Kerrod Gray Busts 5 Deadly Myths that are Ruining Your Golfswing

Find more tips at https://www.perform.golf/mark

@kerrodgraygolf is an award-winning Australian PGA Golf Coach, a former Tour Professional and now one of the most popular golf instructors in the world. With over 38 million YouTube views and more than 350,000 online followers, Kerrod is on a mission to revolutionize the way golf is taught by making quality, evidence-based coaching more accessible and easier to implement.

He joins #OntheMark to bust a few myths that could be wrecking your golfswing:

Your Golfswing is a 2-part motion with a clear start to the downswing
You can fix “Casting” by holding “Lag”
Your Grip Pressure should be soft and light
If you Improve Downswing Lag you will pick up more distance, and
Your Lead Arm must be straight thoughout the swing.
Kerrod not only points out the correct ways of improving your swing, he also shares a few drills that will set you on the way to a better swing and improved ball-striking.

He also shares a link with free access to videos of some of his favorite golfswing drills.
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[Music] on the mark rolls on. And uh personally, I’m a little embarrassed it’s taking us so long to find this guy because Carro Gray, man, you you are changing the world with online golf instruction and I’m so glad you would have you join us on the show. How are you? Oh, mate, fantastic. I I feel like I need to record that snippet and play it back. What’s the truth? And this is what I love, right? I’ve taught golf since Moby Dick was a mow. I mean, I’m aging myself here, but my first golf lesson I gave in 1995. Um, you were probably in diapers back then. And I love a good drill. And the cool thing about you is you’ve got drills for everything. So, we’re going to dive in. But before we do that, uh, I’m going to read you this quote. It’s from your website. It’s a, um, it’s a reference. It’s a commendation, if you will, and I want to read it to you and then have you respond because I feel like there’s some instructional gold in this. So, here we go. It’s from I won’t use the name, but it goes, I used to freeze over the ball, overthinking every move. These drills stripped everything back one move at a time. I started flushing it. It feels easy now. I’m hitting more fairways and actually enjoying the game again and I was like, what a cool um compliment to get from a student. Yeah. So, please, just as the teacher within, respond to that statement you got from that student, please. Well, Mark, we know there’s uh more than ever information everywhere. It’s on every single feed that you open on social media. It’s from your buddies down at the driving range. It’s from every pro trying to give you a free lesson. There’s a lot of noise out there. And as in this stage, speaking today, golfers have never been more educated, but also never been more confused and worse. And it’s not like people are playing better. That’s the sad thing, too. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the well I know one of the things that I enjoy the most about coaching is clearing up any confusion misconceptions and just that feeling that the student is stuck and they just don’t know what to work on. So I love that breakthrough moment be it working in person or online of just seeing that student go wow God it’s really not as complicated as I thought. I gave well I’ve given a lesson once or twice and a few well lots of lessons but once or twice I’ve heard this it can’t be that easy. It can’t be that simple. Um convince people that it actually is that easy and that simple. Look golf is simple. It’s not easy. Uh if you just do a few things correctly, you too can hit the ball flush. Yes. Yeah. Without a doubt. And I think you you would you would assume that with the amount of quality knowledge out there that’s been shared around a lot of the myths and misconceptions out there, Mark, would have been cleared up by now. Yeah. But it only just takes a quick visit down to your local driving range to hear some of the fables being shared between buddies. And you just know that if that person listens to what that well-intended friend is saying to them, they’re going to be in a world of trouble if they practice that for the next month. So, uh, I’m looking forward to breaking some of those down today. Yeah, let’s do it. Fables. I’m going to use that. I call it Advil for a golf swing. Everyone, they dole this medication out just going, “Yeah, it’s like a painkiller for a few hours kind of thing.” Um before we get into some myths and some of the fables as you call them, um for the folks who haven’t found you online that are apparently sleeping under a rock like me, um tell us a little bit about Car Gray. Uh well, I am from the most remote city in the world, a place called Perth in Western Australia in Australia on the complete other side of the world from where I’m sitting at the moment in San Diego. Yeah. Uh, and I am a longtime lover of the game, aspiring professional, uh, turned into PGA coach and very proud PGA coach from Australia. Uh, and then over the last 10 years, what I’ve done is just dedicated myself full-time to making the game, which can be made inherently complex, a lot more simple. And for the last 5 years specifically, I packed up all my stuff, left Australia, and have been essentially a traveling nomad around the world, uh, filming content with top coaches and sharing that all online for free on YouTube and social media and doing, uh, like I said to you, a version of Chris Ko’s swing expedition and collaborating with coaches to essentially, uh, share the word around highlighting their expertise, but also that even though two coaches might seem like they teach different things, it’s usually just the way that they’re communicated. And we’ve all got the students best interests uh at top of mind. And just collaborating in that sense, I think, just makes the the world of golf a lot better. And and uh yeah, I get a lot of positive comments from doing that. Trying to convince him to come to Georgia to spend a little time with me, folks. But before that happens, let’s dive in. Um carrot, um I’ve been around a little bit. I I’ve been teaching golf since we were using Sony Handy Cams and you’d see us coming and if we were lucky, we’d have some footage of Tiger Woods and Ernie else and BJ Singh perhaps and some good swings in our video, our little cassette tape, and you’d compare folks using V1 back in the day, you know, now it’s all done on your phone. So, I’ve seen that and I’ve seen where golf is and so I’m kind of a bridge, but the truth remains, and you’ve kind of touched on it already, that the advent of information on the internet has proliferated yet folks are still confused and somehow people are still making the same mistakes. and and then you switch on YouTube or whatever the case might be and you type in golf instruction and the next thing it just is you you’re just