Welcome back to another episode of my monthly Q&A where I’ll be having an honest and unfiltered convo with you guys about everything in the golf industry!
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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!
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all right everybody welcome back to another episode of our little monthly Q&A that we’re going to be doing for YouTube exclusively um I did this for the first time last month seems like people tended to enjoy it so we’re going to throw up another one on there i have about 15 questions this time predominantly golf swing related questions uh but I did bring up a couple of personal ones that people had asked me just to kind of talk through stuff okay so one of the first questions I was asked was “What is your favorite golf swing?” I get this question so often and I never know how to answer it because truthfully favorite golf swings don’t exist i am at the point in my golf career let’s say where I personally just see flaws in golf swings i see the good stuff i see the matchups i see the flaws i don’t really have a favorite at the end of the day i look at even a player like Adam Scott i’ll use him as an example because he’s for sure you know top three top five names that come up whenever people ask what their favorite golf swing is i can still see some flaws in there you know he shallows the club a ton gets a little under rotated sometimes with his chest club drops under the plane he can hit some big draws for me personally I’m not a fan of that i would rather he be a hair more on top maybe neutralize some of the draw curve is that going to make him score better not necessarily but it you know maybe it would maybe it wouldn’t there’s no way to say that unless you’re like in his camp and talking to him in terms of what he struggles with and all that but certainly I I see where my mind would want to take the golf swing i say I would say that’s the thing that I see the most now is when I look at a golf swing I don’t necessarily see good and bad it’s not like that black and white i see more of like oh this is what his current matchups are if he wanted to play more of a fade more of a draw if he’s struggling with certain things this is the route I would go with their golf swing that’s kind of where my mind always looks at and I would say that’s not exclusive to anybody now in saying that cuz that’s kind of like a a ridiculous answer to some degree for a very general question my favorite golf swing if I had to give one to recreational golfers would be a Rory kind of pattern uh not fully Rory’s mechanics there are some things in his swing that I don’t think most recreational golfers would benefit from but let’s list some of the stuff that Rory does really well rory swings out to the right really well most players who come and see me who are higher handicappers cut across the ball rory has a lot of hand depth in his golf swing hand depth from a down the line view basically means his hands are further behind him in theory that would be a go a good thing for a player who struggles with the slice adding more hand depth so he does that really well rory has a lot of lateral shift in transition towards the target the more you shift laterally especially without your chest just like separating and falling back too much you’re going to hit down on the ball better you’ll get the weight transfer moving correctly so you’ll make sure to compress the ball better also that transition shift that he has it allows his hands to drop some amount at the start of the down swing which also helps him to swing more from the inside so for me when I look at a pattern like Rory’s I think you can model a lot of characteristics about that pattern for recreational golfers who slice the ball and I think it would help now let’s talk about some of the things that I wouldn’t teach recreational golfers to do that Rory has rory has a lot of lead wrist extension a lot of lead wrist extension again number one push the shaft really across the line if your swing is short and you get to across the line with a cuped wrist it’ll be really difficult to recover from that so probably wouldn’t be teaching that to a lot of shorter back swing players in general if we cut the wrist too much it’ll also open the club face another characteristic that I’m not a big fan of for recreational golfers personally you know so I wouldn’t necessarily teach those mechanics for a lot of recreational golfers of course you can get away with it if your grip is strong enough but doesn’t mean it’ll help you to shallow the club and things like that um Rory also is somebody who you know yes he can hit up on a ball really well and swing out to the right would most golfers benefit from swinging as far right as he does probably not you know for me personally I I don’t like how his shaft tends to tip across the line at the top of the back swing i do find that occasionally when it does get across the line at the top he gets a little narrow and steep at the start of the down swing and then has to shallow it really late and when your hands are that deep and you’re shallowing it really late it can cause you to get a little stuck so really easy to hit blocks from there now historically a guy like Rory for example not that I want to be critical of him i mean Grand Slam one of the best let’s call him 10 to 15 players of all time but you know Rory can very easily get a little under the plane with wedges and block wedges you know he historically probably doesn’t have the best stats with his wedge game because of something like that obviously driving the ball hitting that up on it swinging out to the right can be really beneficial for you unless you do it to an extreme like I do and then develop the driver yips and give up the game for a little while um but yeah that my point is basically like I don’t really see favorite golf swings i see characteristics I like about certain players and characteristics I don’t i’ll give you another example sam Burns just finished second this past week at the Canadian Open uh lost in a playoff I believe sam Burns little shorter back swing a little bit more laid off keeps the club shallow really well rotates his body really well doesn’t have nearly the same amount of lateral movement in transition that uh a guy like Rory has now in theory if you took a golfer with a steeper club and a more open club face and you gave them Sam Burns’s pivot they will wipe