WHY GOLF GEAR is SET UP WRONG. @lagpressure on Be Better Golf

if you really want to have a pivot driven swing like the greats did then you really need to have that working at that club working at right right angles okay [Music] thank you so much for clicking the video we're going to be talking about gear today golf gear and the pluses and minuses of how you set it up the weight of it the lie angle of it specifically and i'm here in the backyard and workspace of john erickson a former tour player who now really gets deep into how to hit the ball more solid more straight and something that you found john is that how important lie angles are and lie angles throughout the years have like what stock is has changed a lot yeah not only angles but like the offset of the club i think they do a lot of things to clubs to make it easier for people yeah that could actually be holding back their improvement maybe yeah um what we're trying to do here is is just tip things maybe in our favor okay a little bit okay there's been a lot of great players that have you know swung off more upright gear and then a lot of great players were flat gear hogan was very flat you know possibly as flat as six degrees flat a lot of times they put that with like the height they're like okay hold him short so he had flat gear that's exactly right polar guy would have more upright right yeah so i'm i'm six feet tall and i play six degrees flat okay okay and the reason that i do that is based more out of principle in other words i'm not trying to fit my clubs to my body i'm trying to take advantage of flat lie angles so what i want to explain here is how that works and why that's an advantage the problem that golfers have in the swing is controlling the rotation of the shaft okay that's the problem you know i can't you know that i leave it open i have it closed this is the direction if i hit the ball right this is the problem controlling the rotation of the shaft now let's take for instance let's pretend this is a golf club we'll make it so we can see okay now if this club you see this ball and if this is perfectly upright the rotation of the shaft has everything to do with direction right so in other words if the shaft is is rotated to the left it's going to send the ball this way yeah like a 100 correlation so one degree rotated would be one degree one degree right that way so if we take it to that extreme okay then the rotation of the shaft has to do with direction now let's take it to the other extreme let's say that we're perfectly flat yeah rotation of the shaft now has to do with trajectory yep if i'm open i hit it high if i'm closed i hit it low yeah okay so given that knowledge what am i trying to do on the golf course i mean for me i'm trying to hit it straight yeah if i could like take a pill and say okay your trajectory might vary but you will hit it straight for the rest of your life i would choose the straight one yes that's exactly right yeah exactly right worrying about trajectory uh yeah when i'm really on my trajectories are going to be good but uh you know at least i'm in the fairway so the more that i get this club flat the more open is a trajectory issue and the more upright it is the more it's a direction issue that's the concept and it's a very very real real thing okay so by having my lie angles flattened out if i you know i'm a human being i make bad swings like anybody else when i get a little if i get a little over the top a little bit rushed my ball isn't going as far left as if it was upright if my club is more upright and i get over the top oh yeah in other words okay let's say that i'm i'm very upright i could come over the top and hit this golf ball at my foot here right i mean i can hit this i could really come over and hit this thing hard left yeah now let's say that i'm down on my knees how can i hit it over here i mean if i if i come over the top i might hit it well i mean hit that if i if i come over the top i might hit it that direction yeah right that's about as you know if i came straight over the top that direction so one of the the things you could do to stop the pull if you have a bad pull is to flatten out your lie angles so most club fitters would say you know you've been through this with the guys here's your body they're going to measure your arm length you know and blah blah blah and tell you you know okay well whatever that is and somebody hands you a club okay now if i want to take advantage of that i'm six feet tall where where are your arms let's just see where where we're at here we're about about the same right yeah pretty pretty similar huh in fact uh yours are almost a little lower than mine i think okay yeah a little bit right my wingspan would be you so you could go flatter than me oh okay gotcha in other words your arms are longer you should be able to go a little flatter than me you could certainly do you could definitely go six degrees flat i mean i'm not saying i'm not telling you to do that but you could yeah yeah i mean you saw me hit the ball i can do it yeah so what would be way ways to do it well one if you're a taller player you could bend your knees a little bit more right and you could say well if you bend your knees more i can't turn as much sometimes when people will say well you know if i bend my knees uh you know i could bend my knees and turn so you gotta decide you know what am i willing to i want the flat language i want that yeah i want that so i'm willing to maybe give up a little bit of distance i can't you