bombarded with information and it was sort of the inspiration for my show to say, “Hey, let’s help people sift through this stuff and find out what’s actually applicable to them.” Okay. So, you said, “How about we talk about some myths?” And I was like, “I’d love that.” because most of golf instruction is a bit of a myth and and with the internet and with technology some of that stuff has been proved wrong but people are still misunderstanding it all. So like I mentioned to you knowledge is one thing understanding is another. So let’s start here. Um, this was very interesting when I asked you to give me a few ideas and you hit me with the first one. It instantly perked my ears up and I was like, “Okay, cool.” And you said, “A lot of people think the back swing and the downswing are two different things and there’s this significant like pause stop or a change in events at in the middle of all of them and then they will I don’t know I guess think of Hideki Matsyama and such.” I was like, you know, he’s so right because people swing to the top and stop and then they lose all momentum and then the next thing they’re all out of time and sequence and such. So, help us please with this two-piece motion idea of the golf swing. Yeah, I think we can all agree that when you look at a professional golfer, regardless if it looks like they pause, and we can talk about someone like Hideki in a second, uh they all flow in what looks like a continuous, effortless manner, don’t they? They look beautiful. Yeah. And very much like a playground swing, momentum carries it throughout. And even though there might be a period of time where it looks like that club head pauses or someone like Hideki does uh visually there’s a lot going on down closer to the ground that people are not looking at. And so when you try and create a golf swing which is a two-piece motion with a clear, okay, this is the back swing. We’re going to load up all our weight onto our trail foot. And as soon as I feel like I’ve got 100% of weight on my back foot, then I’m going to start down. And before you know it, Mark, yourself, me, every other coach is starting to answer questions around what starts the down swing. Yeah. Exactly. And so when you create or you have the intention of having a two-piece motion with that back swing and down swing, it just induces unnecessary tension and causes a lot of like jerkiness throughout the swing. And without a doubt, if you think about any other athletic motion such as just something like throwing a ball, as you move your hand back, what are you doing with your lower body? It’s opposite direction. You’ll be stepping forward. And when your foot plants, your hand is generally still moving back and then changes direction because of what happened closer to the ground. Yeah. And so yes, the club look like may look like it has a point which it reaches the top and then starts down, but it is one athletic dynamic motion. I want to comment here. It’s what you say is absolutely correct and I’m completely on board. But I want to go back to Hideki and he’s a friend. So this is not critical. I’m I’m not being critical. If you watch Matsuyama over the years, that pause is diminishing. And I I feel like if you think of old Matsyama, you saw a number of onearmed follow-throughs all the time because he’s this big strong legs, big strong rear end, and he’d swing to the top and there’d be this not noticeable pause. Then the legs would fire so hard he couldn’t match the club up with everything coming down. So that’s why you always saw the right arm sort of rip away from contact. He’s made these one arm followroughs. Yeah. He’s actually to me strangely he’s always been a great ball striker, but now that the pause is less and it’s more that flow you reference. Yeah. He’s almost become a better ball striker. Yeah. And uh I think especially in an audio format with everyone listening to this, walking away with some practical drills that they can use at the range next time they go down is going to be really helpful as we work through these myths, Mark. And I think number one there, let’s say if you feel like you’ve been trying to create a two-piece motion with a clear start to the down swing, uh what I want you to do is just a very simple step through drill. So, set up to your golf ball in your normal posture. And then I want you to bring your, if you’re a right-hander, your left foot next to your right foot. Okay? And then as you’re swinging the golf club back, as your left arm gets past level with the ground or parallel with the ground, I want you to step forward and then swing through. So, that’s just going to encourage a natural flowing sequence where the lower body is going to lead the upper body in the down swing. One of my mentors, Mr. Gary Player, if he’s listening to this, is loving you right now. Gary, the uh it’s so true. I would almost add to that like like you you start with the feet together, you step and swing kind of deal. Mr. Player love that. He’d even take another step through to ensure he’s gotten all the way through the shot. In fact, to this day, whenever he sees me, he’s like, “Mark, are you teaching your students to get through the ball completely?” And I’m like, “Yes, I am, Mr. Player.” And he goes, “Good, good, good.” And then I want to say to him, hey, you know, the club face has got to be decently organized. But he goes, just make sure they get through the ball. And and what you say there is so true. And I would almost add like sometimes I have folks start with their feet together over the ball and to swing back. Take a little step to the right for the rightander. Yeah. And that starts going back and then to then I add your move on the way down. Then they start to feel this. I’m going one way, I’m going the other. And I’m becoming I’m freeing up my golf swing. Is that what you encounter as well? I’m sure. Oh, without a doubt. I uh the the funny thing about the the version that you just said, right? Let’s say I’m doing a a group clinic. It’s a lot harder to get everyone to figure out right foot swing foot swing and everything like that. But that what you just said there, Mark, is without a doubt uh one of the best drills anyone can work on. It does take a little bit of practice. The uh best way to I suppose get in the rhythm of doing that step swing step swing drill is from your setup if you had your feet together start with the club about a foot in front. Mhm. And step back first and wait till you plant your foot away before you swing. And then that adds the momentum. It’ll encourage a bit of reentering of the body which will stop you from unwinding aggressively. And then as you step forward, that’s when then you can do the swing. So it’s a step, swing, step, swing. That’s what you want. If you are listening to this, go to YouTube and watch Carrot as he’s he’s actually de he’s sitting down, but he’s demonstrating the move. And there’s this beautiful rhythmic flow back and forth. And if you’re struggling with rhythm or tempo or even timing in your golf swing, this is a great way to learn it. And incidentally, yeah, recently the boys from Athletic Motion Golf were on here and Sean Webb was talking about the same thing. Uh, quickly, as far as that drill goes, how many times, now we’re just talking about the one where you’ve got the feet together and then you only step forward and swing. Yeah. How many times have you seen people swing before they step? And it’s really, really hard for them to initiate this movement from the ground up. