Gary Gilchrist on Golf Fundamentals | Swing Expedition with Chris Como | GolfPass

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Chris Como visits Howie-in-the-Hills, Florida where he meets up with Gary Gilchrist – a man who has spent time working with some of the best players in the world, but who also has had a major impact on the way junior golf instruction is taught. Gilchrist shares his keys to improving a player’s game, ranging from drills & fitness to on-course execution.

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Gary Gilchrist on Golf Fundamentals | Swing Expedition with Chris Como | GolfPass

I’m Chris KO back with swing Expedition and we’re here at Mission resort with Gary Gilcrest Gary got his starting golf as a player and his professional golf interests led him to seek help from David Le better good swing Gary now over the top there he quickly realized he had

A passion for teaching and went on to assist Le better in his coaching of players such as Nick price David Frost Mark omera Andy Bean and Ernie El’s Gary heads up one of our more exciting programs which is our Junior Academy in 1995 gilr was charged with developing

The first full-time Junior Golf Academy in the world it turned out to be a massive success he went on to develop two more of the world’s most successful junior golf programs one being his very own the Gary Gilcrest Golf Academy well number one they keep me young number two

It’s lovely to inspire young people to believe that they can do something in their career that they never thought they could do Gil Crest has also spent much of his career working with some of the best players in the world having coached the likes of Michelle we Paula

Kramer Yanni sang Lydia Co Shan song Fun Susan peton Morgan Hoffman nasah Hoka and ARA and Moria Janar so I have over 70 wins worldwide most on the LPGA Tour but I’ve had quite a few wins on the European tour and and a few wins in the

PGA Tour gave me credibility and I also gave the students the opportunity to be standing their Hing Balls next to somebody who they didn’t even notice and then suddenly that person ends up becoming number one in the World Gary I’ve known you for almost 20 years share with us some of the things that you work on with golfers of all skill levels well you know when I first started out you know I learned a lot from David lead better at his Academy so I learned the basic fundamentals are so

Important that I worked at with you and I brought you golf balls I was like your your your your hand helping you get the range balls for your for your students yeah well those were the Great old days when uh we first started the Junior Academy everybody thought we were crazy

To start in junior golf and it’s amazing how that’s exploded over the years with Junior golfers I mean you obviously work with some of the best juniors in the world but you also get golfers who are just starting out so maybe we start there with those those early golfers a

Couple drills that can help anybody build a golf swing yeah for sure and again it always comes back people always talk about a grip but if you go to top golf or any range and watch people hit what’s the first thing you see a very

Very poor grip y so the first thing I look at especially the left hand grip because most choppers that I see who play the game grip it in the palm of their left hand okay and once it’s in the Palm very little rotation and the face stay shut now they bend their left

Arm and now they overuse their body so what I try and get them to feel is put the club next to their side and now you can feel that you gripping it from on top and not from underneath the grip is this does this look that looks great and

Then you can look down at the face and then when you bring it up in front of you and balance it you can feel that the thumb balances the club and you can feel the back of your left hand matches the face okay so if I understand you

Correctly we’re trying to get this part of the hand to be parallel to the Leading Edge of the face face and that’s more or less like a very neutral grip yes and then once you get that now the game starts to become way easier because now the club face can stay Square

Especially through impact and where would this fall in my hand so you mentioned in the Palm before so yeah so it’s more across perpendicular down in the fingers more so like down like this yes okay and then you can feel right there the left hand V points where more at

Your right eye okay so if it starts pointing more at your right ear that means now the club is going to really release quickly and shut so some of the people it’s good to have a stronger grip if they want to learn how to draw the ball especially if they’ve been fading

It for the last 35 years yeah and they want to see a beautiful little draw they can actually see an experiment how strong you want that left hand grip and why that’s so important is now when you grab with your right hand and you can

See now want to match the face of the club with the right hand you can slide it down put it in there and you can have an interlock overlap or 10 finger grip now the two v’s are going to start matching each other I see so they’re

Going to be more married instead of now a lot of people they either get the right hand way too strong so now it’s going to shut down or most people get it really weak so with a weak right hand grip guess what starts to happen yeah

Start open the face starts to open you start rolling it and now it’s all about timing and a lot of praying while you’re on the golf course and for for like you mentioned for for beginning golfers it’s probably better to error a little bit on

The side of it being too strong or the face being more I guess you could say closed to the back of that that lead hand absolutely and a great way too is to grip it the wrong way around because then the shaft is so thin I can really

Feel it in my fingers okay so once again when it’s in the fingers you can hear what more speed see if it’s in the Palm slows down the club head MH so soon as it’s in the finger of the left hand I can rotate it I can move my body can