across the ball really fast so do I love the characteristics of Sam Burns’s pivot well I do if you have a shallower pattern he’s very rotational rotates really well hands exit really low and left through the ball for a right-handed player so I love his pivot for a shallower pattern do I love his pivot for a steeper pattern absolutely not it would cause a player to get even steeper again case of like matchups and all that so I don’t really want to give like a PR answer but at the same time I don’t really have a favorite golf swing i have like characteristics about everyone’s swing that I either really like or really dislike and um at the end of the day it’s just about like molding your pattern to certain characteristics of certain players based on your DNA that’s a whole lot of way for me to avoid that that answer so I apologize but that’s kind of just unfortunately as a coach that’s how you I I personally think about the golf swing okay so in the conversation about depth somebody asked me in a previous story you said that adding hand depth would help some golfers shallow out the club how and why is that the case okay so two ways to think about hand depth that could help you to swing more from the inside let’s try to pull up a club here while I am recording by the way you might see the quality is a little bit better on this video versus the last one it’s not going to be perfect by any means but I’m doing this from my phone which is going to have a much better quality than my laptop which I recorded the first video on so hand depth the more upright my arms are and less behind me they are the less depth I have the more behind me and flatter and lower my arms are the more depth I have the reason that having the hands be deeper will help most golfers get shallow is because of two things number one if my hand path is deeper by definition coming down my hands will be coming down from more behind me that helps me to get much shallower as an attack angle wise into the ball and help my path stay more from the inside that can help a lot of recreational golfers think about this i keep the exact same angle of this shaft let’s call it like 45 degrees just for the sake of this argument if my hands coming down are way out in front of me here I’m going to look a lot steeper coming into the ball i take I take this exact same angle of the club and all I’m doing is just adding hand depth doesn’t this golfer look like he’s coming in so much more shallow the plane of this club is the exact same when golfer has less depth the hands are more in front of him when golfer has more depth the hands are more behind him who do you think is swinging more from the inside and going to have a shallower attack angle basically meaning whose swing direction for a right-handed golfer is going to move more to the right this guy right so the more hand depth you have the easier it is to swing from the inside and obviously the easier it is to shallow your low point if you’re too steep on it if you’re taking like massive divots when you play golf now what is the second reason well the more my hand path is deeper in my back swing the more they theoretically need to work back in front of me at some point right we don’t want our hands to stay behind us forever or we get stuck too shallow well if my hand path is deeper I’ll try to do this while actually holding this microphone in front of me like this it’s going to look a little awkward for a second but I do want to show this if my hand path is deeper my hand path now needs to move back in front of my body well the more outward my hand path now travels in transition the more of a force that way I’m going to apply to the club to get my hands back in front of me if I push my hands that way look at the type of force I’m applying to the shaft right if I’m here and I just apply a force in front of my body that pushes the handle that way that’s going to help me to pitch the shaft onto a more horizontal plane this is a very simplified visual that I’m giving you but the idea is if your hand path is deeper they need to work more outward in transition the more outward they travel the more you’re going to apply force that way that can help the plane of the club to get more horizontal while also retaining a bit of that hand depth and now not only is the shaft on a shallower plane but your hands are a little deeper coming down your attack angle is going to be better club path is going to be better you’re going to solve your problems so generally speaking is a lot of hand depth good for everyone absolutely not if I put any more depth in my pattern I’m going to hook the crap out of the ball i’m somebody who shallows the club a lot through the wrist structure coming down and the arms and I actually have a relatively upright arm plane i can’t afford to get my hand path any deeper because my hands also drop a little bit more in transition than I probably would want if my hands are now deeper and I shallow the club well and my hands drop in transition now I’m stuck way too shallow and on the golf course historically me personally I get too shallow i don’t take big divots my attack angle gets on the skinnier side and um so I tend to thin the ball and you know catch them low on the face and things like that so in general is more hand depth good for everyone absolutely not is it good for recreational golfers to help them swing more from the inside and shallow the plane of their club out yes hope that helps so what are and this the another question kind of is related to that a lot of people tend to talk about these or are curious about this but what is the best way to build meaningful hand depth well there’s two ways to get your hand path deeper in the golf swing i can do it solely by getting my arms back there without moving my body any differently so if I isolate my hand path and I just shove my arms back I’ll get them deeper right in theory or I’m going to use the chair as a swivel for this visual if my arms are staying in front of me here and then I add rotation to my body guess where my hands are going as I’m rotating my body more my hands are now getting more upright they’re getting more behind me the golf ball’s down there my hands are much deeper relative to the golf ball so the best most meaningful way generally speaking the least like invasive way to do it is by rotating better because the more you rotate better if I leave all my mechanics alone as I rotate more my hands naturally want to get deeper in theory some