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Way too often. Way too often. Uh, and I think that’s where one of the key words in golf comes in, not only in the swing, but throughout scoring and ensuring that you don’t get too angry at yourself, is the word patience, right? And you just got to be patient at the top of the swing. And I suppose that’s where people look at the club head at the top for a lot of pros and go, “Oh, he’s pausing.” Well, not necessarily. I would add to that, too, and I’d love your take here. A lot of folks to me have got like a hit impulse and then they’ll come to Kar Gray and go, “Hey man, my practice swings perfect.” Then you put a ball down there and then I can’t hit the thing for flip because they’re swinging back and stopping and then they’re like, “Just hit.” As opposed to sequencing the thing with your drill properly, it cures any number of ills this drill you’re sharing. Yeah. One of the favorite little stories that I love to tell any client that comes in is to imagine if golf wasn’t played from a static position. And so, uh, imagine the ball was rolling towards you slightly. Bear in mind, assume the ball’s a little bit bigger. Okay? So, it’s a little bit easy to make contact. But if the ball was rolling towards you, what would you do? You would start to step forward towards it. You would start winding up as you’re still as you move forward feeling like you’re stepping towards the ball. And then as you would then swing down and through, you’re not focusing on hitting the ball. You’re focusing on swinging through towards a target with that intention in mind. When the ball’s on the ground, the quickest route from the top, if it’s not moving, is straight down. So, it’s no wonder that players have that jerkiness to their swing, but just having that little visual that you’re swinging through the ball towards a target rather than at a ball can make a huge difference to players and the way that they swing. That is beautiful. I mean, I look, I’ve heard a lot of stuff in my how how many years I’ve been in this stuff, I’ve never actually considered describing it to somebody like that. how where if you roll a ball at them, they will naturally athletically, you know, step, swing, and there would be that no pause at the top, no jerk with the shoulders, whatever the case might be. They’d react to the ball coming towards them, which is kind of how what we do when we swing a golf club. Yeah. Uh Mark, I know you used to do a fair bit of work with college players, right? And one of my favorite things with the elite juniors that I used to work on uh work with was to actually get them to do it’s probably not the safest thing in the world, right? But they would roll the ball towards each other and then have to run out of the way as the person came through and hit it. Now bear in mind we had a bit of a barricade so they wouldn’t get shanked straight into. Hey folks, folks, if you try this and get hurt, we had nothing to do with this. It’s all right. the rules don’t apply in Australia anyway, so it’s all good. Um, but it’s amazing. Not only does that encourage this natural athleticism to shine through, Mark, but also those um innate reaction tendencies and the propriception and your ability to put club face on ball and next time that your ball’s sitting half an inch down and some thick rough, you have some awareness of arc height to your swing. all these like minute details that are hardly ever practiced on the range. So, it’s just about increasing variability to ensure that you’re able to transfer what you’re doing on the range onto the course. Yeah, we’re camping out on this a long time, but I feel like we’re uncovering a lot of stuff. And the one thing I want to say here that’s now I’m sort of inside my soul. I want to pitch back at you. There is increasingly a movement in golf instruction now where you’ll hear people saying about technique versus skill and it’s two different things like the skill of hitting the ball on the toe of the club versus the heel and stuff that’s skill driven but I feel like there still is an amount there’s a technical there’s a force change to change those things but it’s the skill of reacting to the ball and I would almost argue now listening to you and what you have to say if p people had to adopt that image of the ball rolling towards them, the skill of applying the club to the ball is likely to improve because they’re going to organize themselves athletically and timing wise to return the club to the place it should be to meet that ball that’s coming toward them, even if the ball’s standing still, if you will. You know, the one problem about exercises like that that are hard, Mark, is that it bruises the ego, doesn’t it? And so people don’t like to look bad. True. Whenever you’re doing something on the range and you’ve got three people you don’t know standing on either side and um couple of kids standing behind watching and you’re about to tee off and you haven’t practiced all week and you’re nervous, you’ve probably had a few beers the night before and you’re hung over. The last thing you want to do is try something that’s going to make you look bad. And that’s where I think uh the driving range is a bit of a limitation to players getting better. Uh, but I just challenge every listener and viewer of this to try a little bit of variability in their practice. And it can start as simple as just around the chipping green. Just throw three balls around, step on one so it’s like halfway in the ground, put one in a divot, uh, put one up the backside of a tree, and just figure it out. And that’s a great way to at least start that process of learning how to develop skill to get the job done rather than technique. In saying that, don’t don’t get me wrong, I’m a technique geek like you wouldn’t believe. Like my number one goal in life with my golf mark is to just swing it so it looks pretty, right? Uh and I love playing around with the aesthetic of the swing. And I suppose this is where removing the ego and not having this ignorance of, oh, all I can do, all I need to do is just become skillful and that’s it. It’s like, yeah, I think I’m skillful at snowboarding, but I suck. It’s just because what I don’t know, I don’t know. And as soon as you get broad awareness to areas that you didn’t know that you need to improve, then all of a sudden you start to see a path forward where you can improve your technique. uh