3-Time Major Champion Padraig Harrington TRANSFORMS Your Swing In 1 Lesson!

3-Time Major Champion Padraig Harrington TRANSFORMS Your Swing In 1 Lesson!

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Golf Secrets

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. But if you get to a point in your back swing where you you’ve you’ve got a tight coil, don’t lift past that. The minute you lift your arms and your body stretches like this, you’re going to lose all your power. We’re pressing down our left heel into our left side. That’s your start of the down swing. Sitting in there, pressing down. And this is why I said Nicholas was so good. He had that high foot and he jammed it back down into the ground. Yes, the body’s rotating, but the arms are down as hard as you can. He gets the shaft and he just goes just whacks it. Actual fact, he just keeps whacking it. He will. But all those motions, every one of those swings I just made there is perfect golf swing. Hodri 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 boat 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 balanced. 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. And 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 on 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 actually 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. By the end of three 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. You promised us you were going to let us know how the swing should feel. Carry on. The first thing the golf swing should feel like exactly how you felt as a kid when you played tennis, hockey, baseball, it’s the same thing. We’re swinging a stick at a ball. There’s no difference. So, the movement that you use to play hockey and tennis and all those sports, we’re going to use that to play golf. And I did say movement. Here are some of the keys you don’t want to do in golf. You don’t want to keep your head down. You don’t want to keep your head still. You don’t want to make a slow back swing. You don’t want to make a big back swing. All those things are going to cause you problems. Okay. So, what should the swing feel like? Essentially, if you really really want to get the feel, go out to your garden or somewhere you can set up in your golf position. Put a golf ball in your right hand. Hold your right wrist, assuming you’re right-handed. We want to throw the golf ball as hard as we can into the ground about a yard ahead of us and for it to go as far as we can straight. So, like so. I pull that a little bit. Now, every bit of that motion there is a golf swing. So, watch what happens. I made the right amount of hip turn. I made the right amount of arm swing. I didn’t lift my arms. I didn’t lift my body. Okay? I made the right amount of wrist break. All naturally. I’m not thinking about this. I pivoted to my left. I stayed down with my chest and I released it. All because I was throwing a ball. We all know how to throw a ball. Let’s say you hit one with that sort of feeling of a throwing action. But again, it’s what we we all know how naturally to do this again. Holding, holding, holding. Watch it till you uh see the ball land. I’m exaggerating here. No doubt about it. I’m holding for as long as I can. But I’m able to do that. I would like amateurs to exaggerate in the range and on the golf course hold it for two seconds. I said we don’t want to swing back slowly. We certainly don’t want to keep our head still. the head floats when so essentially the weight as you turn your shoulder it shifts your weight to your right side so we don’t need to shift like this our body turns and it moves the center of gravity over here but see my head has moved there’s no if I try and keep my head still I’m actually going to go forwards which is the worst thing you can do in golf if you keep your head still you’re going to go forwards and you’re going to have that step backwards and no finish that’s why I said holding the finish it gets you doing all the right things without you knowing you’re doing them. I think the modern professional has done a lot of harm to amateurs. Modern professional is very supple. They’re young. They’re powerful. So when they make a swing, they can keep this left heel in the ground. They can keep a lot of a lot of tension inside their legs like this. They can turn. They get onto the right side. And the to the public that looks like they’re staying still. Would you think of keeping your head still when you’re hitting a baseball? Could you imagine telling a kid, “Okay, right. You’re ready to hit it, but you’re not allowed to move your head. I don’t think so. I don’t think it would be good. Yeah. Like we want to keep our eye on the golf ball. No doubt about it. But our head moves a little bit and floats. So, couple of drills. Yes. Lift your left heel off the ground. A drill I would always get kids practicing is actually lift their foot off the ground. This is So, you can either start in this position like