Move better because the body reacts to the face so to me the grip is number one awesome now how about other parts of Swing the setup or or just kind of building a pivot you know High handicap golfers and you know they high handicappers because they’re fundamentals of Po they don’t set up

With their feet either wide enough apart so they can really swing in Balance but what I like people to feel is when they bend over it’s like diving in a swimming pool they can bounce up and down so what are you going to feel board joints of

Your hips okay you see so you can feel get your knees straight then slightly Flex them and you can feel your butt comes out a little bit and now you can bounce up and down and now you can really turn around your spine axis when you do that what’s also important you

Don’t want to set up with your toes too in or Donald Duck too out because that’s going to cause restriction so slightly out with both feet so now your knees can rotate your right hip can get behind you and the same thing is going to happen back and through okay and also what

Happens too when people set up you need to make sure that you have spine tilt slide spine tilt because if you don’t start behind the ball and most people always hear they fade the ball is because they start leaning to forward so they spine starts leaning to the left

Now that restricts the turn so what we want to do is get the SP behind so now we can feel the left shoulder goes down left hip goes across and then the left knee follows okay so the head doesn’t have to sway around it can stay pretty

Centered and you can see today Pros they turn their shoulders past 90 yeah definitely so once you start moving your head to the right really difficult you see so you really want to set up there slight spine tilt and now you can turn back turn through and keep your body

Angles okay okay great so we’ve built we’ve built a setup yeah taught us how to grip it yeah great stuff for beginners how about now when someone wants to learn how to like control the face how to really sort of relate the face in their golf swing I’ve

Also seen you use awesome little props like a like a tennis racket for example yes okay so again like I said to you before you know the body reacts to the face so a lot of people play tennis but what I love about a tennis racket you

Can set it up you don’t want to get it too open too closed and now I put my left hand on my right shoulder so I really can feel when I turn around my spine angle I’m starting to feel pressure in my right side you can see my

Left shoulder gets across so I’m not staying on my left side and then I’m going to back out so I turn nicely and then the club I can feel shallow and now I feel like I got a Down the Line Roger Federer forehand bam and finish into my

Left side so a lot of people in the winter offseason they can do these things indoors and then you’re going to create more feel and your body’s going to start reacting a lot better so you can do it nice and slowly and then create more

Speed and the harder you go and now you can see when I finish I finish straight up and down so I’m creating what more stability balance and allowing my body to turn back and through got and and then how about we want to add some

Dynamics to the swing some pop to it you can take a sucker B and what’s so much fun about it is because you want to make sure that the arm arms and your body work together okay so once your arm and your body work together you’re going to be more in sync

So if I stand here and I turn to the right and then I throw it to you I can feel that where do I release the club mhm so feel that getting good posture absolutely so what happens is if your body works poorly you’re going to either

Throw it to the right or you’re going to throw it too late and then you’re in trouble so really getting your good setup it also allows where your hands are they’re not too close close to your body they’re not too far away and now you can feel that turn to the

Right turn to the left fantastic good job all right so so you can actually feel the core also working you see and it’s nice you can turn back you feel how your hips work excellent M so it’s really allowing what your right shoulder to stay low and through

So your right shoulder is not coming up and a lot of High handicappers when they start their swing move forward and then back so this really allows you to turn around your spine and keep your sideband what about for the the better player who you know falls into certain Tendencies

You’ve obviously worked with some of the the the best golfers in the world yeah um what are some good drills for them well the thing is about you know better players is you start to work on Direction so it’s path and face so a

Good one too is to teach him to do a bit of a club awareness drill okay so you can put the club next to their side and they can look down and see the face square and they can start by working first on their move away yeah so

They don’t want to roll it away and they don’t want they can’t drag it see so now they can get halfway back they feel the club more in Balance see so the butt in the club points more between the ball and then they turn to the top MH see

Good then you set the club see go halfway back for me right to here first good now turn to the the top so you finish now you can feel the next move what the shallowing of the club what are you feeling your left side what is it

Doing see more pressure into that left side M now when you come through you can see where the butt end of the club goes yeah so most people especially with better and intermediate players what do they start doing they start pushing moving forward losing their angles so when I feel that

The but end has to go behind me what’s that doing to my chest making it stay stay down and then when you you know you can finish into a nice finish for the cameras all right I’m I’m going to give that feel a go so that that actually

Felt really nice okay so I’m going to sort of imagine the club going up my left side right there yeah take away pressure into that left side chest stays down and through good yeah nice that look good yeah that felt really soloft Gary you’ve been coaching for a long

Time tons of experience what is something you know now that you wish you had known in the beginning of your coaching career well you know when I was growing up I started to play golf at a young age and it took me a long time and