golfers already have a lot of rotation and they’ve kind of isolated the arms and disconnected them and lifted them and all of that if that is you then the best way to add hand depth to your pattern is by isolating the hands and arms and getting them back there themselves that would be the second way so there is an isolated version of the hands and arms right the connection between my left arm and my chest if I disconnect and get upright I’m not deep if I pin my left arm more across my chest I’ll get deeper that’s the first way and then the less invasive let’s call it like more organic way to do it would be by just rotating better in the back swing if you have space to turn better obviously not everybody has space to turn better hope that makes sense what are the benefits of having a more laid-off structure versus across the line i mean I’ll give you like a a shortened version of the answer because I can probably talk about this for like 45 minutes but basically if the back swing gets a lot longer you generally want the club to be a little bit more across the line if the back swing gets a little bit shorter you generally want the club to be laid off and I would argue you can consider this kind of like a a bell curve right the shorter it is the more laid off you want it the longer it is the more across the line you want it as a rule of thumb I will say I’m not a fan of either extreme meaning too across the line if the top of my back swing looks like this it is going to be way too hard to manage this shaft even if in theory I have a lot of space to shallow the club from being really across the line it doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to do it because if my club gets way too far across I have to reroute the crap out of this club to get it into what more traditional golfers call the slot which I absolutely hate that term i think it’s useless but let’s call it into a better position coming down right the problem is that’s a lot of movement that takes a lot of time so generally if the club gets too across the line even if your club is in a state of shallowing and moving well it might only actually get shallow enough way too late into the pattern meaning early in the down swing you’re going to be steep even if the club’s trying to go shallow and then it’s only going to get there late in the down swing if the club gets shallow too late into the down swing you will hit a lot of blocks a lot of hooks because your path is going to get too far from the inside it’ll be hard to manage don’t like that extreme if the club is too laid off even if the pattern is short at some point the hands are going to drop the shaft is going to steepen you can think of it in a more simplified way of if the club is too laid off it’s essentially maxed out how shallow it can get and the only direction it can go as you start down and apply a force to the handle from here is that direction and the club is going to start to steepen on you and it might actually kick over the plane and end up in trouble so I usually use the term range of acceptability what does that mean it means that there is a range that is acceptable of where the club should be aligning at the top of your back swing slightly across the line for longer patterns slightly laid off for shorter patterns but this is your range of acceptability if the club starts to get too far this way it’s going to be hard to manage not impossible if a player comes to me and they’re striping it and the club movement’s really good from here I’m not going to change it for the sake of this conversation but when I say a range of acceptability I mean you’re going to do yourself a lot of favors by getting it within the range of let’s say slightly laid off to slightly across the line and it’s okay to feel this or feel this if you have to based on your pattern but feel is not real if we’re talking actual positioning like real positioning slightly laid off to slightly more across the line that’s the range of acceptability as the club pattern gets longer the back swing get a little bit more across the line because you can shallow it out effectively as the pattern gets shorter get a little bit more laid off again within that range the reason why we don’t like shorten across the line you get really narrow and there’s just no way to unwind this club in time so odds are even if it’s trying to unwind it’ll be really narrow and steep in the early parts of your down swing probably even in the late stages of your down swing that’s a terrible combination to try to manage and if it gets too laid off it’s effectively maxed out how shallow it can get it’s going to start down by steepening and you’re going to end up in trouble so again hope that helps that’s a lot of mechanics in that but essentially think of a range of acceptability when it comes to club alignment at the top of your back swing that will generally do you a lot more favors than trying to say “Hey everybody needs to have the club perfectly on plane and down the target line and all of that.” I just don’t agree with that concept at all now let’s answer um a different type of question here that somebody asked me on Twitter which is basically how much time should be spent on mechanics versus creative shots i like to take my student out onto the golf course occasionally and put them in messed up lies where their unconscious mind has to take over and just feel it so I’ll rephrase the question because I think I kind of understand where he’s getting at which is basically how much time should be spent on like you know mechanics so range work um you know block practice things like that versus when they’re saying creative shots we’re thinking more just like skill development right what do you consider skill development for me skill development is the ability to flight it high flight it low curve it one way curve it the other way play around with ball positions put yourself in different scenarios can you hit a hook can you hit a slice if you’re stuck behind a tree and you got to keep it under a limb and then push it with a draw can you do that can you try to push it under trees down and then hope it kind of fades which is probably the hardest shot in golf for most people in my opinion most better players um just in general you know can you pull off different shots when it demands it because the reality is when you play around a golf the idea that every ball position every flat lie everything is going to be perfect and stable just doesn’t