and then as a result the skill combines with that. Yeah. And sometimes that path forward won’t necessarily make sense. Uh to put a bow on your observation, I had you know back in the day when I was teaching full-time, really accomplished golfer, I was in South Africa. She was from Germany, captain of the German ladies national team. Blusher, but you put her like 50 yards and in from the target, she was it was a disaster. She’d hit the ground before the ball. She’d top the ball. It was ridiculous. It’s like she had a case of the yips and I used to say and I made her do this which is a derivative of what you’re doing. So kind of like Kyle Burkshshire, I had her just step on the spot. Left, right, left, right, left, right. And then as she put the right down, she’d have to swing back. And as she put the left down, she’d have to swing through. Yeah. And when she figured this out, and they weren’t big steps, she was just like gently lifting the feet off the ground. Kind of like walking but swinging across your butt and stepping in the same place. And she started to clip them perfectly every single time. Yeah. And you could see the disbelief in the first little bit. And I’m sure you’ve seen that too. And folks when you’re practicing, there’s going to be this moment where they’re like, “This doesn’t make sense.” And it’s not jing with what I believe, but anyhow, it’s working and the ball’s going better, which means something must be better. And after hitting about 20 perfectly, even the right distance, cuz I’ll say to her, “Okay, now longer.” And then the athlete just swung faster or shorter. And she was varying distance. She looked at me in broken English and said, “I do win tournaments.” And I said to her, “Sure.” So the next weekend, she has an event. I’m close by. I go and watch her play. Lo and behold, second par five. She’s got like 40 yards to the target, title eye over a bunker, and this could be disastrous. And I see her making practice swings with the feet going. And she hits it like that, clips it over, and the smile on her face was like someone liberated her. Oh, yeah. And as far as I know, she still does this. So I’m sharing that to ask you to tell people, hey man, if you kind of have to do this when you swing to get better results, you can take a big drill like where you take a big step and just make it little still to get that feel about you. Would you agree? 100%. And you’ll see this in the short game from a lot of the the top players in the world. Fellow West Aussie Brett Rumford, absolute short game wizard, right? Yeah. And uh I was scrolling through his Instagram the other day and and this is a drill once again I used to do with the the kids that I taught for full swing, but um you would have like six balls placed out on you uh in front of you in very close proximity and you had to swing through, step, move to the next ball, swing through. And they weren’t in a perfect row like you’ve seen the walk the line drill. Yeah. They’re in different areas. But to even add to that, what Brett was doing is he was trying to hit like a tiny little circle that he had drawn up in his net in his house. So, he was working on not only the contact and the flow and the variability and changing height and all those elements, which is a great drill for anyone to practice in their backyard or if they’ve got a net, but it just keeps you in constant motion. And when you look at basketball, right, uh NBA, maybe not NBA because they the these players don’t do this, but if you think about at any top level sport, at the highest level, uh when someone gets the yips, could be a T-shot in driving, could be uh in NBA, a free throw. Yeah. could be uh in rugby like uh kicking a conversion or a field goal in NFL. That’s when you’re going to see the best in the world get the yips. It’s because they’re starting from a stationary position. Unfortunately for us playing golf, it’s always stationary. Yeah. And so, uh practicing that reactiveness as we just discussed there is just a fantastic way to move your body and your mind into more of an athletic state. quickly. I can’t I can think of four or five guys off the top of my head on the PGA tour that start the swing with a little like a foot press or something like that. Mroy, Justin Rose, there’s a few of them where the start to the swing is just a little raise of the toes or you could see the energy starting from the ground up. So, a great way to finish this. Yeah, your golf swing is constant motion. Uh be careful of trying to stop, you know, the one flows into the other. Um I guess this sort of touches on myth number two that you listed and that is well look I’ll start with this. If I type shaft lean on my browser Mhm. information gets vomited on me and all in sunundry are trying to show you how you must lean the shaft of contact. Yeah. Or the tease is like do you flip? Don’t worry we got you. And then you these folks that are pulling on the handle and they’re holding on to the leg and you’re seeing followthroughs where it’s like the clubs the hands haven’t rehedioned. It looks looks kind of wooden and static to me to build on something and you’re like well people are trying to fix the throw of the club the cast with hanging on to the leg which as far as I’m concerned is equally as disastrous if you’re not careful. Yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt. uh casting if you freeze frame it as when the club shaft is parallel to the ground in the down swing. It’s a moment in time but only relative to the rest of your body. Right? If you take that casting position and you actually move the arms further back down in front of your body, well, guess what? You’re in a perfect down swing position, right? Yeah. So, what you’ll see with the best ball strikers in the world when they’re hitting a, let’s say, an eight and PGA to a level speed, right, the hands will be in front of the right thigh in the down swing. Mhm. By um this stage here, just using simplistic turns. That’s going to help you and keep everything in sequence to get shaft lean, compression power, all that good stuff that we look for, right? So when players are casting it, we’ll tend to see that the club shaft and their hands will be well behind their body. But if you look at the distance of the handle away from their body and specifically their back arm, we’re going to see that it’s going to be very folded and close to their body. Exactly. We’re going to see that the lead arm is going to be pinned across their chest a lot. Now, the reason that happens is either because that happened in the back swing or in transition it got too pinned, right? And so casting, if you’re trying to then throw your right arm, you’re trying to get the right elbow in front. Uh, Mr. Hogan misconception there. That ruined me, by the way. That picture in that book ruined me as a player. Oh, so the right side of the target as sure as you could say my name when the pressure was up. Trust me. Oh my god. And like as soon