so. That creates great movement. If you start, take your golf stance, bring your foot back. You’re a terrific driver of the golf ball. And I know in this driver special, you want to debunk some swing myths. So, let’s get right to it. Yeah. Look, this is what I see when I play every week in the proam, my amateurs, what I see going wrong. One, don’t try and stay still. This is the worst thing you could try and do. Somebody who tries to stay still in in the golf swing will actually probably go forwards as they go back and when they try and hit it, they’ll be going backwards. Don’t try and keep your head down. If your head goes down, it’s going to get in the way. Terrible idea. Let your head float in the golf swing. You wouldn’t try and keep your head still if you were swinging a a baseball bat. You wouldn’t keep your head still if you were throwing a punch. Why would you keep your head still playing golf? Okay, next thing is professional golfers actually swing the club back three times faster than amateurs. So, the rhythm of the back swing really helps the club set. You don’t go real slow. This isn’t going to help you. So, a nice rhythm in the back swing. Allow your head float. Don’t try and stay still. Don’t keep your head down. And lastly, don’t lift in the back swing. People always want to make a bigger back swing. They think that’s going to equate to more power. That’s okay if you’re supple, but if you get to a point in your back swing where you you’ve you’ve got a tight coil, don’t lift past that. The minute you lift your arms and your body stretches like this, you’re going to lose all your power and your accuracy. So, you got to stay within yourself. And what you will see, especially with pros when they’re taking practice swings in a in a static environment without the ball, they only ever swing about that long. They don’t make a big swing in the back swing because we don’t want any of this lifting. Okay? So, nice and tight in the back swing. Good bit of rhythm. And I would recommend to people at home in their garage during the winter, you know, years ago if you were watching Hogan, they had lovely waggling going on. Their feet were were dancing. They were moving and they hit that back swing with speed and that got the club lovely to hinge up here on plane. They got a lovely wrist because of the speed of the back swing. So get that nice rhythm going. Allow yourself move. Essentially, as you turn, your turn shifts your weight. And as you can see, it shifts my head a little bit to this side. I don’t need to move my hips over here. I just need to turn my body. And once my body turns, you can see I’m going to that is actually going to turn into a full golf swing when the golf ball is there. See how it gets to parallel when when you’re doing that, Padre? I mean, certainly I love the idea of the movement. No question. Are you still mindful of keeping the eyes somewhat on the back of the ball, though? Absolutely. Like all sports, it’s a good idea to look at the golf ball. But it doesn’t mean you need to keep your head still. I can still see the golf ball. As I move my head, it floats. But it’s the same as, as I said, if you were hitting a tennis ball, you wouldn’t try and keep your head still. If you were hitting a hockey puck, you’d still see the ball, but you wouldn’t keep your head still. We don’t want it that fixture there. It will actually hurt your neck. It will hurt your back if you try and keep it still. Anybody Well, sorry. Well, some people who suffer from a bad back playing in golf, it’s because they try and stay still and they tilt forward and get jammed up here in the down swing. We always want to have that big follow through. But, you know, if you’re getting a bit older, that’s going to put a lot of strain on you. So, do as Gary Player does. And Gary Player, without doubt, in this world, poundfor-pound, if you take into account his age, is the best ball striker that’s ever been in the game. Gary Player’s favorite drill when he’s on the range is he hits it and he steps over that left leg. That’s to take the pressure off his follow through. We want that big follow through. So, I’m going to copy Gary Player here. Okay. You’ll see a nice bit of movement in the back swing [Music] and I step after it. That takes the pressure off my back. So, let let’s see that one more time. I love that. And then I have got one question. And I know that uh someone who influenced you greatly with your game was the late great Bob Torrance. And you told me earlier that he talked about squashing the bug on the down swing. Perhaps not something you think of now, but you certainly did, didn’t you? Oh, no doubt about it. We’re we’re looking old school here. And in fairness, there’s kind of two things that, well, three things that happen in the golf swing and the down swing. So, we’ve made that nice brisk back swing. We cocked our wrists. We’re up there. We want to get into our left side. So, as you say, you’re squashing. Are