How To PLAY GOLF - The BASICS | Me and My Golf

Hi everyone and welcome to Me and My Golf. Welcome to how to play golf the basics. Yes, we've created a four week plan for you to learn how to play golf. You're going to love this. Let's take charge of your game. Here's what's coming up. We're busting myths and explaining concepts. We're going to show you how to aim, how to stand and position the golf ball, how to hold the golf club and how to practice. Let's get started. Now in golf we obviously have a target, which is usually a flag on the green or a fairway to hit. So it's important we understand how to aim and how to stand to the golf ball. We're going to talk about that before we get into the most important part, which is the grip. Absolutely. OK, so let's start with the alignment. So the first thing we want to do is aim the club at the target. So the bottom of the golf club here, we have something called the leading edge. Now your job is to get a 90 degree line coming out of that leading edge to the flag. In this instance, if I want to hit a straight shot at the target. So that's my club head aimed at the target. Now, from there, I need to get my body aligned to the target. Now, the way that we align our body is we run it parallel to that target line that we just created from the club head. So by that we mean the feet, knees, hips and shoulders are all running parallel to the target line created by the club head. So that's my body alignment sorted. The next thing is the stance. So by that we mean the width of our feet and how far apart they are. So in this instance, with a 7 iron, we want to be about shoulder width apart. And then from there, as far as the ball position is concerned, you can see the center of my stance is there. The golf ball is target side of that. So a little bit further forward than center in my stance. OK, so that takes care of the very simple way to aim. It really it's worth practicing that, but it's worth understanding just how to position the feet as well and where that ball goes. Now it's time to move into the all important grip, the most important part of week one. Over the next four weeks of the plan, we are going to be talking about the golf club. So it's important for you to understand what the parts of the golf club are called. So first of all, we have the grip. Some people call it the handle, but we call it the grip. Then we have the shaft and then we have the club head. Now on the club head, we have a face and we spoke about this already, that the faces on the golf clubs have different lofts depending on the distance that you want to hit the shot. This is where it gets a little bit confusing. We have a toe and we have a heel. Yes, on the head we have the toe and the heel. And obviously we've also mentioned the leading edge. So it's important to understand these different parts of the golf club as we go through the next four weeks. Before we get into the main part, which is all about the grip and how you practice, we hope you enjoy the video. So if you are, let us know, hit the thumbs up and also leave us a comment and question down below. And we'd love you to take part in this plan. If you want to just head to meandmygolf.com, click the link in the description and we will see you over there. Right, Piers, the grip. This is the most important thing that the guys watching this should be really thinking of. Why is it so important? I mean, look, there's several reasons why it's the most important part for us. The first thing is it's the only part of your body which is holding the golf club. It also controls the angles that you swing the club around your body. But the most important part is it controls the club face. So it controls the hitting area on your shot. So it's really, really important. Let's talk about and show the guys how this influences delivering the club back to the golf balls. That's the important thing. Give us an example of some, let's say, some poor holds or poor grips. A couple of bad ones. So obviously, if the shot's going to the left and the right, it could be down to the alignment of the hands. So if you think of this, I've got my leading edge in place. I'll take my stance. If I have one or both hands too much round to the right of the handle or the grip like so, then when I swing the club back and strike the golf ball, the face is going to want to be pointing to the left. So we could hook the golf ball to the left. Conversely, if I got my hands and move them too far around to the left of the golf club, as I swing back down to strike the golf ball, the face is going to want to point to the right. And look, we've been coaching for a long time now, Andy, and we see versions of this which are causing people to slice and hit the golf ball all the time. So what we talk about today, something you're going to work in it for a long time. So it's important that you just get it right. So let's go through exactly how we want to hold the golf club. OK, so there is a routine to this that you need to look at to make it as consistent as possible. We like you to stand up straight to attention almost when you're about to do this. So feet together, hold the golf club up in front. Now, you need to be very mindful of the leading edge of the golf club. So the bottom part of the golf club that we've already mentioned, I want that pointing straight up in the air. So from there, we're going to put the lead hand on first. Now, you'll notice that I've got a glove on my left hand. So if you do want to wear a glove, it can help with the grip and keeping control. So you want it for your lead hand, left hand in my case. So from then, I'm keeping that leading edge pointing up. I'm going to run the grip of the golf club from the middle of the index finger to the bottom of the little finger on the left hand. Then from there, I'm going to close my hand on the golf club. So I'm making sure now that I'm feeling it's in more the fingers as opposed to being in the palm, because this is something that we see the golfers like to have