exist that’s not reality rangework is great and I would argue it’s absolutely necessary to create a strong foundation of what your swing is going to look like and act like on the golf course but having the understanding and the ability to hit different shots and be creative when it calls for it I think is super important so for me I don’t really think there’s like an ideal time to say like “Hey by the time you start breaking 90 you should start doing skill-based work by the time you break 80 you should do this i don’t think it’s that simple right because the reality is score is an ever evolving being that encompasses way too many different areas you can’t say like “Hey by the time you break this number on the golf course you should start working on skill.” I’ll tell you why two golfers finished their round both of them shot 89 one of them hit six greens one of them hit 12 greens i mean should one be working on skill development more than the other right they have two different weaknesses the golfer who hit six greens and shot 89 maybe has a slightly better uh short game the golfer who hit 12 greens and shot 89 probably needs to either figure out their driver because I would imagine if you shot 89 and hit 12 greens the other six holes that you didn’t hit the green you probably pumped one out of bounds and made double at worst or at best or that golfer needs a putting lesson or a short game lesson ASAP right so this is one of those situations where you know to get to an end result of a golf score just requires way too many different factors to say like hey start by breaking 90 and then you can learn how to flight the ball i just don’t think it’s that you know that realistic i think that once you have a good enough foundation where you can you know to some degree replicate a ball flight pretty consistently and I mean a successful ball flight not a ball flight because the reality is most recreational golfers who come and see me in a lesson format the first thing they tell me is I want to be more consistent right every coach knows this if you’re a coach and you’re watching this you’ve been told this a million times right everybody says this the problem in my opinion is everybody is already consistent you’re just either consistently really bad or you’re not but you can stand there on the range like I’ve seen high handicappers stand there on the range and actually make really solid contact on the ball pretty consistently but there is no compression no ball speed and everything is a power slice that golfer is going to stand on a T- box and hit 18 slices into trees they’re going to stand there and say “I need to be more consistent.” But you just hit the exact same shot 18 times in a row that’s pretty consistent it’s just not a successful shot so obviously it sucks so in my opinion when should you be spending time on mechanics versus skill development and how should that transition over as soon as you have a strong enough foundation within your mechanics where you you have a successful ball flight for starters something where there’s not a way too extreme of a curve and it generally falls you know the ball flight stays in front of you and is pretty good obviously you’re always going to have the odd bad shot here and there you can start to work on skill development skill development for me means hitting different shots hitting different shapes learning how to curve the ball under a tree above a tree and all of that that’s just one form first of all skill development like learning to hit different parts of the club face is another form of a skill now there are time and places to work on those skills versus like learning to shape the ball differently but in my opinion as soon as you have a strong enough foundation where you generally have a ball flight you can keep in front of you and you can hit the ball solid more often than you can’t you should start to work on learning how to flight the ball the other way it doesn’t mean you’re going to go out to the golf course and start playing that shot there’s a lot of information out there uh especially with Scott Faucet and Decade and all of this information and strokes gain that we have now access to that tells you that you should probably play your standardized curve more often than you shouldn’t i’m a drawer of the ball i’ve always been a drawer of the ball can I play a fade yeah of course I can is it going to be consistent as the draw that I hit or the straighter golf ball that I hit no probably not so when you absolutely need to it is advantageous to learn how to play those shots i don’t necessarily believe that you’re going to use those shots as often as you think you are because I find that some people the mistake they make when they’re learning how to play the game of golf is like “Oh I learned how to I’m hitting a draw now i want to learn how to hit a fade.” So that you can stand there and every single ball that you see in the air now you’re like I want to play a You just randomly decide to play a fade or there’s like a couple trees in the way you’re like I’m going to bend it around the tree why do you need to do that if you don’t need to outside of when you absolutely need to curve it the other way you probably shouldn’t curve it the other way think of it as simple as that okay uh so in terms of like mechanics versus creative shots yeah as soon as you feel like you have you’re relatively consistent with a successful ball flight and contact point and all of that by all means learn to shape the ball the other way and all all of that jazz and how to do that requires a whole other video i generally like my tour players to do it through static changes so more setup related as opposed to feeling different i’m not a big advocate of like trying to feel something so drastically different you can feel subtle things for example today I played my third round of golf in 2025 okay we’re middle of June this is my third round I played this year i’m not a fader of the ball but on the 18th hole I had 175 out i pulled Drew a driver behind a tree i had to punch fade a drive a sixiron from 175 uh that I just wanted to like flight and chip it my sixiron average is probably like 182 so I took a couple yards off it and um I tried to flight it and in order to do that I was aiming much more open than I’m used to my ball position was much more back in my stance because I had to keep it low behind under the tree limbs and then I felt a subtle bit of like holding off of the club face that’s