Welcome to Greg Norman's golf instructional video entitled, The Complete Golfer.
This is part two, the short game.
In part one, Greg explored the fundamentals of the long game.
Now we return to the Grand Cypress Resort in Orlando, Florida, as Greg focuses on elements
of the short game.
Shots played from 75 yards in.
He tells us about chipping, putting, the art of playing from sand bunkers.
Here we are, we missed the green to the right.
We're in the bunker.
What do you people do out there?
You panic.
You don't know how to play bunker shots.
You think it's the hardest shot in the game.
Actual fact, it's one of the easiest shots.
You've got an extra element you can use to your advantage, the sand.
All right, now if we can learn and understand the sand, we're going to be able to play bunker
shots a lot easier.
If you hit the fairway, you've only got one shot.
That's hit the ball solid and hit the ball first if you're going to execute the right
shot.
Here in the bunker, we can use the sand for numerous things.
We can make the ball spin.
We can hit the ball higher.
We can hit the ball lower.
We can make the ball run.
So we're using the sand as an extra piece of tool in our bag.
We can manipulate it.
This shot here right now that we're going to do is we've missed the green to the right.
We've got a little downhill slope to the flag, and we've got to stop the ball quickly.
So obviously, we need the spin shot.
We have about 15 or 20 feet of bunker to go over.
Don't panic.
It's really an easy shot to play if you don't get overexcited about it.
Now, let me first of all explain about the golf club.
And the reason why a bunker shot can be a little bit easier than what you think is because
of the flange.
This is the only golf club in your bag that is designed or has a larger flange than normal.
Now, if you can zero in here, you can see this flange right here has got a little bit
more of a bulge and thickness to it than most of your other irons.
Now, that is designed for a reason.
Let me talk about if we can get down near the sand here.
The golf club, when it enters the sand, should be using the flange.
The flange of the golf club should enter the sand like this.
Now, the reason why we should do that is as the golf club hits the sand, it's automatically
going to close because there's resistance.
So what happens is the golf club is going to do this a little bit.
All right, you understand that now?
And okay, we're going to allow for it.
Now, the reason why, how we allow for it is open the club face up as much as we can.
How many times you've gone in the bunker and you've seen a professional or a good bunker
player open his club face up flat like this?
You think, oh my gosh, he can't get it out.
What's going to happen?
But this is what you've got to do.
We're counteracting the club face closing as it enters the sand.
So as it comes down and hits my palm here like this, it's going to naturally close a
bit.
Now, if I start with the club face as it sits normal on the ground like so, what's going
to happen is that flange is going to make the club face dig into the sand.
Now, let's go back down to the sand here and see what happens.
Here is what we're trying to achieve.
Lay the club face back almost horizontal to the sand.
Here is the way the golf club normally sits with about 56, 57 degrees loft.
That's how it sits.
OK, now as this golf club enters the sand, the flange is going to close the club face
a bit.
And as it closes, the leading edge is going to go digging in.
That's why you amateur players out there and weekend players mess up your bunker shots.
The club head digs into the sand too fast and you chunk it.
The ball either goes two feet and you go, oh my god, I hate bunkers.
Or you rifle it over the green and you're into another bunker.
You go, I'm going to panic again.
I'm going to take a seven when I should be really taking a five, which would be my worst
score.
So what we've got to do, and we're going to talk about the technical part of doing this
now, is open that club face up.
Use the golf club like it's designed to be used.
Use your flange.
OK, now let's show you the shot and we'll talk about a few techniques about how to get
a little bit of spin on the ball.
First of all, we've got to talk about our balance.
This is one shot where we're really trying to eliminate a lot of lower body motion.
A bunker shot, we're trying to get our feet in the sand.
You see the players dig their feet in.
Now the reason why we're doing that is two.
We're going to try and find out the texture of the sand, find out how deep the sand is,
which is a very important thing.
If you find out the sand is very firm, we've got to change our technique a little bit,
which I'll go into later on.
If we find out the sand is real soft, and then obviously you can see here there's a
lot of sand underneath the ball, we're going to have to be careful that the club doesn't
dig in too quickly.
So we're just going to have to make a little bit of a variation.
And the way I do that is I make sure I open the club face up even more, because the wider
it's open, the less chance you've got of digging in, which is what we're trying to eliminate.
