Shauheen answers your GOLF QUESTIONS!

Hey guys, Shauheen here
I decided to start doing monthly Q&As for YouTube going forward. I’ll be recording these once a month at the minimum, so if you have any questions, whether about the golf swing itself or other golf topics, please write them in the comment section below and I’ll try to get through as many as possible on my next recording!

The quality of the video also came out a little too zoomed in and choppy here since I recorded this first session from my laptop, so I’ll make sure it’s much improved the next time around. Better quaity and filmed from further away. Enjoy! 👌

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Hello, My name is Shauheen Nakhjavani, Co-founder of Nakhjavani Golf. I have been a golf coach for 10+ years, I’ve given over 25,000 lessons in-person & online, and I have worked with many professional players; including Kevin Chappell, Stephen Ames, Darren Clarke, Calum Hill, Yannik Paul, Eddie Pepperell, Jeremy Paul & many others!

If you want to learn more about my style of coaching, you can find more instruction here:

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🏌️‍♂️ SIGN UP FOR ONLINE GOLF LESSONS here: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/snead-online-golf-coaching/id6452275983

So, I wanted to do something a little bit different for the YouTube channel. I figured maybe once every, you know, 2, 3 weeks, I’ll probably jump on here and collect a bunch of questions that you guys are sending me through Instagram. I usually put up like a Q&A post on Instagram stories and uh just run through them. You know, more often than not, obviously, they’re going to be golfer later. There might be some like, you know, fun stupid questions in there. I don’t think I got any of those today. Uh cuz I did want to focus for the first time on doing this. Uh more so for like actual golf questions. Some of them are going to be technical, some of them are going to be about other stuff. Uh but just to kind of run through some some fun stuff. Hopefully you guys will learn from these. Um and yeah, like I said, shouldn’t be too long. This is going to be like a 20 30 minute video or something like that on a bunch of questions that I got. I saved up about 10 fun ones and uh we’re just going to run through them. Okay, I got my iPhone on the side here. So, we’ll kind of take a look at all. Also, welcome to my office. Um, some of you don’t actually know this. I’m I’m a big gamer, or I used to be when I was growing up. I’m still friends with a lot of esports people, uh, some professional Call of Duty players and coaches and things like that. And, uh, I actually keep up to date with the CDL and some other esports, uh, quite often just because I’m I’m friendly with these guys, but also because I grew up as a gamer, so it’s always fun to see, you know, the professional side. You can actually see my Legend of Zelda, Hyrule Shield for those of you who are uh the OGs who used to play on N64. Ocarine of Time, still my favorite game of all time. Uh and you can even see Sonic and Ninja Turtles there. So, just, you know, some fun stuff I’ve been adding to the to my office. I’ll actually rotate the camera over just for a second. You can actually see uh I have a nice little office set up with a bunch of clubs, a lot of Callaway stuff, obviously, because I’m affiliated with Callaway and I I love their equipment. And then some flags from I believe one of them is Steven Ames, the far one. That would be that one there. And then this is Yannik Paul’s first ever win on the DP World Tour. So, a lot of the a lot of like the the flags and stuff I’ve collected over the years are usually at my academy, but I did want to start building out a little bit of like a home office, uh, especially if I’m going to be filming videos like this. So, hope you guys enjoyed my fake mini tour. Uh but yeah, it’s going to be a better setup coming soon, but I did want to just share a little something something for you guys. Uh so just in general, uh some of the questions, so we’ll run through them. Uh first things first, and this is kind of like I guess you know, pace of play is a big issue that people complain about a lot. So somebody asked me if uh enforcing a shot clock in tournaments is a yay or nay. Personally, I’m all for it. Okay, I’m I’m a fast player myself. I’ve never understood the idea of taking so long. I get it. they’re playing for a lot of money. So are other people in other sports. And I’m sorry, but if I’m like somebody who’s going up to the first plate, um, you know, to home plate to to start my round of batting, uh, a baseball in the MLB, you know, I’m not standing there and like telling people to hold on before I shoot. The reality is when the pitcher’s ready, the batter has to be ready, right? This is just like a known fact. Obviously, sometimes there’s going to be some, you know, holding off for whatever reason, but generally that pacing doesn’t change from one shot to the next pitch to the next pitch. Like once the pitcher is ready to go, the batter should be more or less ready to go. They can’t just stand there and all of a sudden take an extra 2, three minutes. And if they do, if they did, uh, rest assured that, uh, the reality is they’ll probably get booed to hell, uh, from everybody in the stadium. So, you know, in hockey, it’s a very reactive sport. Obviously, you can’t compare every sport like one for one. Golf is very much like you have to assess all the variables and all that, which I totally understand, but it should not be taking you 2 minutes to hit a golf shot. I’m sorry. I think that’s crazy. You know, collect all your data when you get as soon as you get to the golf ball. Shouldn’t take you that long once it’s your turn and ready to go. Like, you