it too high up in the palm like so. And then when they do that, all sorts of problems happen. So again, going from the middle of the index finger running down to the bottom of the little finger. From there, you close your hands on the golf club. I'm keeping an eye on that leading edge. Now, when I'm looking at that knife, I let go of my right hand. I can see all of the knuckles on the back of my left hand, and I can see the logo on the back of the glove. So right hand comes into play. Now, I always like to put the hand on the shaft like so with the palm facing towards the target. From there, I can slide my hand down the golf club and then close my fingers and thumb onto the golf club. So you can now see that my right thumb is sitting on top of the left thumb. So this is going to give me that sort of freedom when I'm swinging the golf club, and it's also going to make it a lot easier to square that club face up. So when I put the golf club down now, I've got my leading edge going to my target. But as I'm looking down, I can see two, maybe two and a half knuckles on my glove hand, and there's a V form between the thumb and the forefinger on the trail hand, the right hand, which is going up pretty much to my right ear. From there, I think you've got a really good place to start from. Now, it sounds like a lot of information, but the more that you practice this, you can pause this now and play it back, the more that you practice this, the more automatic it will become. Yeah, it's worth making sure that you spend time doing this because it has such a key role in hitting some good golf shots. Now, one question you might have or you might have been asked to do or told is you need to join the hands together. Well, we're not going to ask you to do that at this point. We're going to say stick with what we call the baseball grip where we don't join the hands together with interlocking them because that's something we're going to do at a later stage potentially. Yeah, I think experience has shown us that whenever people have tried to interlock the fingers, it really does make the hands go into a poor position. We really want to be stressing that we want to be getting the hands looking like this when you hit a golf shot. OK, so that's the grip. Now we're going to show you guys how to practice. So if you go into a driving range or a practice area, this is what you need to do. We're going to hit 30 golf balls, remember, on week one. Now, Piers, once we've done this, we've got the grip, we know how to stand and aim our body. Should we use a tee or should we go off the ground? Yeah, I mean, look, you can do whatever you want to, whatever feels most comfortable to you. We would definitely recommend to start with using a tee. So if you're on the grass area like this, obviously you can adjust the height yourself. If you're on a range, Matt, then you may have a fixed tee, a fixed rubber tee in there. But you can experiment with it. So if you need a really high tee to start with, that is absolutely fine. If that's going to make it easy for you, then that's absolutely fine. But you need to bear in mind that the better you get and the more advanced you get, you want to be lowering this tee peg so eventually it's like you're hitting off the ground. Yeah, we've normally got the driving range like a black tee, which is just above the ground like that. We'd recommend if you can maybe start on that, but if you do need to change it a bit, then that's fine. Again, bear in mind that we do want to be hitting the ground at some point. And if it's really high like that, it's going to be hard to do that. Let's go through how these guys need to practice for week one. OK, so I'm going to stand to the side here. As you said, Andy, 30 goals minimum is what we want for this. So let's just go through that grip. I'm going to go through the routine again. Again, the more you do this, the quicker it is. And then from there, slide the hand down. Leading edge looks good. So from here now, split the stance. Left foot goes a little bit less than the right foot. That allows us to get the golf ball target side of that center of the stance. And all we're asking you to do from here now is just to have some swings. And you can go with whatever swing length you feel comfortable with. So don't forget, as you know, your concept now is a slight arc around the body. But you can see when I'm doing these practice swings, I am brushing the ground. So if you want to go back a little bit further, you can do. But again, be mindful you're trying to brush the ground when you are doing this. I'll actually hit one in a moment. But every time you do it, you're trying to brush the ground. It's inevitable that when you're doing this that you are going to miss the ground. But this is why the practice swings are so important for you. So I'm going to move into the golf ball now. Let's make sure that leading edge is pointing at my target. I'm taking my stance. I'm having a look at the grip, making sure I'm happy with that. And all I want to do when I hit this golf ball is just clip the ball away, obviously. But I want to hit the tee peg and a little bit of the ground when I hit this shot. Definitely hit the ground there. The tee peg's popped out of the ground. That was okay. Definitely. I think the key thing is Pierce has made that look pretty easy. But he's a pretty good golfer. Now this is week one, remember. So if it's your first time, you may even miss the golf ball at this stage, which is absolutely fine. Just get used to getting a good grip, having the practice swings, making sure you're hitting the ground or the tee, and you'll start to see the improvement. Really important as well, after every shot that you hit, the club may move in your hand. So you need to make sure that you get the grip aligned properly. Do not hit a golf ball and then hit another one straight afterwards without changing your grip. I'm going to have one more practice swing again when I'm doing this. Left foot went a little bit. The right foot