Then uh my hero was Nick Felder so if you looked at that you could see that my personality was more in the perfectionistic side so I spent so many years trying to have the most perfect golf swing and forgot to focus on my strength so you know the biggest thing

That I’ve learned since I’ve been coaching is not to stand there and be critical and judgmental and so when I get to my players and I see that I I say to them what are the things that’s going to make you great so focus on your strengths and instead of being a

Perfectionist this create a plan of action that can get you to the next level so that’s the biggest thing that I’ve learned and I’ve changed you know a lot of coaches careers doing that because you know a lot of them are very hard on themselves because most of us

Didn’t make it in golf and then we decided to be teachers and coaches and so uh for them you know they have to go out there and be an example to their students so going out there to have a passion and an excitement and really enjoying what they doing being more

Childlike being more logical is way better than being critical and judgmental and being a perfectionist because you live in your head and you don’t live in your heart and once I can get a play out of their head into their heart they do amazing things Gary one of the things I’ve always

Appreciated about your coaching is how you train golfers very holistically it’s not just about hitting a golf ball better but how do you do things in the gym you do a lot of things with bands weights just really bringing people’s development of the golf skills out through their exercise in the gym maybe

You can share with us some of those things well you know starting the Junior Academy most young players never spent most time in the gym but you can see has become one of the greatest things for young people to do to get an edge and um

So we have all ages and so some have no functional movement at all so sometimes we get them to throw a ball which is kind of fun because if they’re throwing a ball you can see they start getting more dynamic they can feel the their um

Ability to move from one side to the next but then once you start um moving them into weight training they get a lot more strength and now today it’s become a game of power and speed hitting it further it’s a big advantage and so if they can start young pretty much they

Have you know two opportunities where they can work on their speed which will help them tremendously throughout their golf career so show us some of this way to create this stability through like band work okay you can hold one end okay you see so the most important thing for

Me you can start with a back swing and so you can get your feet narrow and then what I like the the player to do is to step to the right and then pull across their body m so guess what starts to happen here I can feel my core being

Engaged so you know a lot of people the weight goes on the outside and also the left side has no stability so you can do this like four times one two three four and then you hold it for a little while okay all right Gary that

That felt really good what what else do you have with a band well flexibility okay so here we have a band which you can go byy any anyway I love this you can put it behind your shoulders get your arms out get in good posture and really feel yourself turn back and

Through so this allows you again to feel the rotation that’s needed okay at the same time also with this band what I love it can help you in your back swing too you can put pressure there under your foot grab it here and work on your

Back swing so you know one of my Tendencies narrow yeah guess what this helps me get nice and wide and then I can just put in my right hand and then when it comes down it’s just I can feel my right hand come right in front of me

So pull it pull it pull it so it can really feel core feel stable in my lower body and then back to the ball beautiful so it’s easy it’s fun you can use it in many different ways got it and you got a dumbbell over there what what would you

Use that for you know today with power explosive power it’s kind of fun to grab one of these for me squatting is fantastic especially for posture yeah so you find a lot lot of Juniors when they stand in they get rounded so when they squat they squat like this so now you

Can really get your butt out and lift it down and up yeah down up and then you can change arms you see you do both sides like this Gary I’m impressed this can help anybody right this helps with stability is that correct absolutely well I can

Feel that over time I’m going to get stronger in my legs and my core my arms and my shoulders so that’s going to make make me more explosive through impact okay so now this stability helps with the body motion and then how do you how would you transfer this speed to the

Club well here’s a great training aid here that I give my students and you can just take this get it off the ground and what I love about this it’s a total body workout so I make them make swings back and through so as they get here they’re

Pulling it back and they get quicker and quicker and then like the fourth one all the way through yeah so the fun thing about without this you can take your driver and feel the same thing so you get it off the ground like this and you feel the same

Mhm so where do you feel the speed yeah you see you don’t pull here you feel the speed just before the ball and through yep yep yep so doing that I can feel that it’s going to help with my endurance and slowly but surely I’m going to get faster for years I’ve

Called it like train Like A Champion okay you know you know the better your training the better the quality the better you’re going to get over time Gary give us a bold statement maybe something that you believe that’s really important in coaching and instruction that’s different than than sort of the

Mainstream trends that we see well today you look it’s a lot on technique different ways to swing the club technology is a big part of the game so when I started I was an instructor we just gave lesson after lesson after lesson and then I moved on to Junior

Golf where I had to learn how to become a coach and so you know instead of teaching a philosophy I want to teach a person and so my life I’m a people person so I’ve made great relationships worldwide I really feel that even with my Golf Academy life outside of golf was