should if you’re able to go play ready golf with your buddies, why can’t you do something even remotely close to that when you’re in a tournament setting? Doesn’t matter. You know, it’s not as if your shots all of a sudden are hit worse because you’re playing a practice run and you’re playing ready golf versus when you’re playing in a tournament. This is all in people’s heads in my opinion. And I believe this fully with even my own tour players. Then again, a guy like Steven Ames that I work with, he’s a very fast uh player. He doesn’t really take that much time. So, you know, I’m a big advocate of like play at the same pace you would be playing at home. And more often than not, that tends to be a little bit faster than when they are get in tournaments where they completely slow down and change their their game. So, uh, enforcing a shot clock, if that’s what’s necessary, start penalizing players. I’m also of the belief that these little fines that they offer players in tournaments, that I’m going to be honest, that doesn’t do Like offering a guy or not offering, I should say, penalizing a guy who makes 10 to $15 million a year. Let’s say like the better better players, penalizing them five grand. You think they’re really going to give a about that five grand? They’ll take their sweet time because the reality is that shot is going to cost them way more than $5,000 if they hit it poorly. more often than not obviously, right? So, this is one of those situations where, in my opinion, enforce the shot clock. Excuse my language. And really, you know, start penalizing players actual shots. You take too long. First one’s a warning. Second one, you just lost a shot. Penalty. Next time it happens again, boom, penalty. Next time it happens again, penalty. And make the penalties more severe each time. First one is first one obviously has to be a warning. Second one, one shot. Maybe the third time, which would be your second penalty, is three shots. You know, make it like amplified every single time cuz it’s really, you really need to start giving these players a kick in the you know what, in order for them to start hurrying up and learning how to play at a faster rate or I’m also of the belief, expose the guys who are slow. I’m sorry, but there is no reason to why the PGA Tour or any other association for that matter should just be sitting there and like seeing all the data of which players are actually slow and then not publicizing it cuz the reality is public shaming. I hate to tell you like you guys play for millions of dollars. Maybe you deserve it a little bit. You know, PJ tour players have the right to play a bad round of golf and then choose not to speak to the media. If you did that in other sports, well, first of all, they would rip you apart online. they tend to do in golf also, but in general. And secondly, more often than not, you don’t really have the choice if you have if you play a bad game like the Toronto Maple Leafs just got eliminated in the NHL, right? Mitch Mner, Austin Matthews, all these guys, John Tavvarz, well, they had to go and stand up and actually talk to the media afterwards. They don’t really have a choice. Sometimes we don’t have a choice. This is just part of professional sports. You’re paid a lot of money to do these things. So, I’m kind of rambling on, but yes, for shot clock. Yes, for penalizing players. And if I’m being honest, yes, for exposing the ones that are slow. Let everybody know who’s slow because guess what? People are going to keep a lot more eyes on those guys. And then the next rounds, they’re probably going to start to speed up or they’re going to have to do something different to learn to speed up. Sorry, I hate to break it to you. That’s I have a strong opinion about this because I’m not a slow player. And when I see slow play, it gets me nervous a bit. Um, are the ball speeds on the Trackman on TV actually true? I mean, here’s the thing. Are they true 100% every single time they’re super accurate? No. But I mean, you can say the same thing about any launch monitor anywhere in the world. They’re very, very accurate. Upwards of 99% accuracy. Are they 100% accurate? Maybe not. Sometimes it could be something as simple as like where the guy is set up on the T- box might affect, you know, how accurate the read is of how the ball is taking off off the club face. And it might be off a little bit on the reads. But let’s be real. Let’s be clear here. The ball speeds you’re seeing are within the realm of accuracy for every player. So you will never see a guy stand on the T- box and he hits a shot and it says 191 mph of ball speed, but it was like 170. That is impossible. I’ve never seen that. And I’ve been around these tour players often enough and launch monitors often enough to know that that’s never going to happen. So even if you see 191, is it actually 191 every single time? Maybe not. But it’s probably 188, 189, maybe 193. and it misread it. It’s within the realm, right? So, it’s pretty accurate. So, if you’re seeing Tiger, for example, come back from a long injury and he hits a shot and it says 183 mph fall speed, which all things considered for a guy like Tiger at his age and with the amount of surgeries and and stuff he’s had, that would be extremely impressive. Are you going to stand there and say, “Oh, well, it was never 183. That had to have been like 170.” No, that’s impossible. It wouldn’t have been 170. Maybe it was 179 180 and they misread it by 2 3 m an hour but it’s in the realm. So um always relatively accurate for the most part. Now a more of a technical question. What is the best way to approach 50 yard shots for amateurs without getting too complicated? I will say this whenever it comes to hitting these like mid-range wedge shots. mid-range for me as a