as we see players try and drag that elbow in front and hold that lag, that actually just decreases that radius of the swing, gets them even narrower, gets their lead shoulder going even higher. And unless they’re super young and they can have enough right side bend to square things up, you’re either going to hit three foot behind the ball, swing over the ball, or snap your back. So understanding this fixing casting by holding lag, you want to set up your down swing in the back swing. And so instead of trying to force another movement in the down swing, I want everyone to bring awareness to what’s happening in the b back swing and transition to improve that. And believe that or not, guess what drill also fixes that mark? The step drill. Yeah. Okay. Well, I’m going to add to that because in the modern fundamentals, and God love Mr. Hogan of my golf books and I got countless of them. It’s one of my favorites. Um, you know, he’s got that picture of that illustrated guy with a big strong body and he’s turning out of the way and the clubs in behind him and I was like, “Yeah, I’m going to be that guy.” And I again ruined my golf swinging away. Towards the end of the book, there’s an image of him just swinging the club head back and forth from about arms parallel with some jing in the wrists and he goes, “You must do this every day.” So that lag feel on the way down. If you watch him in the other drill they were illustrating that club head’s releasing through very very quickly. Yeah. So it’s not like he’s pulling on the handle and holding on to that leg. Like people mistakenly think that they must do and then they get just cuz holding on to the leg you’re destined to hit the right side of the target as if you’re right-hander unless you again tilt or really bow those wrists which both moves are sort of unnatural and most folks can’t pull them off. Yeah. I I think uh for every player listening here in your setup position at address, your arms are long, right? Yes. And through impact, guess what needs to happen? The arms need to get long. Mhm. So, at some stage in the down swing, they need to lengthen. And if you’re trying to drag and hold anything in, you’re actually increasing that flex, keeping it closer to your body, and just making it even harder to time at the moment of impact. Yeah. So, having that awareness that we need to create a wide arc through longer arms throughout the entirety of the swing is certainly going to be beneficial for a lot of players. Yeah. I mean, here’s a great image for people like all the really elegant golf swings to me in the world’s game have those long arms you speak of. I’ll toss one right at you cuz as far as I’m concerned, he swing fell straight out of heaven. Um, Harris English, it is glorious to watch him swing it and hit it. And he’s got that big, wide, unhurried, um, uninhibited radius about him. And he does exactly what you were exhibiting there. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful swing. Yeah, I think big arms. Ernie else, same deal. If you watch the the swings that look really pretty to you, they are wide as far as I’m concerned. Um, as it pertains to what Kar was saying, right? So, for everyone listening, what you need to do is you just need to uh grow a little bit more, get longer arms, and you’ll get a beautiful swing. Yeah. Um, well, let’s do this. the I’m going to one of the things other things you were talking about was the myth is that you have to have lag in the downswing to create distance and most folks I just I I help them cure themselves. I don’t say anything. I’ll put them on my launch monitor. I’ll be like, “All right, really lag one for me.” Yeah. And they’ll see the club speed go down. Yeah. And then I’ll be like, “Okay, like sling one a little bit.” And then they’ll see the speed go up. And then that flumxes them like you can’t believe and then you explain the concept to them. So help us with that concept please. Yeah. A great visual. Uh pretend you’re banging a nail into a piece of wood, right? You’ve got a hammer in your hand. You lift the hammer up. Do you hold on to that angle on the way down? No. What happens is you let the weight of the object do the work and there is this moment of timing and this flick and this release that happens. And so, uh, I’ve had the pleasure of doing a lot of videos on my YouTube channel, uh, around long driving. Did some with Kyle Burkshshire and some of the top speed experts in the world. And I’ll tell you what, for someone uh like myself who was lead arm pinned across the chest trying to drag the arms in front, trying to get this perfect impact position, burn the body open through contact. Burn the body. And not to mention, I used to have a cut wrist at the top. So I was narrow, steep, and I had an open face. Driving was not my forte. Mark, let me give you the tip. You were good at bunker shots, though. You greenside bunker shots. You were pretty solid. Oh, it’s your game. It’s your game. and recovery shots that that was great because I was always in there. But when I was uh when I was playing, I was just terrible off the tea, under pressure, no good. And um it was my downfall. And a part of uh that time in the last 10 years of devoting my career now to get a better understanding of the golf swing to help others. So I didn’t they don’t have that feeling that I had when I was standing on the tea of total confusion. Yeah. Was okay. Well, what actually needs to happen through this section of the swing, right, to get most amount of speed and consistency. And when I was playing, my club head speed was around 112 mph with driver, right? Okay. Uh, in this pursuit of improving my technique, not size, not strength or anything like that. Uh, last year I got my club head speed up to 131.9. Damn. Gee was okay. And I’ll tell you the difference. The sole difference was from the top of the swing feeling like I was trying to get the club head back to the ball as quickly as possible. You sound like Jack Nicholas right now. I have heard Jack Nicholas say he goes, “From the top of my swing, I was trying to get the club head to the ball before anything else before I was turning.” He goes, “I was trying to get the head there as fast as I could.” Brad Couple said the same thing to me. Guys, I was trying to get the club head to my back on the follow through as quickly as I could. Think about the uh hammer analogy we were just talking about before, Mark. When you’re banging a nail into a piece of wood, you’re not focusing on the end of the handle dragging down. You’re focusing on the hammerhead hitting the nail. Hallelujah, Reverend. Keep preaching. It’s true. Yeah. Huh. It’s I again and and you said this earlier, but I want to go back there now because perhaps you people glossed over what you were saying because they’re listening for the next sexy, you know, somewhat salient point, this tip that they’re looking for, but you but you were like this stuff gets lost a little bit in translation and then