we allowed to say that these days? We’re squeezing a ball under our left foot. We’re not killing any little ball. Okay. So, we’re squeezing a ball. We’re pressing down our left heel into our left side. That’s your start of the down swing. Sitting in there, pressing down. And this is why I said Nicholas was so good. He had that high foot and he jammed it back down into the ground. From there, your body, your hips and your body rotate. But this is one of the modern differences in golf that I think has changed maybe from Hogan’s time. So as everything is turning, we don’t want rotation in our arms. We actually want our arms going as hard as they can down. So our shoulders and our arms go down while our body’s rotating. So the speed comes and this is why you see the likes of Bubba Watson, the likes of DJ Johnson, why they’re so long is they’re up here. And that means their arms come down very quickly. They’ve got JB Holmes. He gets his arms up and they come flying down. That’s not rotation. Yes, the body’s rotating, but the arms are down as hard as you can. I think years ago, rotation, too much rotation wouldn’t be a good thing. We got to keep the arm speed up. Okay, we’re back with Patrick Happy Gilmore Harrington. Uh, that’s impressive. Why do you do that? It’s a natural move. It’s what a kid would do and it’s actually how my own kids play a little bit of golf. It’s how I keep them interested. I get them doing happy gilmores. It’s really good for their golf swing. They make a much better more dynamic physical good golf swing doing a happy gilmore than they do when they have to plant their feet. Moving is very natural for people. So when you you move, it’s quite easy. You stop you stop thinking about your arms. You plant and you hit it. Now for my younger fellow, he’s eight. I actually get him doing it with an impact bag. So, I actually get him a shaft because again, there’s no weight in the shaft. It keeps it so much easier for him to swing a shaft than a than a weighted club. With a big bag, he’s not afraid of missing the ball. So, all that interpretation of the ball running along the ground, that’s all gone. He gets the shaft and he just goes just whacks it. Actual fact, he’ll just keep whacking it. He will. But all those motions, every one of those swings I just made there is perfect golf swing. Even even just whacking it down, whacking it back, all those motions are good for the golf swing because all we’re doing is swinging a stick. And for a young kid, we’re just trying to build up being able to get his arms to fire fast with his body working. And what more natural that hitting a bag? And what’s more enjoyable? I’m enjoying it. I’m having great fun, actually. You know, one thing if I might, uh, in the break you showed me how you would actually use the impact bag and you used it club head down. If you could just show us how you might use the impact bag with half more. I thought this was really interesting. And then we’re going to get some I do it as an exercise. I actually use it as a speed exercise. So, as I’m building up speed and trying to create speed, I’ll spend some time. I think what’s so interesting there is that you swing through. Traditionally, people would stop at the impact bag. Far from it in your case. I think that was years ago. It was Henry Cotton hit a tire and and you know that was found if you hit it too hard you’re going to hurt your wrist. So I’m not telling you to fill that impact bag. I’m telling you to keep a very light impact bag. Even get a magazine and stand it up. Something that’s not going to hurt your wrist but it’s big enough and it gives a bang when you hit it because again that bang is what the kids love. They love that and you like it. Let’s see you hit one now. Okay. I think the bag’s safe there. You’re not going to hit. I think I’m okay with that. And then you said you were going to delve in a little deeper with some technical aspects. I know that’s a beautiful golf. I know one thing you’ve been working on. We chatted and that’s actually with your practice swing to get the club head closer to your feet to have the hands lower. So, can you tell me a little bit about that? I don’t know if they want to know about that. I think I I think for most amateurs, we got to keep it simple. So for me, if I’m looking at most amateurs again, I’m thinking to myself, look, once we have the right grip, and I don’t mind a strong left hand grip with the right hand on, we’ve got to concentrate on making that club hinge in the back swing. Now, the best way to get it hinge is actually to have a bit of rhythm in the back swing. So look, that club is going, it’s hard to get it to hinge if you take it back statically. Let it go back. Now, what you will see with pros on the golf course, whenever they take a practice and you watch the pros the next time, they only ever swing about that far. That’s is when you’re in a cold position in terms of this, you’re not actually physically going