know i could i think i could still rock at the thing pretty good from a lot of knee flex i i'm really thinking i can still turn you know it's really about my shoulder rotation here so i'm thinking i can i can slow the ball pretty far down there so you could you could lower things down you you wouldn't necessarily want to you know stand upright and close to the ball so you're going to stand a little farther away and you're gonna but what the flat language does as far as the swing is it when it's flat where does it it it's gonna tend to put that club behind my body here just naturally naturally setting this down take the club here if the club is more upright um you have that four iron with you yep okay yeah so here's a all right a modern three iron and one iron these should be a relative now let's look at the difference here here's a six degrees flat so that's pretty significant yeah yeah for real okay so if we look at that we're talking what six inches five six inches indifference now i'm going to have to swing this club differently in other words it if i'm swinging this club that's upright i mean i'm going to stand closer to the ball i mean i have to kind of unless the heel is going to be you know i mean the toe's going to be way up in the air so i'm going to have to position my body a little closer and because of that because the club is more upright it's just naturally going to get me more upright in my swing because that's where it's pointing it's pointing to the sky i gotta i gotta go with it right if i take this thing and this thing's flatter it's just naturally because of where it's pointing it's natural to take it on this path well why would that be better to be deeper and flatter what what is beneficial about that because now i can use my body to to hit the ball okay when i'm here i've got the shaft at right angles to my spine as i'm coming down and as i rotate i can use my core to really drive that golf club coming off right angles to my spine if you watch the great strikers that's one thing you're going to see and very much you watch hogan you watch knudsen you watch trevino you watch mo all of those guys uh sam snead you're gonna see that shaft is at right angles to the spine coming down it's not the rotation isn't coming this way and the shaft is is steeper okay so we want to we want to have that that right angle so even if you have like justin thomas high hands you gotta at some point get it to the right angles well yeah you're gonna have to bring it bring it back down ideally i mean if you if you really want to have a pivot driven swing like the greats did then you really need to have that working at that club working at right right angles okay here's another thing too with the flat lying goals i'm gonna tend to rotate my body more level to accommodate the golf club yeah right here it's flat my body wants to go this way if i have the club upright my body wants to go more this way because i've got it it's pointing at the sky i got i got a comedy i'm not going to be here and then swinging it flat so the club is then telling you how to swing so this is this is where we get into club fitting should you go in and have a club made for your body yeah or should you take your body and work it the opposite in other words okay should should you have should somebody hand me a golf club that's going to give me the best chance of hitting the ball straight yes a flat club okay it's harder to hook the ball with a flat lie angle much harder so if i set up my club so that my lie angles are flat then conversely is it easier to slice it without yes what we want to do then is the hook swing like what you talk what you call it a looping uh a slinger a slinging swing okay i like that since so the hook swing i i would promote very much a hook swing flat entry everything would be about a hook so we want to we want to hook our way in but then we want to cut our way out yeah so that gives us a net straight shot hook our way in dynamic swing plane and all that stuff so by coming in flat then i can set up my gear so where everything is about hooking the ball but i got my lie angles flat and i have no offset on my clubs so that's helping me to not hook the ball yeah gotcha that's like you said flat language going to tend to hit it to the right also stiffer shafts are going to make you tend to hit it to the right okay so if i have flat lying goals and super stiff shafts then i can have a powerful hook swing and it doesn't hook yeah hitting a big hook like when you need to is a really free and fun feeling really just let it all out let's let's have you hit one right hit this thing with this one iron that's super flat and let's see what happens so you might feel like you're kind of have to bend your knees a little more or get get kind of down a little bit lower and does it do you feel like you'd want to swing flatter with it like we just kind of want to go around around your body more uh-huh yeah so just feel like you're swinging a little flatter and just go at it hard just go ahead and hit that thing piped there you go yeah that was a beautiful shot yeah so what's that john should i try to hit any kind of shape or just no just hit it hard just just swing flat because the club shaft is flatter so just just feel like you're going on that orientation flatter orientation swing hard mishit it a lot but it went really but it went dead straight see you got a little over the top of it but you're right down the middle of the fairway so with a more upright club i think that's a