Okay, we dig our feet into the sand.
We have to stand a little bit open.
I'm going to draw a line on the bunker here to show the exact line from the ball to the
flag, which is along this line here.
I'm going to extend the line past the golf ball, back, for my backswing.
Now I'm going to draw another line that would make my stance square to that.
Now as you notice, when I take my stance, I'm probably standing 20 degrees open to my
intended line for the shot.
Now you see what happens if I stand square to my shot, which is straight down there,
if I open the club face up like I want it to, I'm almost going to hit it down your television
set.
And we don't want that.
So what we do is we move our body to the left until our club face gets square to this line
that I've drawn in the sand.
Now you'll notice my left toe is pointing a little bit more to the left.
If I take my normal address position towards the line here for a shot, my left toe is just
at a slight angle.
In the bunker shot, my left toe is probably aiming twice as much to the left.
The reason why I do this, to eliminate my body falling forward.
If the more I point my toe towards the target, the harder it is for my knee and my body to
go this way because I've got resistance.
I've got sort of a platform I'm hitting on.
If I have my foot straight there, it's easy to go this way.
And the more your body goes forward, the easier it is for the club to dig in.
You know, your weekend plays, you get back here and this is your typical shot.
Oh my gosh, you're buried in the front of the bunker.
Or if you catch it thin, it's going to go over the green.
You notice the divot?
Very deep, very steep, the club head has entered the sand too fast.
What we're trying to do is get the club head to skim across the top like that.
That's about as deep as we want the divot to be.
Now, pointing that left toe towards the target can help you get that nice skimming motion
because your body's going to stay firm.
Left toe a little bit more to the target for stability.
Feet firmly embedded into the ground.
Execution of the shot.
Make sure the club face is open.
Feel comfortable.
Now, when you open your club face up, again, this is a point I see every Wednesday I play
in a pro-am or whenever I play with my friends.
They'll get their normal grip with the club face in the normal position like that and
I'm going to say to them, open your club face up.
What they do is they go like this.
Now, notice my grip.
It goes open and open.
They're trying to open the club face by just moving their hands over, not taking their,
redoing their grip.
They're just turning their hands over.
What's going to happen then, remember we talked about the grip, how your hands return to the
normal position, most natural position.
As they come down, your hand's going to go back like this.
See what happens?
The club face is going to dig into the sand.
We're going to fluff it.
So what we've got to do, just take one hand with your right hand or left, lay the club
face open, then re-grip it to the open club face.
Do not change your grip.
Keep your grip exactly the same.
All you're doing is just changing the loft and the direction of your club face.
You've got that grip.
You've got the club face open.
You've got your left toe pointed towards the target.
Don't be scared of it.
Nice firm swing.
Don't decelerate.
A lot of amateur players go long, get down here and go, oh my gosh, dig, stop, flop.
You miss hit the shot.
The other bad fold is you come all the way back here, you go, oh, bunker shot, up and
out.
The ball goes 60 yards over the green.
Be confident with it.
When you get in there, execute your shot.
We don't need a full backswing.
We need like a three o'clock swing.
Get back to here, stop.
You've still got your nice firm movement.
You notice my hips haven't taken a full turn.
My upper body has just turned a little bit and very little shoulder turn because I'm
just using my hands and arms.
Get back there and accelerate the club face under the ball and the ball will pop up nice
and high.
Don't be scared of it.
Execute it.
Be confident and aggressive.
Thank you.
The buried lie.
We find it quite often a lot of the golf courses we get built in nowadays because a lot of
the sand is very loose.
Buried lie is a difficult shot to play because you have to enter the sand at the right way
and the other detraction from it you can't get any backspin.
The ball is going to hit the green and release.
We have to allow for that.
Sometimes you can't, you have to swallow your medicine, take your best way out and make
your bogey and try not to get too cute with the buried lie and hit it close to the flag
and make a double bogey.
Accept your medicine.
Sometimes you're going to get it, sometimes you won't.
So let me explain to you what will happen and how we're going to try and get out of
this.
You explained before about opening the flange of the club.
What I do with the buried lie, here we have what I had before trying to hit a high soft
spin shot.
The club face was here.
Now all I do for a buried lie is keep the club face there but I will lower my hands.