coach. Anything in that like let’s call it 35 yard to 75 yard range. It’s an awkward range. And the reason why it’s awkward is because for most people whatever you define or deem as a full shot with your lob wedge will typically go somewhere of 75 to 100 yards for most players. Obviously there are some people who have an open face. They release the club and deliver a lot of loft. And in those scenarios, they deliver a lot of loft. The ball shoots way up in the air and they’ll hit their lob point 60 yards. Well, that’s not typically the norm. That’s because there’s a technical flaw within their golf swing. But for most players, and especially better players that are, let’s say, like sub 20 handicap, to me, that’s a decent player. Like, anything sub 20 handicap is a decent player. Anything sub 10 handicap is a is a good player. Anything sub five handicap is a is a great player in my opinion. So, if you’re anything like decent of a golfer, so you’re in the teens and the handicap or better, odds are you’re not hitting a full lob wedge, like 50 yards, right? So, the problem there is if you’re going to hit a full lob wedge, 75 to 100 yards, somewhere in that range, let’s even call it 70 to 100 yards. Taking yardage off of clubs, people have a lot of issues with this, and this is the case for everybody. Now, in my experience, here is a common mistake people will make. They stand on on the fairway. They have a 60°ree wedge in their hands. Full 60° goes 80 yards, let’s say. And now they have a 60 yard shot. I see one of two mistakes happen. And this happens a lot. Either they’re going to make a full paced, fulllength back swing. So the back swing that in reality, if they were hitting an 80 yard shot, they would do the exact same thing here. And now they try to control the pacing coming down. Some form of deling. And I wouldn’t even necessarily say it’s always decelerating, but certainly the tempo is full and stock on the back swing and then much slower coming down than the back swing was. And they’re trying to like steer or guide the ball to 60 yards. Terrible idea. Generally speaking, we always want the body to be moving through the ball pretty aggressively, and we generally want to have some form of acceleration through the ball on mid-range wet shots. You don’t want to stand there and and slow down to hit those shots from a full length back swing. Not ideal. That’s going to lead to low point issues. It’s going to lead to um you know, just strike tendency issues, loft delivery issues, and most importantly, your sequence is changing relative to your full shots. In an ideal world, I don’t generally want the sequence of how things are moving to change. Okay? Meaning, if I’m hitting a 50 yard shot or 80 yard shot, yes, proportionally my body might not be rotating as much or whatever, but the sequence shouldn’t change. The order in which things happen with your body parts should be more or less the same or within a similar range. So, the problem in my opinion in these scenarios, if you’re standing there and you’re trying to hit a 50 or 60 yard shot with a wedge that typically your full one goes 80 yards and you try to do a full back swing, you’re toast. You’re going to have to slow down to hit it shorter and that doesn’t work. So, not a fan. The second mistake that I see people make is they stop everything short in the back swing. So obviously to some degree you need to make a shorter back swing if you want the ball to go less far but also at the same time you don’t want to stand there for an 80 yard shot and stop your arms at the height of your chest. Stop your hips at the height of your chest. Stop everything at the height of your chest and now your back swing is so short with not enough pacing that you have to like jam everything through with a lot of speed. I see people get really really short in their back swing and then like forcibly accelerate through the ball to try to hit it as far. And that doesn’t work either. Not only that, but technically speaking, you can create problems if you stop everything short. Cuz if I don’t load my hips very far in the back swing, I’m not going to magically fire them on the way down. And if I do, now the sequence is different than my full shots. That’s not ideal. But also more often than not, what happens in this scenario is if I just try to stop everything short, I get very handsy because my body doesn’t move very well. And that’s not ideal either. I can’t control my loft consistently if I’m just trying to do everything with my hands and arms and my body’s just like non-existent. It’s okay if you’re hitting it less than 30 yards. You’re hitting a pitch shot, something that’s 20 yards away from the green. I mean, yeah, totally fine because I can hit a 20 yard shot with just my hands and arms. I can hit a 30 yard shot with just my hands and arms. If I have to do a 40, 50, 60, 70 yard shot with just my hands and arms, it’s going to feel like my hands and arms need to do a lot. My body is not really working very well and I I can’t guarantee that I can control my loft every time. So, in that scenario, let’s simplify this now because the question really was about not making it too complicated and I’m making it very complicated right now. So, I do apologize. Don’t make a full length back swing. That’s not ideal. And don’t stop everything short. That’s also not ideal. What I like to do is tell players, feel like your body is still rotating on both sides of the golf ball. So, still rotate your hips back, still rotate your hips through, still rotate rotate your chest back, still rotate your chest through, and just shorten up the arms. Simple as that. That’s the simplest way to hit those shots. Meaning, I’m still going to make a hip turn in my back swing. I’m still going to rotate and finish