to hit the golf ball. That’s as far as you can get. Whereas, you see a lot of amateurs when they make their practicing, they’re trying to get the club up there. And once they lift this right hand side, they’re losing all their power and all their accuracy. So, I recommend for amateurs especially, do a lot of practice swings and a lot of practice shots with a half back swing and a big follow through. So, a half back swing will make you your wrists, will make the wrist go up. Half back swing. Well, JB Holmes is a strong hitter. I’m sure you’ve played with him and he doesn’t make a massive back swing, does he? No. But you you even the guys who get up there, like even John Dailyaly, John Daly has this big long swing, but this here never lifts in his golf swing. when he swings back. Yes, he can get his arms all the way up here and hinge down here, but he doesn’t do it by lifting. So, when you see the problem only occurs when the amateur gets to here and he says, “Oh, I want to make a big swing.” He’s not supple enough to make that big swing. And he look, he lifts. This is a power leak here. We always want to keep that hip, keep that angle in that hip. And that means when you’re swinging cold in your garage or in your house, when you’re swinging without a golf club, always keep it short and a big follow. True. We haven’t got a flag stick in the middle of the fairway. We’ve got a golf cart in the middle of the fairway cuz we’re talking punch shot distances. Tell us how you hit the punch shot, please. Yeah. Well, I was brought up playing this, so I actually had to figure out how other people are not hitting the punch shot. So essentially a lot of guys say if you hit your six iron 180 yards, they go into the wind, it’s 180 yards and they want to hit it 180 yards and they’ve gone in at this and they’ve made this big hard chunky swing at it. And of course they’ve mishit it. It’s spun up in the air. They’ve lost control in this. Oh, I can’t hit punch shots. Well, sure enough, you’re not going to hit a punch shot like that. So I tell them, look, why don’t you start out with your sixiron and hit it 100 yards? So, if they start off 100 yards, it was a little left, but essentially that went low enough. It’s never going to get affected by the wind, but I hooked it a little. I didn’t really have any control. So, then I turn around and go, “Well, you know what? I’m going to hit this 120 yards.” Again, plenty low. The wind isn’t going to affect it, but you know what? I don’t think I have quite enough control on that. So, I start opening it. Now, I’m going up to 140. Now that’s starting to feel better and it’s still low enough. But you know what? I think it would still stay low probably for 160 yards. Couldn’t play golf without yardages. Actually couldn’t I would not enjoy a game of golf unless I had my my my rangefinder with me to figure out the yardages. Well, here we are. We’ve got the perfect distance. I better do it now. So now a nice a nice trajectory, a nice distance, and I feel under control. Yeah. And that was about perfect. So the key is for anybody who wants to learn hit a puncher, start at the lowest distance and work up to your 150, 160 yards rather than most people start off with the distance that they normally hit the club. And of course, they’re never going to manage to do that into the wind. So get the low first and then find the control rather than going for the the distance first and never having control coming backwards. A nice take on that. Now, I want I know one thing you wanted to do for the viewers at home. You wanted to help people stop a slice and stop a hook. You can either do one or two things in the golf game if it’s out. It’s always a bit like a clock. It’s always going from one side to the other. So, anybody who hits the ball with a slice, there’s a simple way. You don’t really have to change well, you don’t have to think about changing anything. Just find yourself a side slope. Again, I’m going to the side of the tea box here. About after about 25 balls, you’ll feel this kicking in. 25 to 50 balls. And look, I’ve already have to move around to the right. And I hit a big draw from this thing. So, I’m exaggerating the draw off this slope. Exaggerating the club releasing. And once I go back to the flat, some of that release will still be in there and I’ll hit a nice draw. That’s all you have to do. If you hit a cut, practice off a side slope. And in a couple of months time, you’ll be complaining that Harrington taught you how to hit a hook and you’ll want to stop doing that. So, how do we stop hitting a hook? Very very simple simple drill. It might only take 10 practice swings to do this. So when you address it, come back a couple of inches and just hit the ground a good 18 in foot foot to 18 in left of the ball. Now if you do that, it throws the club out. It speeds up your arms. So out. And if you do that enough when you go to hit your next shot, you’ll hit a nice fade. It’s as simple as