Now you see what happens to the toe of the club when I lower my hands?
It comes up.
Now the reason why I'm doing this is I need to get the club face under the ball or into
the sand under the ball as fast as I can get it.
So all I do is now what I'm trying to do is by lowering my hands I'm going to use this
part of the golf club to enter the sand.
In other words I'm using the heel of the golf club to get the ball out.
Now I'll explain to you if you come down to see this.
Here's my conventional if the ball was sitting nice.
When I lower my hands the heel is going to come right in underneath the ball.
So what's going to happen is the heel of the club is going to dig in this way.
With the club face still open the ball is going to pop up fairly soft and run a little.
Let me execute the shot and show you.
Same deal.
Bury your feet in the sand.
Point the toe of your club toe, your left foot towards the target.
Little open stance.
Same motion.
Exactly the same backswing but you may want to have a tendency of picking it up a little
more.
We want to get the club face in under the ball as fast as we can.
So open your club face, lower your hands.
You see I've lowered my hands.
Nothing's changed so what I'm going to do now is pick the club face up a little bit quicker
and bring it in right underneath the ball.
And stab.
It's the only shot I want to stab because the club head is going so far into the sand
we can't have any follow through.
And the ball will just come.
The club face will go straight underneath.
The ball will pop straight up and gut it on the green.
Well what do we find ourselves here?
In a sea of sand.
Remember we're in the greenside bunker and I mentioned to you it's a confidence shot.
You just got to approach it like you're on the fairway.
Forget you're in the sand.
It's the same full swing technique, same set up, just the one different variation is foundation.
So let me show you how we get our foundation.
When we're in the greenside bunker, same with the fairway bunker.
Dig your feet in.
Find that firm footing underneath.
Same balance technique, same ball position.
We're not going to change this thing from an 8 iron fairway shot to an 8 iron shot out
of the bunker.
The key point is foundation.
The biggest fault is the movement of your feet.
When you go back you notice because I don't have a great deal of foundation my right foot's
going to move.
The more I take my backswing the more my right foot wants to move.
So once I get back out here the top part of my body is going away from the shot.
When I start coming down on the downswing because my foundation's not good my foot's
going to spin and I'm going to go ahead of the shot.
That is why it's crucial we have a good foundation.
Get those feet into the ground.
Ball position in the same place as what you would play a full shot.
Same set up, same full swing.
Don't be scared of it.
Don't try and think you've got to hit down into the ball.
You don't have to do that.
The steeper your arc is the more chance you have got of hitting a fat.
Right here if I come down real steep and catch it just a little bit fat the sand's going
to get between the club face and the ball.
Because we don't have a flange like a sand iron the leading edge is going to go straight
into the sand and the ball might only go three or four feet or just get out of the bunker.
So we're just going to play it like a regular 8 iron shot off the fairway.
Remember don't ground your club.
It's going to be a penalty if you do.
Keep the golf club elevated.
Take your normal routine.
Club face to the target.
A good little point is to think of is not to ground your club.
Address the ball with the bottom of the golf club on the top of the ball.
Now what this will do is this will give you a little bit more leeway for coming down into
the shot.
If you start here you've got all that room maybe half an inch to get back down onto the
ball for any little bit of movement that's going to happen.
So address the ball with the club face on top.
Take your normal swing.
No difference in grip pressure.
Check your alignment.
Make sure you wiggle your feet in a little bit more.
One other thing I'm doing here with my feet is when I dig it in I'm digging in at an angle.
My knees are forcing the inside of my feet to go down.
So I'm having an angle like that.
You notice how my foot's there?
It's not flat.
It's a little more in.
Same with my left foot.
It's in.
Now the reason why that is I'm having like a starter's gun, a starter's platform.
I'm going to be able to get back here and there's not going to be any movement and when
I come down I can push off something.
Whereas if I was flat when I get back here you see the movement?
It's going to move.
So just tilt your feet in when you make your foundation.
It's going to be harder for it to move.
Same with this one.
Tilt your foot in.
Harder to move that way.
Just tilt your feet in.
Good little tip right there.
So we're going to take our normal address position through our routine.
Don't change anything.
Same routine.
Balance is good.
Ball position's good.
Now I'm going to address the ball up here and we're just going to take our normal swing.