you’re holding on the leg, but you’re like all these pictures you see in stills are moments in time and you might see some PGA professional with a lot of wrist hinge here with left arm parallel on the way down, but if you catch the next frame, that club head’s like way accelerated. So, in other words, they’re in the process of letting that head go. They’re not pulling on that thing and retaining lag for as long as they can. You got it. You got it. Cars thought you’re going to jump on this one and run with it a bit more. Come on. Look, uh it is probably the number one piece of the golf swing that in my online lessons and in person that I spend the most time breaking down for people is what happens in transition down into this club shaft parallel position and getting them to understand that the hands need to get back in front of the chest. The arms need to unload and lengthen which then helps you get into that strong impact position. They don’t stay pinned back and behind just as we were talking about of dragging the elbows in or this lag. Now, don’t get me wrong. Yes, lag is so important. But what I want everyone to understand and picture is that lag really is the angle between the club shaft and the trail forearm. Right. Yeah. that if if you can see what I’m doing here, it’s this motion where if you are changing direction with the hammer, there’s that lagging motion of the wrist. Okay, the hammer’s getting closer. Then that at some point that energy is then released down at the moment of impact. It is not from dragging the arms and body, the arms back into the body there. This has just occurred to me as he was demonstrating. And folks, if you were listening on audio, go to YouTube. What Car was doing there was he was just moving the arm up and down with a really I wouldn’t call a limp wrist, but you’re not stiff, right? So, you’re allowing the wrist to sort of react and as you’re changing direction again, it was like you were talking about the body’s moving back to the target whilst the club’s still going back in your first point. So, there’s this three action, but consider this to hammer that nail. There is a quick release of the lag that was created. Now, here’s my point I want you to comment on. For a lot of people, you know, your sense of timing in the golf swing is always late because it’s so fast. Like from the club head at the top to the club head down at impact, it’s the blink of an eye. And our sensory perception of that is often times late. So then when you say to someone, hey, you got to like straighten this thing earlier, you know, try and release the head a bit more. They feel like it’s happening way early in the down swing, but it’s actually happening at contact because their concept of time during the swing is a miss because of the speed at which the head’s going in relation to what they going during this pass. Concept of time and misconception of lag. Yeah. Because they think that letting the club go, the club head go is casting it. But when you are throwing a fishing rod, when you are banging a nail into a piece of wood, what are you really trying to do? Trying to get the end whipping as quick as you possibly can. Yep. And that is the same thing in the down swing. That’s called club head speed. Hey, one more thing. We’ve referenced some really good players in here. You’ve talked about Remy and we’ve had Jack Nicholas. Bryson Dambo, man. If you watch that guy warming up, he’s always he gets to the top and then he’s straightening his arms down to his side every single time. And that trail elbow is getting straight as quick as he can make it. And it’s not towards the golf ball. It’s almost away from the ball to his side because that’s making the approach even longer, which is something he tells me learned from Kyle Burkshshire cuz they connected. It was Bryson back then. And Kyle’s like, “Dude, you,” and I paraphrase, he’s like, “You’re working so hard. Make the arc as big and wide as you can.” Bryson started doing that. is in the ball just as far, not expending as much energy, and not having to consume as many calories either. Yeah, there’s a great drill that you can do uh if you are someone who’s getting their trail arm folding too much into their body in the down swing. Yeah. uh from your address. And I would suggest every player does this just for a sense of what we’re talking about because not only is it an easier way to get more speed, but it’s also a much easier way to shallow the shaft, create a wider arc. Right. Here we go. All right. Go. From your address position, uh what I want you to do is imagine your ball position. You’ve got a seven iron. For simplicity sakes, it’s in the center of your stance. I want you to put that golf ball uh a club head outside your back foot. You’re still going to start with the club in the center of your stance. And you’re not going to hit this, but what I want you to do is swing to the top. And your objective is to get the club head back on the ball behind you. Mhm. Love it. Now, that feeling, that unloading feeling of that club on the back of the ball behind you, just doing slow motion, swinging to the top and down beneath will be very different from probably what you’ve been trying to do, which is a lot later in that moment of time, 0.25 25 of a second mark, right? Is what we’ve got in the downswing. Oh, Karen, as smart as we all think we are, we’re not that smart. Inquirs of angels because you’ve just focus on audio. K’s just shown a picture where his chest is all turned open. He’s got his arms in front of him, his thumbs are pointing behind him, and then there’s a cadre of folks on the internet that will show you major league pitchers as they’re making contact where the body’s twisted wide open, the bat’s trailing their hands, and they’re basically hitting the ball in front of them. Now, they’re like, “You got to get here.” The reality about that is you can hit the baseball way in front of you where the golf ball’s underneath you over here. And if you try to get to where they’re saying, you are destined to hit the weak side of the target if you’re trying to do that. Yeah. And a baseball bat doesn’t have a square edge. Well, yeah. I left that one unsaid. Uhhuh. It’s true. And And I love that drill where you’re trying to hit the ball behind you. Um because if you’re trying to hit the ball there, but your body’s unwinding, you’re naturally going to move the base of the arc to somewhere that’s sembling for a decent strike if the ball was in its regular position. You know what’s really interesting, Mark? And uh you’ll get this, right? Uh being from your home country, but in cricket, let’s say the ball’s coming through at waist height and you’re trying to do a big pull shot. A cricket bat has a flat edge. Yes. Exactly. So you need to treat it a lot more like a golf swing whereas in baseball you can continue to kind of rotate through. Right? If you did that in cricket you’re getting top edge and you’re getting caught out behind every