facing the the follow through like towards the target. So my chest is going to be facing the target in the follow through, but maybe I’m just swinging at chest high to chest high or shoulder high to shoulder high or knee high to knee high, for example. That is like the simplest way without getting too technical to shorten up your yardage. So for me, a full length lob wedge, for example, I play a 58 degree, not a 60. A full 58 for me goes 90 yards. Okay? I can be a little bit more aggressive on it and like chase it out to let’s say 95, maybe even 100, but at 100 yards I’m losing control and I’m spinning it too much. So, let’s say 90 yards is under control, I can push it to 95. If I’m trying to hit a 70 yard shot, I’m doing the same aggressive motion with my body on both sides of the golf ball. Still making a nice full turn on the way back with my body. Still making a nice full turn through with my body, but I’m shortening up how far back my arms go. Maybe my arms are going back to 3/4 of the distance. and that’ll be a 75 yard shot and then maybe a little bit shorter than that for 70 yards or whatever. You can control the pacing a little bit. Like I’m okay with some fluctuation of pacing when you’re trying to hit these shots, but generally speaking, you should be close to as aggressive as you would on a full shot regardless. Okay, so still the same acceleration. So that’s the way I feel about it. That’s for a 70-yard shot. Obviously, if you’re hitting a 50 yard shot, then you might have to stop the arms a little shorter and that’s where you can control the tempo maybe a little bit more. Obviously, at some point you can’t be super aggressive with your speed and pacing on a 40 yard shot. I mean, you’re going to hit it way too far. So, yes, at some point the tempo and the pacing might slow down a little bit, but it’ll slow down on both sides. It won’t be full length back swing, full speed, and then deling. It’ll be, you know, a little softer speed and tempo on the way back, a little softer speed and tempo on the way through, still rotating your body aggressively, just shorten up the arms in that scenario. That’s still pretty complicated of an answer, so I do apologize, but that’s kind of the best way to think about it. Now, what mentality, this is a good question actually. What mentality leads to developing unconventional but effective golf swings like Jim Furick and Scotty Sheffller? Okay, first thing that needs to be clear here, even though their swings are unconventional by aesthetic standards, and I say aesthetic because the reality is when you’re talking about conventional versus unconventional, you’re talking more often about visually what it looks like. Because when you actually dive into the deep data of the patterns, they’re very good. They’re very efficient. Unconventional means, I’m holding the putter differently than most players do. I’m swinging the club differently than most players do. Most players are within a specific range of plane movements in their back swing. Jim Furick is outside that norm. His arms and club go very upright and then reroute very aggressively behind them and towards a shallow direction. What mentality leads to developing these? Well, I don’t I wouldn’t even argue it’s a mentality. It’s more the fact of knowing if you’re a really good coach, you know when to change things and when not to change them. And I’ll relate this to a former player of mine, Jeremy Paul, who has a very, very inside takeaway. Jeremy’s takeaway is super flat. His shaft looks like it’s lying down halfway back. It is pure horizontal parallel to the ground. By conventional standards, he’s nowhere near that, right? He’s not picking the club up and getting it somewhat down the line at the top. He’s pulling this club back and the shaft is going back super super flat. That’s not very conventional. The difference here is I’m not developing in that case an unconventional move for him. I’m learning and understanding when it is okay to leave them alone. Scotty Sheffler, most famously, it’s his footwork. His footwork is moving all over the place. But if he can consistently strike the ball solid, has a pretty consistent path into the ball and face control, and he is playing really well in tournaments and things like that, there is no reason to change the unconventional component of him as a golfer, which is his footwork. Jim Furick. Jim Furick, the only thing that’s unconventional about his golf swing, if we’re being honest, is his back swing. People talk about Jim Furick because he reroutes the club so much. So many golfers reroute the club. They just do it in different ways that maybe doesn’t look very unconventional. Matt Cooer has a super inside pattern, very, very deep hand path. He does drag the forearms a little clos in the takeaway, but his arms are super super deep in his back swing. And then his chest kind of spins out a little bit. what people would call over the top aesthetically and he hits these like fades, right? Well, that to me is unconventional. It’s very deep to very out and back in front of him with his hand path. Jim Furick just happens to be the opposite. Jim Furick’s is aesthetically a little bit more extreme, which is why people call it unconventional, but by, you know, tour standards, it’s very efficient. His hand path doesn’t get too far out in front of him coming down, considering how upright they were in the back swing. his club reroutes into a relatively shallow position. Now, his trail arm gets stuck a little bit behind him coming down, but that’s more because once he’s at the top of his back swing, his lead arm pushes really back into his chest. And if my hands are connected to my body and I push my hands back into my chest, well, my trail arm is going to retract behind me. So, coming