Now you'll notice one thing.
I pick the ball off the surface.
No big divot.
The reason why that happened is because remember I had the golf club addressed to the top of
the ball.
That gave me that little bit of room for leeway to get down there and pick the ball off the
surface.
Remember the steeper you come into the ball the more chance you have of hitting it fat.
So address the ball with the club face at the top.
Pick it off the surface.
It will improve your bunker play no end by just getting your foundation right.
Take a normal full swing and pick the ball.
I just want to whet your appetite a little bit here right now with this bunker shot.
It's a special bunker shot.
I've taken a lot of years to try and perfect this and it's something that you could try
if you want to.
Again, I'm just going to give you a little benefit on how to play one of the toughest
shots in the game of golf.
Every professional golfer cringes when he gets into this situation.
You're 75, 80 yards from the flag.
You've got nothing but sand or water between you and the flag.
What do we do?
This is what I do and it's worked for me many, many times.
Take a seven iron out of your bag, maybe an eight iron or even a six iron.
Seven iron out.
Open your club face way open.
Very extreme.
Widen your stance.
Play the ball off the instep to the toe of your left foot.
Now because your club face is so open, you're going to have to aim so far left of the target
it will feel awkward.
But just trust it.
Open that club face up, keep it there.
Aim your body way left of the target.
Now right now I'm aiming about 40, 50 yards left of the target.
Again, I'm just going to come in with that club face open as much as that and the ball
is going to banana through the air with a big slice and come down near the flag.
Here we go.
That shot was a little bit more advanced than the basic fundamentals that we've been showing
you in this video.
But if you want to practice it, go ahead and try it.
It might improve your feel for the game and the hand-eye coordination for distance.
Good luck to you.
Here you are.
You're in my office.
And the reason why I call this my office is because this is where I spend most of my time.
I spend my time practicing my chip shots, my lob shots, my field shots, because I know
that I'm not going to hit 18 greens every day I play golf.
So I've got to understand why and how to get the ball near the hole.
Where we are, we're presented with a situation right now which calls for a lob shot, a nice
high soft shot that's going to land on the green.
We've got maybe between the fringe and the flag 12, 15 feet to work with.
We've got about a three or four feet incline to go up.
So what the shot calls for is a high soft lob shot.
Now we're going to play it very similar to a bunker shot.
We're going to open that club face wide open.
We're going to have the same sort of address position, get our rump low to the ground because
we need that club face to skim across.
We're not going to take a divot.
We want the club face to skim the surface.
Similar setup to the bunker shot.
You don't need to widen your stance to that degree because you might need a little bit
of knee flex and soft motion because I said it's a soft shot.
It's a lob shot.
So remember the bunker shot.
We open that club face wide open.
We're going to utilize the flange.
You see again we're going to have this flange working for us.
And the wider we get the club face open, the higher and softer we can hit the shot.
So the only difference with this, with the bunker shot and the lob shot is we're going
to meet the ball at the same time.
We're not going to hit the sand and the sand's going to hit the ball.
If we do that here, we're going to just skim it right across the green.
We're going to have the leading edge of the club face go underneath the golf ball at the
same time the flange meets the ground.
And what will happen then is, just a little demonstration without hitting, the club face
is going to skim across the top.
No divot.
We're using the flange.
So our dress position is ball up in our stance a little bit off our left heel.
Hands low.
Open that club face up.
Remember don't take your grip and then try and open your club face.
Open your club face then take your grip.
Club face is in the right position.
Take your grip.
We want to have our hands in such a position where they're almost back in the middle of
our stance.
So in other words, normal address position you're here.
For the high lob shot, we want our hands back here a little bit.
The reason, we want that flange and the leading edge to get under the ball as quickly as we
can with the greatest amount of loft on the club.
So the more you can experiment with this without even hitting the ball, the more you move your
hand back, the more you can open up your club face.
So we don't want it back too far which is going to feel uncomfortable.
We don't want it too far forward which is going to make the club face aim straight right.
We want to bring it back so we can level out that club face and get the flange underneath
the ball.
Just a little demonstration.
You don't need to take a full swing.
Just a nice firm swing.
Again, accelerate at the ball.
Don't decelerate.
And here we go.
And you'll notice when the ball hits the ground it's coming down so soft it may move only
about two or three feet.
