6 Rules That Will Fix 95% of Your Golf Swing Issues

Hey, here's six rules that'll solve 95% of the issues that you have in your golf swing. There's just a few fundamentals in golf and you have to constantly work on them to perfect them. The best players in the world like Scotty Scheffler and Brooks Koepka, that's all they work on is very basic things. Stick to the basics and you'll get better. Follow all six rules and it'll really improve your game. Rule number one, the golf clubs are designed and built the way they are on purpose. They're designed to hit the balls different distances so you have a gapping in yardage. But you have to learn how to swing the clubs properly but the way the club is made tells you how to do it. And not enough people worry about the golf club. I want my students to think much more about the positions of the golf club than the positions of their body. And I think that's where a lot of golf instruction goes wrong, frankly, is that you're worried too much about body parts and with all the new stuff with different releases and what to try to do and using the ground to generate more speed. Do I think there's some merit to that? I do, but for most of you, you're not using the golf club the way it's made and if you'll understand how it's made and how to swing it, you'll have a great amount of success. So I have three clubs here and what you have to understand is that the clubs aren't all made the same. There's four differences in a golf club unless you're Bryson DeChambeau that has single length, single eye angle irons. But I don't recommend that for most players. Obviously the lengths are different as you go through your whole set. The driver generally being the longest and obviously the lofts are different on each club, but the lie angles or the shaft angles, how the shaft comes out of the club head are all different too. A pitching wedge is much more upright than a driver that's flatter. We have to understand that as a player right off the bat. The other thing that's different is in what I call the forward lean of the club. If I saw my pitching wedge flat in the palm of my hand, you can see that this handle is quite a way out in front of the leading edge of the club and that's the impact position I need to return to in order to hit pitching wedges correctly. If I do that, I will have an angle of attack that's on the way down because this club will work down after the impact as this strike happens. The forward lean by the time we get to driver, if I saw it flat in my hand, you'll see that the grip end of the shaft is behind the leading edge of the club and that's the impact position I need to be with driver when I'm hitting the ball. That'll result in a slightly upward motion and so instead of trying to hit down on irons and trying to hit up on driver, if you understand the shaft angles that we're trying to achieve at impact, it'll take care of all that automatically. So understand that the clubs are made different four different ways and as you understand how the clubs are made, it'll start to help you understand how to swing them and what impact position to be in with each club and it's different with each club. Ball position can help with that. So more forward with driver helps having the handle back and more towards my back foot with wedges helps to create this angle at impact and so experiment with that too and find the ball positions that work best for you. While I'm still on rule number one, we want the shaft of our club to point at the target line during the swing. You've seen my flashlight video. It'll show you how to do that. We'll put a link down below but as I would swing this driver, you can see that this end would point at my target line and I would point at my target line on the way through. When I do that with driver, you'll see the angle that this club's on and when I do that with pitching wedge, you'll see that I'm still pointing at the target line here but I'm on a much steeper angle on my backswing and I would be on a much steeper angle on my follow through. So rule number one really is understand that the shaft of the club should point at the target line during your swing and it'll really go a long ways helping you play better golf. Rule number two is a takeoff of rule number one but at some point, the club gets parallel to the target line and when it does that, neither end will point at the target line obviously but rule number two is a simple rule and I've discussed it many times but in my opinion, it's still maybe the most important fundamental to understand. It'll help your chipping, it'll help your pitching and it'll help your full swings the better you accomplish this rule. You need a target line. As my club is parallel to the ground, it should be parallel to the target line. That happens here and that happens over here. It also happens on my backswing if I can turn far enough and get far enough back to where my shaft's parallel to the ground back here, it should also be parallel to the target line and I simply show this with most students with a hula hoop and if you understand that basically from this nine o'clock position to three o'clock position, this semi-circle on the bottom is on my downswing, I would like the club path to resemble this hula hoop and if I have the hula hoop on the correct path and I put the shaft against it on the plane, you will see that when it's parallel to the ground, it's parallel to the target line and that's the simple rule number two. It may be the most important rule in golf, especially for a beginner player to understand. I have a lot of beginners that with maybe a seven iron, an eight iron or a nine iron, that I just try to get them to stop here on a backswing where they're parallel to both the target line and the ground and follow through to where they're parallel to the target line on the ground and just learn that bottom part of the swing and do it correctly. Rule number two, the thing I see most people violate is when they're parallel to the ground, the club's way back in here and not close to the target line at all and they're too far inside. That either makes them swing too much this way or it makes them come over the top. Violating rule number two on the backswing is one of the biggest issues that I find in most golf swings and it's maybe tedious practice, but boy at home this off season, if you'll just take backswings on a line and just learn to be in that position over and over and over until you can do it without thinking about it, I promise you that simple drill might be the most important thing you've ever done. Rule number three, something I preach to everybody that sees me in person. I find the players that improve the most, that I help the most to improve, they focus on the golf club and not their body. If you'll focus on what the club itself is doing, I promise you you'll improve. I've seen it hundreds and hundreds of times over 30 years of teaching. I'll kind of demonstrate it like