down, it always looks like his right arm is kind of collapsed and narrow and behind the back. The thing is, he doesn’t struggle with low point issues or shaftling or anything like that because he rotates well enough to support what his hand path does in transition. If his body didn’t move as well as it did, he would get stuck way under the plane and hit massive blocks, thin shots, delivering too much loft. It would be a problem. But his body does rotate as well. So if someone like that came to see me, there is no reason you take an unconventional move and you devel like de the idea of developing it really is leaving it alone. It’s learning to build and strengthen the components around it to make the swing very functional. Right? You should only get rid of things as a coach when you believe that the elements that you are seeing that are considered unconventional are creating a problem. If someone’s inside takeaway was getting very flat, but then from there they would react and stand the club up with a lot of late momentum and then the club came down a lot steeper than the back swing did to a point where they’re struggling with strike issues and and all of that and path issues, then of course we deem the inside takeaway the start of the chain of what creates the problem, right? The club might be going back very flat and then from being very flat it might be shifting very steep and very over the top of the ball and then from there the golfer either cuts across it or has to do something in reaction with their body or so on. In those situations, well, you have a clear-cut reason to make those changes, right? You can work your way backwards and say, “Well, the root of that problem really starts. It stems from the takeaway being inside.” So, in that situation, you’re changing it. If someone like Jeremy Paul or another player who pulls the club really inside, but then at the top of the back swing, the alignments are pretty solid and the golfer still shallows the club well in transition and so on. Yeah, from a aesthetics point of view, you look at a swing like that and you say, “Well, that’s effing unconventional.” But really, it’s not that I’m developing the inside takeaway. I’m strengthening the components around the inside takeaway to make the swing work well. So, I hope that makes sense. So, it’s not so much about developing it in my opinion. It’s more about understanding when to change things, when to leave things alone. When are they actually creating a problem versus just physically like they don’t look like everybody looks like Adam Scott? Because when people think of conventional golf swing, the first golfer that comes in 80% of people’s minds is Adam Scott because it’s very like what you would consider one plane. Club goes up, it stays in that 45 degree angle, gets right down the line, comes back down in a similar angle on plane, right? you hit your shot and whatever. I personally don’t think Adam Scott’s swing is that conventional either. Like to me, he drops the club way under the plane. It’s conventional from a physical standpoint, but when you actually look at it, there are some issue. I can pick apart some issues in his swing like anybody else’s. So when we come to developing swings, it’s not so much developing as learning when to leave unconventional things alone and improving all the variables around it because the unconventional component in that scenario is not the root of the problem. I hope that makes sense. What is the best drill to prevent pulling down on the handle and causing blocks? So just so that people are clear what that means. Pulling down on the handle generally refers to when from the top of your back swing I have a certain club alignment. From the top of the back swing the hand path is traveling downwards vertically too much. So they’re not getting back out in front of the golfer. Right? By all accounts we generally want to have I’m going to actually rotate this over so I can speak like this. I apologize. We generally want to have the hand path working back in front of the golfer at some point. If they just drop and stay behind me forever, I’m going to get stuck. Pulling down on the handle doesn’t just happen when the hand path drops because you can drop your hand path and not pull down on the handle. Meaning, I can stand up here and my hand path can lower a lot. I’m not pulling down on this handle at all. I’m staying very wide. My wrist mechanics aren’t really changing that much. My arms are just lowering. Pulling down on the handle means there is an aggressive speed downward in a vertical fashion to the hand path. Number one, that typically is going to steepen the shaft because if I apply a force downwards onto the handle of this club, it’s going to steepen it. So the shaft will look more vertical coming down. Number two, I will get narrow with my arms because if I pull down on the handle, I’m now bringing everything closer to my body. I can keep things wide and lower my arms or I can pull down on the handle and then it looks like this, which looks very narrow. And because there is a lot of hand speed, my body is cannot keep pace with the hands. Meaning my hands are going to get to the ball way too fast relative to how much my body is rotating and tilting and all of that. And now my body because it cannot keep up. I cannot rotate well through the ball. I’m going to throw my hands at it at the last second. And then I end up losing my angles and have to resort to some form of timing. So, not only does the shaft movement get comp gets compromised in that scenario when you pull down on the handle, but you’re going to get narrow. So, your arm structure is getting compromised as well. If I pull down on it, I might actually create too much lead wrist extension. You’ll see that a lot with