single time. Well here’s the truth. Um growing up in South Africa I played I came to golf late because of a rugby injury and I was a pretty good cricket player. In fact probably if I didn’t get injured in rugby I might still have been in cricket. Um, and everything I learned about the golf swing at that stage was learned from a cricket bat in my hand because of the flat edge. And I realized if I could swing straight down the wicket, which for golfers is that straight back towards the pitcher and angle the bat a little bit open and the ball would go off to the off side away from me. So I could swing straight and the ball wouldn’t go straight. And then I’d come to the States and everyone at that stage was talking about swing plane or swing’s direction. I’m like, swing’s direction is only as good as where the face is pointing. Mhm. Now it comes to the four that then eventually launch monitors proved that thing that face alignment is more important than swing path correctionally and the two of them get together to create sid spin. But to that cricket bat thing, yeah, you’re absolutely right. It’s the same deal. Like if you want to hit one hard right over the bowler or the pitcher’s head, that bat which is loaded behind you straightens and you got to add loft to the straight face to hoist the thing in the air. Yeah. The end of it is accelerating. Exactly. Yeah. It’s much like with a ball forward in my stance, me trying to hoist a big long powerful drive because I’m releasing the head there, not pulling the handle all the way there. Yeah, cuz in cricket that ball would be glanced down backwards behind me to uh to somewhere down on the off side. 100% 100%. It’s interesting. I was watching uh there was a new show on the airplane uh with Chris Como call called Golf Verse and he was chatting to elite athletes and other sports and one of them was uh Sha White and snowboarding and they were trying to talk about the differences between well they were talking about the differences between snowboarding and golf and ground reaction force and how to twist and and that sort of thing and it’s interesting how a lot of what we did when we were younger and I’m cricket player as well Mark uh the awareness that you get from that flat edge in cricket. Yeah. And I’ve had the pleasure of playing golf with Kevin Peterson and Usman Kuaja and it’s amazing with their unique golf swings because they don’t want to ruin their cricket technique as much how much of a club face awareness they have and how good they are at getting club on ball just through the skill and awareness of that. Yeah, I’ll add to that. Um, you know, as a golf teacher, I’ve given golf lessons to some pretty elite athletes, Kelly Slater, right? He said to me, he goes, he’s his surfing got better when he learned how he was creating force on the ground with his feet playing golf. Okay, isn’t that cool? And he said his leverage on the board because of how he was moving pressure in the feet. And then um way way back in the day when Tim Henman was like one of the stars in tennis. Mhm. Uh we connected and we were tennis and golf and stuff and and it’s amazing to me how a tennis player has no problem hitting a draw with a golf club. None. If you can hit a top spin shot in tennis, you got the draw taped. If you watch Rafa Nadal, all those boys, they all hit draws because of the it’s like a forehand to them if you’re they’re right-handed. And that’s the thing. Now, I’m naturally left-handed, right? And when I played golf, I played righty. So, I was a puller of the golf club. So, you So, I got away with it until I read the Hogan book. Then, I pulled even more. Okay. Where my career is going, but I wish is not real. Bill is not real. Wish I wish someone would have said to me, “Dude, played like cricket where you get the head around you.” I realized the cricket thing after I had stopped playing and started teaching. Yeah. Anyway, but that’s enough of my sub story. I want to talk about this while you’re on cricket. One of your myths is grip pressure. And you know it’s it’s been said by Sam Sneed. He goes, “You got to hold the club as if it’s a little birdie in your hands, right?” And so I was like, “All right, cool.” And I always used to hold it too light. And then one day there was a bird in the house and I caught the thing and I you you know how tightly you get a grip with your fingers to hold on to a little bird that’s trying to get out of your hands. It is like for real. So that that’s been misunderstood in the worst way. Talk about grip pressure. I think you need to get windows on your house, Mark. Um, open doors. We didn’t have air conditioning in South Africa, bro. I’ve had a snake in my house, mate. So, I know exactly what you’re talking about. Um, so let’s talk about this. Now, the the grip should be held as soft as a baby bird, a tube of toothpaste. This is one of those ones that has carried for so long. But look, let’s think about any other sport or activity. It’s like hammering a nail into a piece of wood, playing tennis, uh, baseball, like anything that requires you to have some level of control. And golf, like you might be swinging that golf club at 100 mile an hour for the average player right now, if you’re gripping it that soft, that face is just going to twist in a heartbeat as soon as it strikes the golf ball. Mhm. And so the key here is to have a secure hold on the grip but with relaxed oily wrists. So what happens is you can feel the weight of the club head. And one of my favorite things to do when I do like a distance master class with people, I get them to understand that we want to create speed with the club head. It’s the easiest way to get a few more yards. Let’s get some speed in that club head. Right? Mhm. And I get them to all do a very funny looking rain dance. I get them to hold the the uh the driver and then I get them to put it above their head. Right. So imagine you’re in your driver setup and you put your club head above your head so it’s way taller than what you are. And the objective here is to give you the feeling of the club head above you. And you’re going to do this by moving and creating circles of the club head using your wrists while at the same time pushing and pulling your arms towards you. And that sensation, right, will ensure that if you’re not letting the club slip in your hands, you’ve got a secure hold, tight enough where you can have soft wrists while pumping and pushing your arms away from your body. You’re going to have a very relaxed upper body, relaxed, long arms at a dress, but a secure hold. Now, the key here is when you get down into your golf posture, don’t lock up. Don’t tense up. That’s why you see a little pumping of the arms, a moving of the club head by the best players in the world, which is called a waggle. And so simply, I don’t know anyone that works on their waggle, right? Working on your waggle is a great way of actually increasing your driver club head speed because it gives you a secure