little more pulled you know the cool thing about it though is like i come from more of a baseball background and hitting off of a tee feels really good yeah i feel open and around of course you know that i could i can use my body to step into it yeah right and you get to do a little more of that now with the flatter lie angle that was really good it's a little draw on that and that was my best smash factor and then and then the wind swirling a little bit but yeah i like the feeling that i can just go at it really hard and i'm more this way rather than locked up that way it keeps me from sliding as much too i think that's kind of one of my things so yeah so you know you're able to hit that just fine yeah six degrees flat right so it in other words the six degree flat club it's like if i hand you this and i say this is golf like you know when a junior player it's like they the dad hands the the sun the set this is golf yeah and then the sun designs this swing based upon the clubs that he's given that would be one weighted that's like this if i hand you this and you're like okay um this thing's six degrees flat i mean if it was like this i mean if i'm on my knees i'm not gonna swing like this right i mean i'm going to swing like this i have to i have no choice i have to swing it like this so you know you have to make a decision am i do what do you want to take advantage of what we just talked about you know whether where the rotation of the club face is open or closed if it's upright or is it more trajectory yeah right and every golfer has to make that decision yeah do you do you want to play more upright and use your swing like if somebody handed me an upright club like this this is gonna feel really upright too this is a this is a seven iron that's mined yeah so that's gonna feel really upright no i can't even hit i can't even hit this yeah but if i if i did i'd have to like see how close you are to it and i'd be up here right because this is where it's pointing at the sky yeah now when you change did you did you change your gear when you went to more of a hitting so i okay yeah so that's a good a good thing um when i played on tour um i was uh two degrees flat okay that's what i did a little flat yeah but i always wanted to go more but i was on tour and i always have a tournament coming up and i mess i bent some irons down like six i was like it's just a little too much it wasn't until after i retired and then i came back to golf later i thought you know now that i have no i don't have any tournaments i'm not on a team let me just do stuff the right way like i should have done back then you know and uh i mean i always you know when mo norman said this is the driver that i use and this thing is mo had a 16 ounce driver okay and i watched mo hit you know thousands of golf balls with a 16 out so just you know i i i put this up on instagram a little process i made making this i took a tony pen ahead driver right there yep this is a one pound driver okay it's 16 ounces now notice how how uh i had to tip the shaft now this doesn't have a driver shaft in it this has a ping one iron shaft from the 70s okay and look where the label is right so you can see where the the shaft label would usually be here yeah so i've tipped this over a foot yeah right and then i put an extender in just right in here underneath the grip so this is extender and now i've got something that is really stiff that's a modern driver so this i think is 11 ounces yeah so 11 ounces and we can see the difference in lie angles right so of course that's going to change your swing you you are locked in with swinging to this club because of the line going i'm locked in to swinging this because of the lie angle i can't swing upright with this club because it's too flat you can see the difference here yeah right thanks now feel feel how heavy this is 16 ounce and we'll maybe even have you hit a ball with that thing there's no bulge and roll either huh it's very flat yeah no i shaved that off just like hogan did yeah right yeah because it's so heavy you really got to get your body well yeah right isn't you can tell the difference right okay now just go ahead and give that thing a rip that was good pipe wow well it's funny with it with your your clubs i can really like it's okay to have this couple happening and it won't ever get to a flip spot yeah right or lighter gary would go like that have we'll have anthony here right now it's heavier oh good one wow i even turned it over a little bit michael you want to give it a go so you know i'm not i'm not suggesting people use 16-ounce drivers but um you know moe did this is what he gamed and played so i think there's something to be learned here you know first of all it feels crazy heavy right all right if it feels all right then give it a rip that's what i would expect to see that a ball going to the right with it yep now you get your second shot now you now you you know you know what you have to do to straighten that out a little bit right true true 16 ounce wow wow you actually turned it over all right let's see another one i like that one okay you've hit one you've hit one with a fade you hit one with a draw so now you felt both those experiences you felt the right parameter the left vector that would work

Channel: BE BETTER GOLF

Views: 35,833

Keywords: golf, be better golf, golf instruction, how to be better at golf, golf tips, how to break 80

Id: ULb-YU9QznI

Length: 18min 26sec (1106 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2022