golfers who pull down on the handle. If my lead wrist extends too much or cups as people call it, the face angle can get open coming down. And then lastly, my hands are traveling too fast relative to my body. So, the sequence gets compromised. So, we are effing up four different things when you pull down on the handle too fast. It is okay for someone to feel like they need to pull down on the handle in order to improve their golf swing. Just to be clear, I see golfers a lot, especially higher handicappers, that they get to the top in a pretty good position, but then their body rotates way too aggressively. There’s no control over the hands and arms at all. And if all I do is spin out my chest with no manipulation to my hands at all, my hands are going to work back in front of my body way too much and I will cut across the golf ball. That’s a scenario where the hands and arms are too passive. The body has too much rotation happening too fast and it creates the complete opposite end of the spectrum in terms of problems. In that scenario specifically, I’m okay with a golfer standing there and feeling like they need to pull down on the handle and slow down the rotation of the body because that can sequence the arms back into a good position. It can help them to actually get the club to stay somewhat on the inside and I’m really fighting a different problem altogether. So, the pulling down on the handle is a feel. And even then, I’m really doing it with feeling more like I’m lowering the arms, feeling like my chest isn’t isn’t opening up too fast, and feeling like my body is adding some form of a lateral movement to get some pressure into my lead side coming down. So, adding a lateral component to my golf swing, lowering the arms, adding some hand speed downwards, not to spin out and get over the top with, you know, no manipulation of the hands and arms whatsoever. That is a feel for a player who has the opposite problem. That’s okay. But if you are somebody who actually physically achieves a pull down, you’re actually doing it. In reality, you’re stuck in the other side of the world. Your hands are stuck too deep and inside coming down. Your shaft is getting steeper and more narrow relative to your body. And then from here, the hands are traveling down so fast that my body cannot keep up. And now I’m going to likely shallow the club really late by tilting back out of it and just throwing my hands out away from me through the golf ball because I’m shallowing the club really late from the move that I created at the start of the down swing that was penalizing to me. Well, that’s what creates the blocks. Anytime you have to shadow the club really, really late, the club’s going to get under the plane and you’ll block it. So in that situation, your blocks are going to go away when you get rid of the pull down. That’s the key. That’s the way you have to look at this entire situation. How do I do that? Well, we have to try to take feel out of the hands because the hands essentially in that scenario, to simplify it, they’re doing too much. They have too much speed. There’s too much control and manipulation happening from the hands and not enough from the body in that scenario. So, the best way to get you back on track, get your club and hands back in front of you and not get steep and narrow at the start of your down swing, you have to take control away from the hands in transition. You know, the golfer whose hands were being left alone and rotated out of sequence, right? The one that I spoke about in the other scenario, that player who pulls down on the club, they need some of that. They need some of the opposite to balance them out. That’s the way you have to look at it. So, we don’t want the lead wrist to be cupped coming down. If I cut my lead wrist coming down, I’m likely going to steepen the club. So, we want to try to take some control away from the club. When I pull down on the handle, I have a lot of control in my fingers here being pulled down. Try to hold the club in the palm of your hands and pull down on the club. Not nearly as easy as if it’s in my fingers and I pull down. So, in that scenario, you might need to weaken the grip a little bit to make sure that the club sits a little bit more in the palm of your hands. Make sure the wrist angle maybe is a little bit flatter. This is also going to make it more difficult to pull down on the club. So, it’s not that I’m necessarily just like removing a pull down altogether. I am changing the elements around your golf swing in that scenario to make it more difficult essentially to pull down on the golf club. That’s the way you have to think about it. And then it’s a lot of work on trying to incentivize the body to move differently while feeling like we’re leaving the hands and arms alone. The speed has to change. Instead of having the speed coming from the hands, the speed needs to come from the body. And we need to leave the hands a little bit more along for the ride, a little bit more passive. That is how you are going to get rid of a pull down. Now, I need to make it very clear, pull downs don’t go away overnight. It’s really easy for me or any other coach to like post a sideby-side video of a student who improved and say, “Well, I got rid of this guy’s pull down.” And I’ve done it before and I have videos of exactly that. The key is understanding this is a process that’s going to take time. Someone might get the feels and click and it happens sooner than later. some other golfer might take months to clean it up. You know, there’s no defining how long a player should take on a swing change. It’s a very subjective process. The key for me, especially as a coach, is making sure the player understands where the issues are coming from, what it’s causing in terms of the