a very simple feel most of the work really was done through my setup so I like the general structure of the pattern to change through the setup you can move the ball position forward it moves your path more outside in you can aim more open it moves your path more outside in in theory I couldn’t afford to move my ball position forward because I had to keep the ball flight down so I had to keep move the ball position a little back and start with a little bit of lean to the shaft to keep it low and I felt maybe a little bit of knuckles down as I’m holding it off to keep the launch down and finish with your hands low and all of that so that’s one way to do it it’s not the only way to do it but generally speaking I’m a big advocate of even if you are going to learn how to shape the ball and all of that don’t do things crazy with your hands and arms necessarily if you want to you know learn through trial and error on the range and work on more skill with your hands and all that by all means do it i’m not saying it’s a bad thing it is a good thing i do believe though if you want to learn to do it in the most consistent way when you’re on the golf course if like it really demands it generally speaking if you can create the change in golf life through the setup it’s a much easier approach to be consistent with than trying to manufacture it through your hands and arms especially when you’re not used to doing it okay that’s all let’s jump into a couple of more questions for you here what is the best resource to learn how to teach golf so I will say this most information on the internet about the golf swing is really bad old information new information is great and you know social media YouTube all this stuff like what we’re talking about here it can be very overwhelming at times like if you don’t really understand the golf swing that well and I’m listing all these like scientific terms and and whatnot it can certainly feel very overwhelming if your priority is to teach golf at some point my suggestion would always be a couple of things number one try to find coaches you admire online and try to learn from them as much as possible stick with one philosophy okay there’s a big difference between having preferences and having models models are when every single student who comes into your lesson you’re going to fit them into the exact box of what you want their swing to look like it’s a non-negotiable student comes in this is how they have to look and then the student leaves the lesson and you’re kind of forcing them into a mold i don’t believe in that at all i believe that there are preferences I have about the golf swing and if you gave me a blind canvas I will try to get close to my preferences i’m also realistic in that they require certain attributes in terms of time in terms of physicality in terms of skill in terms of so many different factors that not everybody is going to be able to get there i also believe if a player is coming into my golf my academy and wants a lesson generally speaking I’ll try to retain the most of their DNA as possible and just play around with the parts that are not so great within that i’m trying to get them close to my preferences of their DNA though i’m not fitting them into a box of like oh your arms are up here no everybody’s arms need to be there like that’s just nonsense so number one try not to teach a model try to teach preferences in my opinion that’s much more fluid it allows you much more room to play around with the golfer who’s going to come and see you and it’s easier to come up with solutions for a player that you’re not fitting them into a box if I force a player into a box and it doesn’t work what do I do then i’m kind of screwed right excuse my language so that would be the first thing is find coaches you admire online find their preferences that they have and their philosophies and their mindsets ask them questions if you can most coaches in my experience are going to be pretty open to at least help you out and answer you there are mentorship programs that exist all over the internet where you can study one-on-one with a coach and learn from them i offer it myself if you’re an up andcoming coach who wants to learn I’m happy to do that for you it is a paid program because unfortunately I don’t have free time to to offer it anymore but still something that could be very beneficial um there are resources on the internet nowadays like websites and golf forums and things like that where um you know you can learn so much from there are certifications that are out there stay tuned give you a little bit of insight on that one stay tuned mine is coming soon enough uh we’re working on it i don’t know if I’m going to be able to release it this year but maybe over the winter early next year for sure lot of lot of content coming on that and just in general um learn from coaches don’t learn from like old school traditional programs because the information has changed so much and I don’t think it’s going to make you a better coach you’re going to learn far more talking to people going and shadow coaches that you like or learning from people whether me or whoever uh about philosophies that you respect and admire because everyone has preferences like I said uh and going that route in my opinion than like reading off a book i do think some old school books can be helpful but there’s a lot of information out there that has changed and a lot of crappy stuff is still out there unfortunately okay how to fix hands that are too far behind the body in transition causing fat shots too often i feel like I’m sitting really poorly here by the way i do apologize for that i’m kind of sitting like a lazy person okay so how do you fix hands that are too far behind the body in transition well number one why are the hands too far behind the body in transition are the hands too far behind the body because you are lacking turn and instead of turn you are tilting your chest away from the target if I stand here and this is the top of my back swing trail shoulder drops too much guess what my hands are going to drop with me they’re going to be too far behind me in transition that is a pivot problem in that scenario are your hands too far behind you in transition because they were already too far behind you at the top and there’s just no way to get them in front of you enough it is possible to be too deep by the way right it’s too possible to do anything too much in the golf swing so are your hands just