This time I might play a little different shot.
I'm going to try and land the ball a little bit closer to the fringe of the green and
get the ball rolling.
All I'll do now is just take a little loft off my club.
Narrow my stance just a little bit but all I'm doing now is just using the regular loft
on my sand wedge.
You notice I haven't got before I was like this.
Now I'm just going to do a normal sand wedge shot.
Stance is a little narrower.
Just like a chip shot and I'm going to land it just on the fringe of the green.
But you see there are two variations to play the lob shot.
Now I want to show you a little practice tip we can do.
It's something I've always done and I do it many, many times and I've even shown a few
golf professionals.
What we do, we pick up a golf ball and we throw away the golf club.
We don't need it for this shot.
Take our normal address position.
Just have an imaginary golf club in your hand.
Take our normal address position just like we're going to play the lob shot.
Now put the ball in the palm of your right hand and cup it like this.
Now what we're going to do here is we're going to have a hand-eye coordination and pick out
a spot where we want the ball to land which is very crucial for this shot.
So we've got our ball in the palm of our hand.
We've addressed it just with the imaginary golf club.
Take our left hand and put it behind our back.
Now what we're going to do is we're going to pick out our spot on the green.
Now remember this is a lob shot.
We want the ball to come up high, land soft.
So the principle with the golf club is the right hand comes through, brings the golf
club up, straight down the line.
That's how we play the shot.
So all we're going to do now is practice hand-eye coordination, stand here, pick out our spot
and just lob it.
When you lob it, oh, you nearly make it.
But you see there are two variations to play the lob shot.
You practice them, believe in yourself, and again be aggressive.
Don't be scared of the shot.
For an
amateur out there, you may not be too confident with the lob shot.
Why don't we think about putting it?
Very little grass on the bank of the green here, very little green to work with.
So if we can get the ball rolling as soon as possible, why not use the putter?
Okay, now when we use the putter, you've got to take into consideration you're going on
the upslope.
The grass is going to be a little slower to putt on than the green itself, so we've got
to sort of make up for that somewhere.
So just imagine the hole is 15 feet past where the hole is cut now.
Put that in your mind.
So that'll give you enough power in the hit to get the ball up the slope, rolling at the
hole.
So with the putt, all we do is take our normal putting position.
We've talked about that before.
Line up your shot.
It's a fairly straightforward putt up the hill, and then it's going to go straight down
to the hole.
So just imagine that hole is 15 feet past the hole, and just go ahead and hit it.
Break, break, break, break, break.
Okay, now we've got it up and down in two.
Here we have a chip and run shot.
We missed the green to the left.
Maybe we've got, what have we got here, 60 feet of green to work with, and we've missed
the green by four or five.
And in between that four or five feet, we've got a little bit of hairy fringe, you know,
where the ball won't run through it if we putt it.
So what we've got to do is chip and run the shot.
All we need to do is just get the ball over this fringe, under the green, and roll it
like a putt.
So really all this shot is is an extension of a putt.
The loft of the club, I've chosen a six iron for this shot because it's just enough elevation
to get it over the fringe and roll the distance I need to get it to the hole.
So all you're doing is putting loft on a putter, and that's all it is.
You can actually grip it the same way as you putt.
A lot of people do that.
It may feel very comfortable for you.
You may want to take the same stance as you putt.
There's nothing wrong with doing that.
If it's an extension of the putt, go ahead and do it.
It might be a lot easier for your mind to accept it that way.
I myself, I take my normal grip, like I would do with a driver or a full six iron or any
full shot.
Take my normal grip, and I stand basically the same way as I putt.
I play the ball off the front of my left foot, and my hand, just like the putt, the back
of my left hand is going to go towards the hole.
If it breaks down at all like this, we're going to thin it.
If it breaks down the other way, you're going to hit the shot fat.
So again, I'm going to keep saying it, it's an extension of the putt.
Get the ball on the green and roll it as soon as you can.
So we'll just take a few little chip shots here.
Touch the back of my left hand, it'll go straight towards the hole.
And you notice the club head didn't take a divot.
It was like a putt, it skimmed across the top of the ground.
I'll do it again for you.
Ball position, straight off like you would putt, somewhere off the instep of your left
foot.
