- 11 months ago
In the first episode of Game Improved: 10 year-old Josh Jackson gets a golf lesson from Nick Dougherty
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00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappin here from Golf Monthly and welcome to Wentworth Club and the first in a
00:04special three-part series in which we've got three normal amateur golfers and we're going to give
00:10them to Nick Doherty for the day to see whether Nick can help them play better golf. So we're
00:15here at Wentworth and we're going to head out onto the west course, they're going to play
00:18three holes with Nick and then they're going to get some individual one-on-one lesson time
00:22to see what advice Nick can offer them to help them shoot lower scores. So our first golfer
00:28is a 10-year-old junior who plays off a handicap of nine, very impressive golfer. The question
00:33is how will Nick help him improve? Let's go and find out.
00:47Right Josh, so first question, what's your handicap? I'm off nine. And how long have you been playing
00:54for? Because you're only, what, 10 years old? Yep, so I've been playing since I was two. And I take it
01:00your handicap has come down pretty quickly this year. So we're filming this in end of September.
01:04What would it have been at the start of the year, do you think? So start of the year, it was about 14.
01:11Okay. So it's come down quite a lot because of summer and playing a lot of golf. Yeah, and I've seen you hit the
01:17ball quite a bit and I can confirm you hit it very nicely. But how's your feeling about where your game is at?
01:22What's your strengths? What do you think your weaknesses are? I think, yeah, golf is good at
01:26the moment. I'd say my strength is probably my driving. I could probably still improve my wedges,
01:32chipping and putting. So you're going to have access to somebody who used to be on the European
01:36tour. He's one of the best pundits in the game. What do you think you'd like to learn from Nick?
01:40What are the questions that you want to answer? Probably a few questions about being on tour.
01:45Oh yeah. I'd say I'm quite interested about that. And how hard is it to get there?
01:51Well, it's a very exciting proposition in front of us. Right, let's head out to the golf course
01:56for me, Nick.
01:58Yeah.
02:00Yeah.
02:01What's the best?
02:03We'd have more teeth and you go, you're a bad person. You're a bad person, you'll
02:04have a bad person and there's no problem. And what's the first thing in front of us is
02:05We'd have more tees and you're going to make a circle around, perfect, two, a little bit
02:35more backswing. Using that bounce is the thing, you throw more speed at it but you keep using
02:39the bounce. Get that foot open, get that knee over that foot. Nice. That's it, plenty of power
02:47into it. Lovely, what a shot. To go down the slope, so the only way, so you almost want
02:53to feel like you're soft in your knees as you go down the slope, yeah? You're back where
02:57the rock is the rock, rock. So feel that in there, look at the nice thing, step away not
03:01too close to the ball. Right Nick, so let's start with Josh. We firstly played three holes
03:11and what were your first impressions of the way that Josh hits the ball? He drives it like
03:14I wish I did when I was playing on tour. Phenomenal. Really great golf swing, good attitude as well.
03:21I think for Josh, the most important stuff was getting the most out of the skills that
03:26he already has. Playing off nine, you know, is still immense at this age and he's progressing
03:32nicely. He's going to get naturally bigger and stronger. So the rest of it should take
03:36care of itself. So for him, I think it was a little bit more about selection of shots maybe,
03:41maybe a bit more strategy orientated in how he could improve whilst he just naturally develops
03:46in all the other areas. So what would be the general advice then in terms of strategy? Is there
03:50anything in there that you can offer people that they might be able to take into their own game?
03:53I think this is helpful for juniors in particular because we all remember being juniors, those
03:58of us that have played from a young enough age. When you get to a level where you start
04:02to spin the golf ball, it becomes something that's very addictive and to be fair, it's
04:09a testament to quality of strike and Josh has that. But sometimes it will lead him to play
04:14a more challenging shot than the one he needs to. The name of the game is how many shots did
04:19it take, not how pretty did they look. So I think one of the things with Josh that I
04:23wanted to try and instill was pick something that we could reproduce more regularly with
04:29it in terms of shot selection around the greens. So for that, we use the idea of landing it
04:34a set point on the green, barring something weird going on with the green like the elephant's
04:38graveyard at St Andrews, something like that, which might influence your shot. Normal green
04:42in front of you, trying to land it roughly a couple yards on every time and then using
04:46that landing point then to tell us what sort of shot should we be playing here? So what club?