ball flight, what we need to change, and how to change it, and then what the expectations are going to be as you go through the process of changing it. If I slow down the pull down by changing the grip and the wrist angles and the pivot and all these things, you should expect first of all visually to see the hands and arms do this instead of that. And then ball flight wise, you shouldn’t maybe see a lot of blocks. Maybe you’ll feel like you’re hitting poles, right? Maybe you’ll change other things. It’ll feel a little bit out of sequence from the chest and the hips instead of from the hands. The player needs to have this expectation so that when you go to the range and you work on something like this for the first time where you’re trying to get rid of a pull down, you’re not going to stand there and hit a shot and be like, “Well, that felt different, but is that good or not?” You should know that going into it. It’s the coach’s priority to give you the full explanation from A to Z. So, when you go to the range, there are no surprises. Not only do you know that that that specific meaning of different is a good thing, that the ball flight you’re seeing is different is a good thing. It’s the expectation. And then obviously visually, like on 2D, on camera, on 3D, however you want to assess the player, you’re seeing changes to how the movements are happening. The player is maybe tilting a little differently versus before. The player’s hand speed isn’t as aggressive downwards. We’re seeing the hand path work a little bit more out and in front of them. The shaft in reaction to the hand path change is now going to be working different as well. Right? If I pull down on this handle, like I said, the shaft gets steep and more vertical. If I stand here and I push the hand path out and in front of me, I’m applying a very different force at this handle. Oh, excuse me. I just hit the microphone. That might actually help me to shallow the club more. So, you’ll see a different reaction to the shaft pitch coming down because of the pull down change as well. If the coach can explain these things obviously in a way that the player would understand it, no matter how simplified you need to go, you can you can actually get rid of the pull down. It can be done, folks. I hope you guys know that. Uh, that was a long explanation, but I hope that was clear. Okay, one more question because really I can ramble on I feel like for like 45 minutes with all the questions that I was given but we are going to do um just a couple and then uh we’ll kind of take it from there. Another video will save uh more of these questions. Okay. So, what is your preferred ways to change trajectory with irons low to high? I am a big believer that the easiest way to change ball flight in general, trajectory, low to high, curvature, right to left, left to right, you know, spinwise and all of that is through setup changes because changing something statically typically is easier than changing something dynamically, which is through the actual movement of the golf swing. If I change the trajectory with your irons, you want to hit it higher. Move the ball position forward. The further in your stance the ball position gets, the less shaft, the more loft you deliver at impact, the higher the ball is going to go. Simple. You’re going to launch it higher. The thing is, you need to understand what else is being affected through that process. If I move the ball position forward in my stance, I’m going to launch it higher. So, I’ll hit it higher. If I have a tree in front of me, move the ball up, it’ll help me get over that tree a little bit easier. But also, the more up in my stance I put the ball, the later in the arc I hit the ball, the less from the inside I hit the ball. Meaning, if I’m a drawer of the golf ball and I move the ball up in my stance, I’ll launch it higher, but I will draw it less. I might hit it straight. The opposite is also true. You want to hit it lower, you can move the ball back in your stance. That’s easier to get your hands forward. that’s easier to lower your dynamic loft, which is your loft at impact. So, how low the ball is going to then launch and that will help you to keep the flight down. But at the same time, the more you do that, well, you’re hitting it earlier in the arc. You are hanging hitting it more from inside out. So, if I move the ball back in my stance, let’s say I’m dead neutral. The ball position is in the middle of my stance and I hit a neutral flight. Neutral ball flight straight. We’re going to use this as the baseline to understand these theories. The further back in my stance I hit it, I’ll launch it lower, but it’ll be more draw biased. The later in my stance I hit it, I’ll launch it higher and the ball of flight will be more fade biased. This is also why people struggle with their drivers because your driver, not only you’re hitting it on a TE, so it’s a very different type of contact point than when the ball’s on the ground with your irons. That alone can be overwhelming for certain players, especially higher handicappers. But also, it’s I’m hitting the ball much later in the arc. I’m going to cut across it the exact same swing plane coming down into the ball. The exact same path. I shouldn’t even say swing plane, but let’s say the exact same like visual movement pattern into the ball. If I have a wedge in my hands, it’ll be easier to draw than if I have a driver, it’ll be easier to fade. Doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to fade. It means it’s harder to draw it. With the wedge, the ball’s further back in your sense. it’s harder to fade it. Also, the loft is a lot stronger on the club face with the driver, which is going to influence more curve as well. So, it’s easier to hit the ball, not only, you