You summarize, you pick out the spot where you want the ball to land, and from there,
take the back of the left hand towards the hole.
No breaking down, body still, it's a hand and arm motion.
Another way of practicing this shot is exactly the same way as I showed you with the lob
shot.
We throw away our club, pick up a ball.
Remember in the lob shot, I was teaching you with the hand-eye coordination about releasing
the ball a little later, which creates a high soft flight.
This time we want to release the ball a little flatter.
And flatter, I mean, by at the bottom of our arc, of our hand swinging through.
It's just exactly the same as a chip.
Your chip shot with the golf club, your right hand went down the line, your back of your
left hand went down the line.
Same deal.
Put the ball in our palm of our right hand, hand behind our back, take a normal chip shot
stance and release it.
And the ball will roll and roll like a chip.
Hand-eye coordination.
One thing you'll notice with those three chip shots, or the first two chip shots I made,
they went past the hole.
Be aggressive when you chip.
Here's a part of the game that can be either aggressive like my little friend behind
me, or you can play conservative.
That's totally up to you.
And that's putting.
Putting is probably the most individualistic part of the game.
You've got to do it yourself.
You've got to feel it yourself.
A lot of people say to me, Greg, why do you putt with the ball off your toe with such
an open stance?
Now, let me tell you why.
Because I like to feel continuity in my game.
Get the same sort of feeling and motion in the game for yourself every time, time in,
time out.
So that is the reason why I like to put the ball off the toe of my putter.
I put my hand down first, get my putter to the spot where I'd like the ball to start
its break, and then I take my position, still looking at that spot.
Continuity.
Love it.
So let's just talk a little bit about putting itself.
Putting basically all feel.
It's feeling your hands, whether you're a wrist putter like Billy Casper, or you're
an arms putter like Ben Crenshaw.
It's totally up to you.
One of the most crucial parts of it, though, is always remember the back of the left hand
or your top hand, keep it going towards the hole.
Just remember that little tip, back of the left hand towards the hole.
If your left hand breaks down, if the left hand breaks down by the right hand coming
past your left hand, becoming a little more dominant, you're going to get a little kink
in your wrist here.
The putter blade is either going to be hooked at impact or it's going to be a little bit
open.
So therefore we're not going to get a nice smooth straight end over end roll.
Now let's get to the grip.
The grip, the hands on the putter grip have got to be very soft.
You've got to feel the putter grip.
Now your grip location, right, may be any way you like.
I've seen putters who take their natural golf swing grip and putt with the same grip.
A lot of players, though, do the overlapping grip, this grip here, where the first finger
of the left hand or the top hand goes down the shaft.
And the reason why they do that is they sort of make this finger become a brace.
Remember I was talking to you about keeping the back of the left hand firm?
Well, this is what this finger does.
When you put that finger down the shaft, it sort of acts like a brace.
It locks up your back of your wrist here.
And then from there, your left forearm can continue going to the target.
So that's why they put the finger down there.
Some I've seen a lot of players putt like this.
So they're locking up everything.
So all they're doing is using a shoulder action.
Fine if it works for them.
I myself believe that this finger just sits there and floats.
I don't really try and put any pressure in this finger at all.
I just let it float there.
As a matter of fact, the better I putt, the softer this finger is on the grip.
Sometimes I even intensely take it off.
So that creates a nice, smooth, soft feeling through the ball for me.
A grip is very, very individualistic.
Experiment yourself.
But just feel.
I mean, you can hit 10, 15 putts one way.
If it doesn't feel any good, you'll know how to pitch it out.
Just forget about it.
Then go and work on something else.
Now we've got to talk about ball position and posture over the ball.
Very important part about putting.
You have to have your eyes over the line.
It doesn't necessarily mean just say you've got to be directly over the ball with the
ball in the center of your stance.
Just imagine let's run an imaginary line from the back of the hole through the ball and
continue going back behind here.
Now what we're going to do with this line is when we get our ball position, remember
the railway line trick we did for our alignment?
Sort of the same type of principle.
But with our stance, you don't really have to stand dead square.
You can stand any way you want.
Say me, for example, I stand very open with a narrow stance.
But the reason why we run this imaginary line from the hole through the ball and pass it
on our backswing for maybe two or three feet is we want to get the idea is that when we
stand here, we want our eyes over that line, but our eyes don't necessarily have to be
directly over the ball.