grip with soft wrists which allows you to get that whip tension. Yeah. Reduces tension as well. the audio listeners. What Carrick was doing was he was imagine there was a club in his hands raised above his head and the circles he was making were counter or anticlockwise. So the head’s moving around and in a circle above his head in a counterclockwise fashion. You know what I I love the addition of the extension and the contraction of the arms as you do that because that’s what’s sort of happening as you swing in the golf club as well. That’s genius there, man. Yeah. Yeah. And look, we’re going to talk about this in a minute around the tension of the arm, specifically the left arm. But most players have a technique issue due to too much tension in their golf swing. Mhm. Hey. Okay. Well, let’s get to that. That’s the last one. Um, there’s looking at the ball, but I’ll I’ll skid past that because I’ve kept you for so long. Um, the straight left arm, man. Uh, I’ll I’ll tee you off with this. Rory Mroy, who’s comfortably the longest hitter in the game for his size. I mean, it’s not even close. Um, that arm is not straight, that lead arm. And on the way down, it’s sort of somewhat bent. Then it straightens. It hits the long arms that you’re saying, but then that thing is folding so quickly into the follow through. It’s actually a bit silly how he does it. Um, and the straight left arm, it’s kind of, it sort of ruined me a little bit to be very honest with you, because I keep the left arm straight for too long. So you can imagine how how I essentially leak club head speed instead of the thing accelerating. So please explain to us how it should work. We’re going to refer to those still images that you see in Golf Digest or on TV uh at moments of time of through the golf ball. The arm with all the veins popping is going to like look very strong and stiff. Um, at a dress you’ll see professional golfers. They look like they’ve got their lead arm like fully locked out. That left arm fully locked out. Now, believe it or not, the arms are long and relaxed. Yes, they are prepared to try and smash the golf ball a long way, but they’re not hyperextended and rigid. This is the key, right? When you do that, that is going to mess up your grip pressure and also increase the tension around your neck and your shoulders and your chest. And that’s going to slow you down. any other cause can cause you some neck pro and shoulder problems as well. Yeah. Hello. Here I am. Oh yeah. My name is Mark. So the uh if you look at any other sport at the moment of impact, let’s say tennis, baseball, cricket, the arms are going to be extended. They’re going to be long. And don’t get me wrong, they start long, but you don’t need to keep them long the whole way. And uh players out there, you’ll get a lot more club head speed. And just practice this by doing some little practice swings at home, rehearsal swings back and forth of just feeling the lead arm be quite soft throughout the entirety of the swing back and through. Now, the weight of the club head gets greater as it approaches the golf ball relatively. And what that’s going to do is straighten the arms because of the momentum, right? You don’t need to try and force it. Now, one of the biggest issues that I see with players in their setup is that time over the ball creates the tension. It locks out their lead arm. It messes with their grip pressure and then they just begin to pull the lead arm across their body. They don’t rotate their body. They haven’t remembered to breathe. And then all of a sudden in that transition, it’s quick and snatchy and they’ve got no turn. So really putting this all together like everything we’ve talked about here is around just putting your body into a relaxed athletic state. We need to use rotation of the body to create that power in the golf swing. But we don’t want to force anything by any means. And that locked left arm trying to keep that lead arm straight is such a big killer for so many players. Mark Yeah, it is. Uh the drill that I often times show people, I’m going to pitch this at you and let you react to it. Um I have well I do it myself and it’s an eye popper for me. It still doesn’t feel right where I have folks assume their grip and then just split their hands on the grip. So the top hand is at the top of the handle and the bottom hand is at the bottom of the handle. So your thumb and your forefinger are touching the shaft of the club. It helps the club hinge on the way back. But on the way through the rehinging is so quick and I feel like my left arm’s completely folded. But I look at where I am midway, well, 3/4 of the way in the follow through and it looks exactly like that freaking Marroy does when he’s in the same place with the driver. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s because we’ve had external rotation on the way through which has the visual of keeping that arm straight. That’s quite a complicated thing to think of when you’re listening to this rather than looking at the the the video, but essentially in the follow through, we don’t want to drive our arm towards the target in its position. You want to feel that the palm is opening. The forearm is opening and then that creates a arm which is straight through the ball which then eventually falls. Yeah. Hey, how many folks have you seen trying to do that because someone told them they were chicken winging in their follow through? Yeah, a great drill for that to keep the left arm straight but relaxed is just put a golf glove underneath your lead arm or bunch your shirt up like you see pros do on the T- box. Feel that pressure of the material underneath your left armpit for the righthander and just be aware of that pressure back and through. That’ll really help you keep that arm soft but also release it properly on the way through. Justin Rose does that all the time to this day. Carrot, this has been absolutely fantastic. I mean, I could continue. I’m sure the folks would love it, but I know you got people waiting for you. So, before I let you go, please share for people where the YouTube handles are, where they can go to find you. Yeah. Yeah. Look, mate, I really appreciate coming on. love everything that you do for the golf community and um was super excited to come on here and share some of the the myths that I have today. So, if you enjoyed that, uh you can find all my content is free everywhere. I put out three long long form videos a week and Instagram and social media content everywhere at my name kera with an A G R A Y uh on all the platforms. And just for your listeners, Mark, I put together a couple of my favorite drills as well. And so if they go to perform.golf/Mark, they can go and get those for free. You are legendary. Give us that again. Perform perform.golf. Carrot, you’re doing God’s work, man. I really, really appreciate you for everything you’re doing. I appreciate you for joining us. Thank you, man, mate. Thank you. Absolute pleasure.