too deep to begin with and that causes problems is it a pivot issue that causes problems are you just lacking turn and you have a lot of lateral motion in transition and your trail arm drops a lot and that causes you to get stuck do you pull down on the club so you have too much hand speed downwards and that causes your hands to get stuck in transition even if your pivot might be pretty good a lot of different ways your hands might get there having the answer of how to solve it you first need to know why you’re creating it without the root cause of the problem you’re simply banditing your swing if you’re pivoting poorly you can pivot differently and that’ll get your hands in front of you if you’re pulling down on it you can leave the hands alone and focus more on core movement and with other drills and training aids and all that you can get the hands back in front of you if you’re too deep at the top and that’s the problem change the depth and get your hands more upright at the top of your back swing that’ll get them more in front of you if you have way too much lateral in transition maybe reduce the lateral and increase the rate of something else to help you a lot of different ways you can solve your problem hope that helps uh okay okay okay is it better to match up the swing to the body type or to a model that a player wants to look like i will say this i will occasionally get someone who comes into my studio or even takes online lessons with me i’m sure some of you already know this i offer online coaching through the Sneeed app it’s an app that I founded myself uh along with my brother and two German developers who are great dudes and we um we built this uh platform where we can offer online coaching to anybody on in the world you can do FaceTime sessions you can do video analysis which is predominantly what I do and a lot of times what a player will send me is they’ll send me a golf swing of theirs that obviously they’re struggling and they’re like I really want to do this either they absolutely want to see a certain ball flight which in my opinion is actually acceptable it’s okay obviously there are some DNAs that are going to be hard to get to that ball flight like if you’re like really stuck and really shallow and you’re swinging 17° to the right for example and you’re telling me you want to hit a fade maybe let’s just reduce the hook to a tighter draw to eventually a straight ball to eventually get to a fade but that might be a longer term process but I always build the road map for the player so that they know what the the the change is going to look like the structure of the change is going to look like over the next coming months that’s number one number two um you know if a person comes and sees me and it’s not just a question of a ball flight but they’re like I absolutely want to get the club here and I want to look like this player and all of that well you need to be realistic with yourself because sometimes first of all there’s a few things to consider even if you look like that player it doesn’t necessarily mean you have the skill of that player or that you’re going to hit the ball as well as that player so even if you want to model your swing after a player it doesn’t mean you’ll have the same results it’s very important to understand that also on that same wavelength um it’s one of those things where you might not physically be able to get into certain positions like the player would and it requires a lot of work and do you really want to go through that much work and change to not even have guaranteed results whereas in my opinion I can take your body type i can take your scheduling situation your day-to-day what it looks like how often you’re willing to play in practice what your current DNA of your pattern is what your skill level is and I can make changes around that to make it work for you right and in my opinion that is far more important and a far better way to approach swing changes than trying to model yourself towards a certain player that you want to look like i just think that’s a horrific idea just because there are no guarantees and why would you ever want to go through such a strenuous tedious long process for something that might not have a guaranteed result in the end it’s just not the way to approach it right and so this is a situation where in my opinion if you match your your swing mechanics to your body type and your age and your physical situation and all of that and where your current pattern is we can play around with that and fit a swing that works for what you’re able to give it and what it gives back to you in return that is the best way to do it okay so I hope that helps now last question this is more of a let’s call it a political one not actual politics but uh Brian Manzella great coach um him and I have shared some conversations in the past on social media we don’t actually know each other on a personal level but we have talked through online and stuff i uh put out like a Q&A question yesterday and he asked me why do you think our little subindustry and he put in quotations golf instruction or in brackets so golf instruction you know our little subcategory of golf our world is the golf instruction world why is it so poorly covered by legacy golf media so who’s legacy golf media legacy golf media is like the Golf Channel uh Sky Sports any sort of like older uh golf coverage of any kind the way in which they distribute um obviously this information to you through television through magazines newspapers that would be considered like more of legacy golf media social media would be more of like the digital age right golf Digest the magazines fall into one world they’re more digital now they weren’t always and so on so why do you think Legacy Golf Media covers golf instructions so poorly why do you think they don’t really care to cover it that much i personally think it’s for a few reasons you know number one I think that they’re always going to prioritize players over coaches at the end of the day who won the Masters rory won the Masters not his coach his coach helped him win the Masters his coach in my opinion probably deserves a lot of credit being on that side of the industry i know how much goes into you know how important a coach is in terms of the knowledge they give in terms of I can give a player who can go out with a certain field tomorrow and he might love that field and play like amazing i might give him the completely wrong change i don’t