Like right here, my eyes, let me get another ball and show you.
My eyes are back here.
Now this is a ball I'm going to hit.
I'm going to hit the first ball.
But I want my eyes to be behind the ball.
So the reason why I do that is I'm looking down the line.
I can see much easier.
When I tilt my head this way, I get a great visual effect.
I can see the line.
Now if I'm directly over the ball, I have to sort of look up.
And I have to change my body motion.
When you start moving your body just a little bit, it's hard to get it back in the identical
place.
So a good little point here we've got to think about is when you're looking down the line,
just swivel your head.
Don't move your body.
Just turn your head.
Look at the line.
Turn your head back.
Try and keep your body as still as you can.
So that's the reason why alignment and head position is crucial.
Let me show you another point.
When you're standing over the putt, have another ball in your hand like this.
Take your normal address position.
Right?
And without hitting it, just stay there.
Put the ball up between your eyes and just drop it.
And where it lands is exactly perpendicular to where your eyes are going to be aligned.
So my eyes actually hit the second ball, but my eyes were directly down the line.
Good little tip.
You can practice this at home on the carpet just by running a piece of string down there.
Don't go getting a big piece of crayon and running down mom or dad's carpet.
That's going to be bad, bad.
So just put your imaginary line down there and just practice getting your eyes in location.
Another little tip you can practice with your stroke.
Maybe sometimes you have a bad problem of looping your stroke.
A loop is where you take the putter on the outside of the line and either bring it back
the same way and you cause a cut stroke or you take it inside the line and come back
over the top and that's how you trap the putt.
You hit the ball left straight away and it's got a right to left spin and you'll never
make a putt.
So the way to practice this is in a hotel room, at home on the carpet, put your putter
up against the wall and just take your putter back along the wall.
And now you'll feel whether you're going outside the line or whether you're coming inside the
line.
Sooner or later your putter is going to have to leave the wall because there's a natural
arc in your swing.
It's just the same as your golf swing.
You're going to go back to a point, the putter is going to come away from the wall.
But that point is going to be, depending on the length of your putt of course, is going
to be about six or seven inches.
So just practice that.
Again, it's a simple little technique to feel for yourself and understand for yourself.
Another important thing about putting is alignment.
Of course if you don't read the putt the right way you're not going to make it.
If you don't hit it at the right speed, at the right mark on the green, again you're
not going to make it.
So let's talk a little bit about alignment.
When you get down behind the ball, you see on television the professional golfer looks
from both sides, maybe even from four sides.
What we're actually doing is taking in the terrain of the ground.
Like when we get down behind the ball here for example, I'm going to line myself up directly
behind the ball and I'm looking for a spot.
Okay, you're going to say, now why a spot?
I'm a spot putter.
I look for a mark on the green where it's going to be at the apex of the break.
In other words, it's the highest point of the break.
So I'm going to aim at that point.
Now if I aim there and hit it at the right speed, I know the ball's going to get there
and then start looking for the hole.
And that's what we want.
Another simple little tip I suppose or thought that you can think about when you're lining
up a putt, I guess the hardest putt to make is a dead straight putt because you're aiming
at the center of the hole.
So in other words, you're only using half the hole.
If you pull it, you've only got half the hole.
If you push it, you've only got half the hole again.
When you've got a breaking putt and you're aiming for a point somewhere, you're going
to use the whole hole because when the putt, ball starts breaking towards the hole, you've
got the full cup to go into.
Alignment, pick a spot.
Visualize that spot.
So when you're walking up there, okay, I've picked out my spot there now about three feet
short of the hole.
And all I do is I stare at that spot.
That is my focal point for the swing.
So I'm going to look just about here.
There's a little light green patch here.
I know if I hit the ball over that spot, the ball is, with the right speed, the ball is
going to start taking its break there.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to stare at the spot, make sure my putt ahead
is right there, and I execute.
One thing people don't think about when they putt is breathing, very important part.
If you take a breath in as you're taking the putt back, your body's going to move up.
If you're breathing out as you're coming down, again, you're going to get body movement.
Control your breathing just before you take the putter back.
Take a nice, easy breath.
Don't take a deep breath and fill yourself up with tension.
