club at the target, feet should be running parallel left, ball quite central, club face aiming where you want to go, neutral grip, maintain your posture. and you’re going to get consistent results. I hope you’ve enjoyed that video. It’s really going through for me the one thing that I probably spend more time in the first lesson when somebody comes to a lesson is getting their setup correct. If that’s right, you’ve got a chance. If it’s wrong, makes it very difficult. If you want to go a little bit more in depth into those five setup points, please watch my video, the five fundamentals. Go a little bit more in depth into that. go back and look at that video and give you an insight of what we’re looking to achieve on that side. Hope you enjoyed today. If you have, please subscribe and I look forward to seeing you soon. [Music]