anymore but let’s say 15 years ago you give a player the wrong change and they go out and they play like well believe it or not the difference between them playing well and them playing shitty is the swing field that they had and guess who gave them that feel was the coach right so I do believe look I’m not going to sit here and say that coaches are the most important thing in the world i I genuinely do not believe that but at the same time I think that they’re maybe underloved you know a coach is a situation where it’s like when the player wins the coach gets too much credit when the player loses the coach gets too much hate i genuinely believe that because at the end of the day we’re not the ones hitting shots so the media is always going to prioritize the players because that’s where the priority should be the players are the ones competing in the events they’re the ones that have the flashy big names they’re the ones that are earning the big bucks and they’re the ones that are going to be plastered all over uh marketing and and things like that so they’re always going to prioritize players over coaches i think that’s just in general i also think there’s just a lot of bad information that’s been passed around over the years and I genuinely think to some degree that there the audience of legacy golf media are scarred by it right how much bad information has there been given in the last 30 years that’s either been disproven since then or things have changed or somebody’s taken a lesson and had a bad experience i hear that all the time oh I was with this coach and I took a couple lessons from them and I didn’t like it at all because uh they just kept telling me to do this and it wasn’t helping and whatever don’t get me wrong there’s a lot of amazing incredible coaches you can take lessons from nowadays not just in person but online too and I’m not just referring to myself i’m referring to other people anywhere in the world there’s also a lot of really shitty golf coaches out there and you can take some horrible lessons i hate to say it but it’s true it’s no different than like you’re hiring a plumber to come to your house unless you know this plumber personally or somebody referred them that you respect you don’t know if this person who comes is as good as what they seem or bad right i share a lot of information on the internet about the lessons that I give because I want to give you guys some insight into my portfolio how I communicate information the kind of lessons I’m giving the kind of information I’m sharing what routes I’m taking with certain players so that you have a certain expectation when you come in you kind of have an idea of what I’m going to be if I never share that information online and you come take a lesson with me you have no idea who I am or what I’m going to say i like when players come in and they’re like “Oh I think you’re going to tell me this about my golf swing.” and then I might either surprise them or I’m just confirming what they already thought and that way you know they they hear that confirmation and they can commit to it so I think that a lot of bad information has been shared on the internet and so like to some degree they’re afraid to either step on people’s toes share the wrong information of course there is some politics involved it’s always going to be that way right you have friends in the industry and they’re going to favor their friends um but I think that players will always be the priority and uh that’s just the way the game is and then it’s funny because this conversation between me and Brian you know at the end of it Brian goes well you know um he had his own personal reasons you can go and see them on Twitter i’m not going to share them here but then I was telling him like as bad as you think the coverage is there imagine here in Canada it’s even worse and that’s the fact that’s just the fact right the reality is outside of the US you don’t hear about coaches you don’t hear about anything that’s going on really in the golf world certainly not in the US right in the US they prioritize what’s going on in the US and I totally understand that i’m not sitting here and trying to be negative about it i’m very realistic as well but when every single year Legacy Golf Media puts out top 50 coaches top 50 this best young instructors coming up and all that it’s always just the US only it’ll always be just the US only because that’s what they’re going to prioritize is their own country and the biggest golf market in the world is in the US that’s just the reality so in my opinion golf instruction is covered really poorly for numerous reasons those are a few of the ones that I personally believe is the case if you think it’s because of something else please share it here and I would love to have a discussion about it and I also think in general anybody outside of the US tends to get left a little bit behind i’m very lucky in that you know I I’ve developed hopefully enough of a reputation where um you know my name maybe stands out a little bit more than others and that I’m I’m very grateful for that but at the same time it’s nothing like it would be if I was in the States it’s just how it’s always going to be it’s it’s it’s a reality that once we accept we can live our lives and all is good and we can smile and and do all the jazz you know so yeah uh I’ll answer one last question here from one of my own personal students on Sneeed Brian he wrote this on the last um on the last video which was basically like “What are some of the more common misnomers and overused golf instructure golf instruction things uh that are like fing fingers on a chalkboard to you like what is the most cringe stuff that you hear?” Man there’s a lot of really bad information on the internet honestly like I I hate when I see somebody’s analyzing a golf swing they see a weaker grip and they go “Well that sucks if you have a weaker grip you’re going to slice the ball you better have a stronger grip.” I promise you that is not always true i have a very weak grip okay by st by like tour standards my thumb of my lead hand goes straight down the handle my trail hand looks like this on the club it’s really on top and believe it or not my big miss is still left as a right-handed golfer I tend to get under the plane and overdraw the ball um so it’s one of those things where people tend to focus on what they consider fundamentals like the grip the posture the stance the alignment all of that stuff and I just