Just take a nice, normal breath.
Hold your breath.
Execute your putt.
Come on through, then you can breathe after you hold your putt.
So far, we've been talking about putts that may be inside 10 feet, 12 feet, or whatever,
you know, the crucial putts.
The other side of the putting is the long putts.
I mean, how many times we're not always going to knock it inside 15 feet on every shot into
every green.
We're going to have some 100 footers, maybe 150 feet sometimes, maybe 60 footers.
They're the putts that I see very few people actually practice.
Now, if you practice those putts a lot, you're going to develop feel in your putting.
And if you can roll a 60 footer or 100 footer within a three foot radius of the hole, that
is great feel.
Considering you've got break, you've got different grain to putt over, over 60 or 70 feet of
ground, the grain is going to be different.
So what you're doing is you're practicing your feel.
Don't try and make these putts because if you do make one, you're going to say, yeah,
OK, I tried to make it.
But in actual fact, it was a fluke, right?
I even admit that.
Lots of times I'm trying to get the ball close to the hole so I don't three putt.
Three putt is the worst thing you can do in the game because you can hit a good shot and
you're going to lose the idea why you hit a good shot because I made a silly mistake
of three putting.
Long putts, don't be so aggressive.
The 10 and 15 footers, the ones you know you can make, be aggressive.
The longer ones, try and get them within a circle.
The longer the putt, obviously give yourself a little bit more leeway with your circle.
Feel the ball to the hole.
Don't try to make them.
Now, the other important thing about the long putt is same as the 10 footers, 12 footers,
remember the back of the left hand to the hole?
More important because if your left hand quits when you're hitting the ball even harder,
you're taking a larger backswing.
So if you're coming here and your left hand quits and it breaks like this like I was talking
about, man, one degree deviation on your putter face is going to be maybe five or six feet
over 60 feet at the end and that's a lot.
So you've got to be a little more conscious of the back of your left hand.
Keep the back of your left hand a little firmer and the more it's down the line and the longer
you can keep it down the line, the straighter the putt is going to roll.
So remember, take a little longer swing, don't go choking the grip.
You still got to have that same soft feeling on the putter grip to maintain the whole feel
for your stroke.
Keep that back of the left hand towards the hole and take a nice full swing and keep the
ball going down the line, especially the putt head.
So just practice feel.
That's all you have to do.
So that's basically the simple part about putting.
Do it yourself, feel it out yourself and just trust yourself.
Be aggressive.
Don't go and lag putts.
You know, you don't leave them short.
95% of the putts you leave short don't go in.
You know, there's a great old rule of golf.
So you got to get it past the hole.
If you don't get it to the hole, forget about it.
You're just going to have an average type of day.
You're going to get irritated.
Oh, I left that putt short again and it sort of eats into your whole system.
If you make the first putt on the first hole in aggressive fashion, the whole game for
the rest of the day is going to be aggressive.
So remember, putt with a lot of confidence, a lot of aggression.
I don't know whether my little friend's still behind me though, but I think he's still checking
me out here, getting a free lesson.
But just like him, take it easy, smooth.
But when you want to make it, like he's trying to catch a fish or eat a fish, he's aggressive.
He's going to go after it.
Same principle.
All right.
You got to enjoy your putting from now on.
And I hope you did.
Well, we've finally come to the end of our video.
And I think I've shown you all the basics and fundamentals of the game that you need
to know.
But I want you to remember one thing about the game.
It's just a game.
And if you treat it that way, you're going to get a lot more enjoyment out of it.
As long as you realize that if you go out there and you play and you give it a hundred
and one percent, whether you're a thirty-six handicapper, whether you're a professional
golfer, that one hundred and one percent means right here, you've given it the best you have.
That means everything.
If you go out there and you lose and you've only given ninety-eight percent, you deserve
to lose.
If you lose giving a hundred and one percent, well, the other guy obviously played better
than you.
That's why we love to hate the game and hate to love it.
So I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you on the golf course.
This has been the Complete Golfer Part Two, the short game.
Part One covers the long game and focuses on such things as grip, ball position, alignment,
hooks and slices, and a lot more.
We hope that Greg Norman, the Complete Golfer, helps your game and continues to help your
game for years to come.
Thanks for joining us.