this. I have a target line here on the edge of my mat and if I take this club halfway back or two thirds of the way back and I point at this target line, you'll see that my hips have turned 45 degrees, you'll see that my shoulders have turned 90 and you'll see that the most of my weight is just naturally shifted to my back foot. So once I'm here and then as I go up to the top, my weight will start to naturally go left as this club points at the target line on the way down and if I follow through correctly, you'll see that on my finish, I'm on my front foot, I'm off my back foot, I'm fully turned facing my target and so my point is is that if you set up correctly and you swing the club the way it's made and you're aligned properly, your body will move the way it's supposed to move and everybody has different flexibility limitations and so not everybody's body's gonna move the same way. So that's what I've found with working with thousands of students is the better they get at having the club on the correct shaft angle or the correct swing point throughout their swing, the more effectively their body works. For those of you that are seeking more distance, you have to fix how the club moves first before you can try to increase swing speeds and stuff like that. Is it good to try to swing as fast as you can? Probably so, but learn to do it correctly first and chase the distance later and I promise you, you'll play better golf. Rule number four, the best ball strikers keep the club in front of them during their swing. This is a pretty vague concept and pretty hard to feel and I find that this fundamental for most players might be the last one that they can accomplish. If I don't move my body at all, I can swing the club on the correct plane, but because I'm not turning with it and keeping the club in the middle of me, the timing is very difficult because the clubs are all different lengths. If the club is in front of me and I like to just use this little belly button drill, if the club is in front of me as I'm swinging back and through, it doesn't matter how long the club is, my timing's gonna be the same with driver, the same with seven iron, the same with sand wedge and one of the biggest mistakes that I see, most people get the club behind them at the very beginning of the golf swing and I've shown this on quite a few videos where if you take a video of yourself down the line and you can see this hole between your arms, this club is behind you and it's gonna give you lots of issues. If it stays behind you, you're probably either gonna shank it or top it or hit it way right if you're right-handed and the only way you can try to get it back in front of you is to come over the top, which 90% of the players I see do and so most likely your over-the-top swing is created because the club's not in front of you on the takeaway. I like this belly button drill a lot where you can see this grip end here between my arms. I can turn and take backswings back and I can feel that it stays between my arms. If that shaft does not stay between my arms, the club head's gonna be behind my chest and I'm gonna have a big issue trying to correct for it and pretty easy with short irons to get it back in front of you, but boy, by the time you get to your longer clubs, you probably can't do it and that's why most people hit short irons pretty good and slice driver. The other drill I like a lot is with your top hand, just hold it normal and you can put this bottom hand on this side of the shaft here and I like just making little backswings like this so I can feel that this entire club from the head to the grip stays between my arms at the start of the takeaway. Learn to keep the golf club in front of you and your ball striking will really improve. Rule number five, really about releasing the club and there's so much on the internet these days about how to release a golf club. Frankly, if you swing the club on plane, rule number one and two, and you keep the club in front of you as you're doing it and the club face is square at address and square on your backswing to start, you probably don't have to worry about releasing the club, it'll release itself correctly. All of those tips that you're getting online and I've given some of them myself because as an instructor, I have to. If I have somebody that is going back like this and the club's inside, the only way I can get them to square the club face up is to bow this wrist and to feel like that on the way down. But I'm compensating for a mistake that you're making and a mistake you won't fix on your own. So fix the mistakes and you don't have to worry about how to release a golf club. This club naturally releases itself, by the way. All the weight is on the outside of the shaft and if I hold it here, that's gonna flip over every time. I can't do nothing about it, it's gonna flip over. The same thing's gonna happen as I swing with centrifugal force is the weight of that club head is gonna release if I let it. And if I'm swinging on the correct angle and the correct plane and it's in front of me, it's gonna return to square. When I did this belly button drill in the last rule, that's a square club face. I am doing nothing at all with my arms and hands. If that club is in front of me, it is gonna be square when it gets back here. And so that's the same thing that happens in a golf swing, believe it or not. But if I go back like this and I go like that, well, it's not gonna be square and I'm gonna have to go like that. But if I can learn to keep this face square and keep it in front of me, I can return to impact without trying to release the club. Rule six is more of a sports psychology rule than it is a fundamental rule in the golf swing. Rule number six is this, you will never be consistent. Every new player that comes to me for a lesson, I say, why are you here? What are you interested in learning? How can I help you? 99% of the time, every instructor will tell you this. They say, I wanna be more consistent. Well, you're never gonna be consistent. There is no one that's ever played this game that is consistent. It's a game of inconsistencies. We have different lies, different grasses, different wind conditions. You are never gonna be consistent. And until you understand that simple philosophy, you will never enjoy this game to the max. Don't try to be consistent. Just try to hit the best shot you can hit on every single swing you take. And regardless of where it goes, try to hit the next shot the best you can. If you'll follow this simple rule, you will really enjoy playing golf a lot more, and I bet you'll shoot the best scores of your life. Thanks for watching. It's a pleasure putting these videos out to all of you. Thanks for the response and the views. If you haven't subscribed, hit the button. Thanks. Hey, also, thanks for watching. I got a free gift for you. Link down in the bottom. Five Keys to Better Golf. We'll send it to you. It'll probably help you as well.