don’t believe they’re fundamental that was actually part of his question is um you know what do you think of fundamentals what do you where did you learn what you believe are fundamentals essentially and for me personally I don’t think things like grip and stance and posture and alignment and all that are fundamental as soon as they become negotiable in the golf swing for your pattern they are no longer fundamental i can hit the ball really well with the ball position back in my stance and forward in my stance by definition because I can do those two things it’s not a fundamental in my golf swing i can play really good golf with a weak grip i weak grip i can play really good golf with a strong one not a fundamental right you would consider a fundamental more of like a non-negotiable where it’s much more important than that um of course a bad element to your posture or to your alignment or to your ball position is going to create poor golf but bad club movement is going to create poor golf too so why is that not a fundamental but my posture is in my opinion those are just two equally important variables that just happen at different points one is static in my setup and one isn’t that doesn’t mean one’s fundamental one’s not i think that’s ridiculous so for me anything cringey is like you know overly obsessing over what people call fundamentals i would argue that’s actually the cringiest for me honestly and then there’s always like the same common you hear you know keep your head down keep your left arm straight for a right-handed golfer uh all that stuff I think is terrible um and just really you know even when it comes to I was having this great conversation actually with my wife yesterday i want to bring this up which was uh this kind of relates to the question with Brian Manzella and it kind of relates to this too which is like she had asked me after I was talking to her about some golf stuff like how come they never put coaches on TV on TV broadcasts you never see coaches really on TV broadcasts and I said I think it’s because like they’re afraid that we’re going to overwhelm the audience with like way too much technical information and that’s just not true right at the end of the day like if I give a golf lesson I’m going to talk to the person who’s in front of me and communicate the information in as simplified of a way as I can and I believe that would be no different if a golf coach whether me or someone else would be on a broadcast right because think about this like imagine a player stood there and they hit a pull draw wouldn’t you love to know the potential reasoning why the player hit a pull draw instead of some like gimmicky phrase that doesn’t mean anything to anybody like aren’t you tired of just hearing like “Oh he got quick on that one.” Or “Oh he got a little on top of that one.” Do you know how many times I have watched golf on television seen a golfer who historically even somebody on tour let’s say shallows the club way too much gets a little under the plane so their path moves too far from the inside and then they just shut the face down because they’re trying to square it up with some timing and they overdo it and it becomes a pull draw and then you’ll hear the announcer “Oh he got on top of that one.” I promise you more often than not they didn’t get on top of the ball okay the club is actually way too shallow and there’s timing to when you’re swinging that far from the inside and in order to avoid a block you need to find a way to try to save it with your hands and you might have overly saved it that doesn’t mean you got on top of it and all of a sudden a tour player who shallows the club a bunch just magically forgot to shallow the club and got over the plane give me a effing break right so this is one of those things where like I always laugh because the reality is like broadcasts are so gimmicky that’s the cringiest thing to me that’s kind of why I brought this up is like I hate hearing you know TV announcers saying nonsense and it’s no discredit to them a lot of them are like ex players and you know they’re saying what comes to their mind right away and a lot of them are actually really good in a lot of ways and they’ve gotten better but there’s a couple of things that I hear sometimes where it’s like I’d rather listen to the broadcast on mute to be honest but if you put a coach up there and like you can just give a a quick 30 second explanation as to why that happened based on their mechanics even in a simplified way I feel like that would be so much more captivating to the audience than hearing some cringy gimmicky line that means nothing to nobody at least that’s the way I feel right and then again maybe that’s just a thing that I feel because I’m a coach and I’m not looking at it from the audience’s perspective maybe somebody who has no idea what happened hears that and doesn’t think anything of it and doesn’t care but I kind of feel like the audience does care nowadays maybe they didn’t 20 years ago but I I feel like I’ve been told this enough from from new people you know i feel like I’m rambling on here this is going to be one of those things where I almost feel like it’s just going to be like life updates and uh just chats with you guys about stuff and if you guys have interesting questions honestly um there’s no filter here i don’t really care i mean there’s like a tiny filter obviously within reason i’m not going to go on someone but at the same time I always want to be as open and as honest with you guys as possible so as much as I can talk about the golf swing but also keep it real uh I do want to keep it real because I don’t want to be another like PR uh everything I say is going to be written off of Chad GPT or off of like a perfect sentence that I don’t want to step on someone’s toes no I’m sorry the golf instruction world in my opinion is really good right now it’s the best it’s ever been it’s still not that great there’s so much more good information out there that’s not being shared and I feel like we could do a much better job of captivating the audience on television on social media um I believe that golf instruction in general needs to be covered more and I feel like it’s coming but at the same time it’s a slow burn and it’s going to take a little bit more than that that’s all that’s basically it for me uh for me to ramble on time for me to go make a gin and tonic i hope that’s your drink of choice that’s mine and we’ll see you guys in the next one okay