04:50So wherever that flag is in relation to that landing point will tell us, is it tight to
04:55it? In which case it might be the 60 degree or for Josh, it'd be a 58. Is it a 52? If
05:00there's a whole load of green to work with, like maybe across the 11th, one of the holes
05:04we played today, maybe we get down to nine, eight, seven, you know, and have a nice simple
05:09action, which he does already have, but he was picking a shot that was much more basic for
05:14him. But also you could see when I set him up and again, this is something sort of tapping into
05:18things to work on through the winter and stuff. When we, when we made him dial in on competing
05:24to land it in the right place. So competing normally is, did you get it up and down? You
05:28know, whereas we moved it to, can you hit, can you deliver this skill? Which is like hitting
05:33those landing points. Got it.
05:34Really good. So if he can do that time and time again, he's going to have an electric short
05:38game. I'd hazard a guess that Josh will shave a ton of strokes off his game by becoming
05:43just really, really effective at the simple stuff around the green. Yeah. And what's quite
05:46interesting, and I was standing in the background watching all of this as it took place, is that
05:50that element of like having a challenge as you practice, which is more than just getting up and
05:54down, as you say, but actually, can you land it on this towel or hit it into this circle on the
05:57green? It's something that for a, for a junior golfer is really going to hopefully engage a little
06:03bit more in what you're trying to do. Practice sucks. You know, it's that, I mean, for,
06:07especially for kids, it's the boring bit. You know, they want to be out there trying to beat
06:11their pals, playing in competitions, but we've got to work at it. You know, that's how we groom
06:15these skills. So the best thing we can do, and actually to get the most out of that practice is
06:20to make it more performance orientated, which is what most practice isn't. The most guilty thing
06:26I see from amateur golfers of the way they go about what they do is the way they practice,
06:30really poor. And I've been a culprit over the years as well. Scrape hit, scrape hit, scrape hit.
06:35You're wasting your time unless you're purely grooving a movement, but even still it should
06:41be conscious. You should be engaged with it because in the end, you have to engage when you get out
06:45here on the golf course. If I take any amateur anywhere in the world and put them on that first
06:49tee in the BMW PGA to hit that tee shot, those feelings, how those arms feel, how they feel inside
06:56will feel completely different to if I said, there's a range, there's no one on it. Here's a couple of
07:01hundred balls. Have a good day. Because bored, almost bored, casual. And sometimes it might not
07:06even be good because they're just not focused at all. But the fact is you do that to prepare for this.
07:12If we can bring the pressure to the practice and in a fun way as well and create that challenge,
07:17then one, it might also shift this to feeling more like a fun challenge rather than, oh my goodness,
07:21I'm terrified the club championships next week for adults, less so for kids, you know, to being like,
07:26this is fun. It's a challenge. And also you're used to having to do it under a bit of pressure.
07:31And that means that then when you step on that first tee, there is a comfort in thinking,
07:36this isn't as different. Sure, it's different. You know, just like if I put someone in a position
07:40like I have to win on tour or to play in the Masters or teared up on the first tee at the Open
07:44in your home city, like that would be terrifying and feel uncomfortable to them. But you get used to it
07:49the more you put yourself in that position. So if we're doing that in our practice, we make the stuff on the
07:53course a lot easier. So there you have it, some really simple and effective ways to think about
07:58game plan and strategy when you're on the golf course and also how to practice as well. Some
08:02simple advice there for Josh and hopefully for you too to help you improve. So there you have it,
08:06some really simple and effective advice from Nick for Josh on how to improve by building a better
08:11strategy and then how to work particularly on his short game. Obviously, Nick is a player who's been
08:17there and who's done it before. And having that kind of tour player level insight is something that should
08:22really help Josh as he continues to improve his golf game. And hopefully there's some stuff in
08:27there that should really help you as well. That's it for now from Wentworth. Thanks very much for
08:31watching. We'll see you next time.