went a little bit more. Leading edge matched up again. Get the stance good. Grip looks good. Let's see if we can get two out of two. Pretty decent. I'll take those. So I think that's the important thing. I think there's a few things we've covered there in this week. The grip is the most important thing we want you to take home from that because if you get that right, it is so much easier to hit some straight golf shots. Absolutely crucial. Over the next four weeks, we are going to be busting myths and explaining concepts. It's so important on your journey to playing golf that you understand exactly what we're trying to achieve in the golf swing. I'm sure your friends are going to want to help you out and give you some friendly advice. There are lots of things that are thrown around that may actually damage you. So we're going to be talking about myths, busting those, and helping you get the right picture and image in your mind to create the right motion. So, Piers, let's get into the first myth. You need to swing it straight to hit it straight. Well, guess what? It kind of sounds like that's the thing you should do when you first start playing golf. You want to hit the golf ball straight, so let's swing straight. Let's show you what that actually looks like. So if I'm going to swing the club back straight, this is exactly what it looks like. That's the club going straight on the way back, coming back down to the impact, and then it's straight on the way through. Now, you can probably see looking at that, that actually doesn't really look like a golf swing you've seen before. So hitting golf balls with that thought process is not going to help you. So if we don't want to swing straight, just talk us through and paint the right picture for these guys what we actually want. So the concept of what we're after, absolutely. So think of this, as soon as you stand to the side of the golf ball, the club now wants to arc around the body. So if I get my golf swing now going back, you'll see the club head is moving in from the target line almost straight away. So it's moving in, it's arcing in around the body as it goes up to the top of the backswing. And then hopefully on the way down, we can get that arc pretty similar on the way down. That would always be a nice thing for consistency. Then I get to the strike. As I then swing past where the ball was, you can now see that the club head is arcing in from that target line as it goes up and around my body. So nothing there in the golf club is traveling straight. It's really important for you guys to really get that visual in your mind to understand that. Let's take a look from a different view from over the head here. And as you'll see from above the head, you will see that the club moves immediately in around the body. It's not traveling down the target line all the way to the top of the backswing. And as we swing down now, it moves back towards the target line at impact. And as we go past, you can see again moving in from that target line. So having that right sort of image in your mind is really going to help shape the concept of your thoughts. And it's going to make a huge difference to your golf swing. Here's a question we want you to think about. Should you strike the ground when you hit the golf ball? This is something we ask a lot of our students, especially the beginner golfers. We want you to think about that while we get into the next myth, getting under it. Getting under it, OK. Again, it kind of makes sense that if we want to get the golf ball into the air like any other sport that you've ever done, you've got to get underneath it. So this is what it looks like when we're getting underneath it. So from here, if I were to swing down with the objective trying to get under it, I may fall onto my back foot. I may throw the club head underneath the golf ball like so. The problem with this is I'm probably going to hit the ground before the golf ball. Or if I do miss the ground, I may hit the top of the golf ball and send it toppling along the ground. So getting underneath it or getting under it is not really going to help you. It would imply that we're hitting up on the golf ball. So OK, let's just explain the concept again. Let's paint the right image in their mind. OK, so what we're looking to do is, you know, the opposite. We're actually looking to hit the golf ball as the club head is descending. So it kind of looks a little bit more like this. So as you are swinging down now, we want the club head to be descending by the time it strikes the golf ball. And then hopefully what happens then is you then strike the ground just after where the golf ball was. And the club is almost bottoming out in this area here quite a bit after the golf ball. Now, the reason we can do this is because we have loft on the club face. So you can see here now when I've got this golf club in my hand, we have the hitting area angled upwards. That's the loft on the club face. That's what gets it up in the air and this is what we need. So we don't need to hang back and try and get underneath it. We can hit down on the golf ball and yet it will still go up. So we've got to let the loft do the work and understand that when we see people play a golf shot, if they take that chunk of turf, Piers, it happens past the golf ball. So it's ball followed by the turf. And if you can have that image again, it's going to make a massive difference as you go to working at your game. So it's a good thing to hit the golf ball. It is. So we hope you enjoyed that. Here's this week's practice plan. We want you to practice parallel alignment, your stance and ball position, your grip. Make sure you hit the ground on your practice swings and most importantly, have some fun when doing it. That is the end of week one. We hope you enjoyed it. Now, if you want to check out week two and have us coach you through the rest of the plan at meandmygolf.com, simply click the link in the description and we look forward to seeing you over there. Thanks for watching.