Padraig Harrington – The ONLY THREE THINGS That Separate a Professional Golfer from a Hack

Padraig Harrington explains how you only need three things to happen in a golf swing to become a great player using the SCHOOL acronym.

welcome to Golf Char Academy i’m your host Martin Hall we’re here at the Grand Cypress Club in Orlando Florida and I am delighted to be joined by Podrick Harrington threetime major champion that never gets old does it
no it doesn’t six-time RDER Cup player that never gets old this is your full swing special and I think we’re going back to school aren’t we
yeah uh you know basically what would I say to a beginner maybe what I would say to a junior starting off the game and and you know to help them remember I always say you got to get a grip on the word at least the first three letters of the word school so what do I mean by that well the first letter S stands for swish so essentially the louder that swish potentially the further the golf will go so everybody who’s starting off the game should spend as much time not hitting a golf ball but getting the club to swish the second letter C stands for chest when you’re hitting the golf ball you keep your chest down we never ever want to see somebody coming in to hit the golf ball and their chest popped up before they hit it so you keep your chest down not your head down another bad mistake is if you try and keep your head down it actually tucks and gets in the way which causes that pop up so when an amateur or or beginner is starting off I’m always think keep your chest down probably to about 6 8 in past the ball before you let it come up out of it so swish the club keep your chest down that gives the strike and the last thing to H is the only universal thing I could say to every golfer and it will do them no harm because there’s everything you work on in this game you can overdo but this the last thing the H you can’t overdo hold your finish stands for H stands for hold your finish the better your finish the better your consistency is going to be so to get to this position you have to do so many things right so probably the most important thing in the golf swing is to be able to finish balance now if you’re an old codger look that’s fine balancing here you don’t need to finish like oh god I’m old you don’t need to finish all the way around you just need to be able to finish in a balanced position posted up on the left hand side now unfortunately I said you got to get a grip on the first three letters of school so swish chest down hold your finish but you must get a grip on it and in golf your left hand it can vary you’ll see a lot of different pros with strong or weak grips but all pros is the one consistent factor you will see in the tour they put their right hand on top of the club like so like you’re shaking hands with the club now there’s a reason for that as you come into impact your right arm is stretching and there’s a lot of force on it to keep the club face square because it’s further away from you than your left hand if this is here which you see a lot of amateurs do they’ll put their hand on here this will help you hit the first second and third shot well but for the rest of your life it’s going to cause a world of pain because it’s going to want to flip and then you’re going to have to protect it but if you put it on top like so like you’re shaking hands yes the first couple of shots aren’t going to be as good but eventually you’re going to have to square that club up with your upper body the right hand grip must stay on there and it is the biggest common denominator between good golfers professional golfers put your right hand on top short-term pain for long-term gain whereas this every bit of instruction you’ll ever see written in magazines in books every bit of TV coverage you see is all for the orthodox grip if you’ve got a grip over here like this you need your own personal PGA Pro because you can’t work with this it may help the first shot go left but after that it’s going to be terrible problems well you do know when you go to school at the end of term you have an examination whether it’s Ireland England or America so let’s have a swing examination
i I actually like that idea because for a beginner they all want to play well the very first day of class and they will make terrible sacrifices in the first day in order to get the golf ball going somewhat in the air and somewhat straight whereas if they thought of it like this is three months to the end of term and they spent those three months starting off gaining speed keeping the chest in it and then eventually holding the finish they might hit a few bad shots to start off with because everybody does but the end of 3 months they’ll be far further down the road with a lot more consistency in their game than if they made those poor choices at the start
let’s see some SC from a threetime major champion so a nice swish going on