know, more draw with the wedge, but also because the wedge has a lot of loft, it’s easier to launch it higher and it’s going to curve offline a lot less versus a driver where it’ll launch very differently and curve much more aggressively. So when I’m trying to change change trajectory with players, well number one, the first question you need to ask yourself is, is your actual swing DNA itself creating a ball flight problem? If you’re come to coming to me and you’re launching every ball at 7, 8°, I have guys who come to me sometimes and they have a seven iron in their hands and they hit so down and across it with such a strong grip and strong club face that they they can hit the ball very far. or they’ll hit a 7 iron 190, but it launches way too low and it doesn’t spin nearly enough. Well, that is a technical problem. Your shaft pitch might be too steep, right? You you might be cutting across the ball too much. There might be other issues within your golf swing that are creating problems. If the swing DNA itself has an issue, then you need to change the trajectory as a byproduct of changing the other issues that exist. In those cases, I’m not necessarily looking at your golf swing and saying, “Well, you’re absolutely launching it too low. Let’s change it.” I’m looking at your golf swing and saying, “There’s a flaw within your swing DNA. Let’s change that.” And through changing that, you should see the ball launch in a better window, a more efficient window, we’ll call it. Because launching it too low and launching it too high have their own problems. I can hit stingers off the tea and it’s all fun in games, but if I’m hitting a stinger into a green with a foreign, I’m not going to be able to control the ball when it lands and how it’s going to roll out. But off the tea, I can hit stingers all day and it’s fun. I I’m somebody who launches the ball too low. I I hit the ball way too low on average. I get away with it in Quebec because the grains are very soft. Most grass is bent. There’s a lot of humidity in the air. There’s a lot of moisture on the ground. The ball typically is going to land and either plug or not going to spin that much. Okay. So, I can get away with that. I’m not landing on a hard surface and it’s bouncing and kicking forward even though I I don’t spin the ball enough. I spin my three uh my four iron like 3,800. it’s it’s too low. So that is a scenario where number one, I don’t have the the patience to work on my game anymore because I work with so many other players. But also number two, the environment in which I play most of my golf, it’s not that penalizing. So I get away with it and I’m I’m happy just accepting that that’s the case. But if you’re competing in different events and you’re going to different locations and you’re dealing with different terrains, well, you’re going to get into a scenario where that ball flight might penalize you. So in that situation, we need to change it. So if you have a swing DNA flaw and in changing the flaw, we can improve your ball flight at the same time, then by all means, that’s the way to do it. But that’s the preferred way in the sense that like if someone comes and sees me for a lesson and says, “I’m launching it too low.” I’m not just exclusively looking at the ball flight and saying, “Okay, today we’re just going to launch it to the moon.” I’m my first thought process in that scenario is how are you launching it too low? Why are you launching it too low? What are you doing within your pattern that’s causing it to launch too low? And can we improve that? If the swing DNA itself is very good and we like generally speaking how you’re getting to the ball, like my swing DNA is is relatively solid. I’m not a tour player, but my swing’s good enough to put up some good scores. Then in that situation, you can alter the ball flight by altering the setup, moving the ball position around, playing with your alignment of your feet, and doing other things in a static component. So, when I’m dealing with tour players, for example, like when I work with the professional golfers, I’m much more likely to alter the ball flight by altering their setup. If I’m dealing with a recreational golfer, someone who’s a higher handicapper, I’m much more likely to alter the ball flight by changing their swing pattern because the likeliness is that there’s a flaw within their mechanics that we can change. And if we change it, it becomes a lot easier to hit the ball uh higher, lower, or do whatever you want with the golf ball. So, I hope that makes sense. Um, I think that’s going to be it for today. I’m I’m rambling on forever. I really do apologize. Uh, there’s some other fun really qu good questions. You know, some stuff on early extension on hand depth and things like that, but I’ve talked about those things at at length uh in the past. So, we’re going to leave those questions alone for the next time. And uh I hope you guys enjoyed this. This is going to be the first of many. I’m going to be doing these, you know, let’s start once a month just to say to be safe. if I don’t want to like overshoot myself um with how much I’m able to handle. But let’s say like once a month at the minimum, maybe twice a month if they start to get more popular and I get more questions being sent in. If you have questions and you enjoyed this video, leave questions in the comment section and then what I can do is I can answer these in a follow-up video and I’ll run through them and I I’ll generally prioritize the questions that are being sent to me here on YouTube um versus ones that are sent to me on Instagram stories. This was obviously the first time doing it, so I had to collect some questions, some fun questions. But I hope you guys enjoyed and uh stay tuned for the next one, y’all. Peace.