Very important how these young kids deal with their academics how they deal with communicating with their parents how they deal with relationships and so creating that balance has really helped and so like I always want to encourage people if you love technology that’s fantastic but how do you take that and

Make it a plus because like anything for every plus there’s a minus so as long as you balance it yeah you’ll be okay Gary we’ve worked on our swing we’ve worked on how to develop motion with bands in the gym with weights how do we now take this to the golf course

Well what’s very important is that you want to build consistency in your ball flight so I don’t care who you are as a player you need to know there are certain ABCs to do to create to draw fade hitting it low high and by working on the Range is going to help you

Tremendously take that to the golf course what are some of these ABCs that we need to incorporate well the first thing that I’ve done I’ve put three balls in a row and they aim at the Target so first of all you want to make sure when you stand behind you see that

Your alignment is going to be correct because most amateurs and even Pros they start aiming way too far to the right or far to the left and that causes a poor what move away transition to the outside or two to the inside and the ball starts

To fly in a different direction so by doing this for me it’s really fun to do is I can set up to this ball and I want to hit a slide draw I can take it slightly in the back Ball come down from the inside and slightly out to the right

If I stand far to the right it’s going to go more inside more outside but what most high handy cappers do is they do the opposite they go in and make a loop to the out side and also what it helps you do is put the ball position in the

Right spot because the ball position controls alignment the further back I put the ball the further forward so when I’m working on you know a launch monitor as soon as I move the ball my pass starts to change so you know here I can stand here put the ball further forward

I can feel the club stays on the outside and then moves on the inside so it goes like This got so straight away there I can feel that the club face if it comes slightly from the outside I keep the face square if it comes way outside the face is open or what’s I’m going to do is I’m going to flick my hands and hook

It I see I see so okay so this is great so if someone had a path those out to in hitting a slice you would tend to move the ball farther back to help incorporate yes absolutely so straight away there now your shoulders where your arms swing Along your shoulder line is

Going to improve that if I open my shoulders now it’s going to start me what moving more left so the release changes when I swing left I hold it through so also so many people want to hit it straight then you have to stand

More square and for me I try and do more of a 3/4 swing and hold it through so the face doesn’t move okay what are some other ways we can take this to the course you know you want to also work on trajectory okay so as you’re doing that

I can aim right put the ball further back so now I can just go like this now the ball slight little draw in it’s lower okay or I can go okay I’ve just hit a poor drive I have to hit High soft shot over a bunk onto the green now

Put the ball further forward open the face now I can hit a high fade so it’s fantastic just to take the ball and move it around but at the same time you can always walk behind double check where the balls are and make sure that you’re walking into

It and straight away as soon as your alignment improves your path and face will improve Gary you have worked with four number one golfers in the world there’s a a great skill as a coach to take someone from playing good developing the swing mechanics that you’re looking to

To do take it to the golf course but then really helping them excel in that highly competitive environment well first of all the most important is to get to know them their personalities they’re all so different they do things differently some love going to the gym some hate the gym some love hitting

Balls some prefer to play so getting to know your student is number one number two is for you as a coach is to really start focusing on their strength because when they start struggling they only see their weaknesses so once you start with a plus then you can say from there

Because you start building more confidence in them what are the things you need to work on and then you start working on those areas so now they have a plan they have a solution for improvement so then when I go to the golf course and I watch them play that’s

When I start looking at their routine their body language if I see poor body language I know there’s poor selft talk also how they react to a shot so once they start putting their focus in the right spot being able to accept a shot move on maybe having a practice

Rehearsal and then putting the club back in their bag so they don’t put a bad swing back in their bag I think is essential and then teaching them also how to be a good coach to themselves how they can encourage themselves and so for me routine is one of them one of the

Biggies can you take us through maybe a couple of the the core things you’re looking for in someone’s routine something that people watching right now can take to their own game yeah I see so many amateurs you know they don’t go through their pre-shot they don’t look

And see their lie they don’t figure out the wind but first of all when I get there I make a plan look at what I want to do check out the shot I want to hit then I see the shot and then I rehearse

The shot so if it’s a draw I really feel in to out and finishing back B once I make my two practice swings I’ll stand behind it look where I’m going and then the most important thing to me is body language so the greatest players in the

World they’re not down you don’t see any they’re like this chest out look where they going and then they walk into the ball they’re looking at their target then they put the face aim the face to where you want to go move into the ball waggle the club trigger some kick their

Right knee Jack Nicholas cocked his head there’s so many ways to do it some don’t even ground the club and then bam and off it goes M so if you hit a good shot it’s good to what deposit something good in your head that was great put the club in the bag because

The more you deposit good things and emotion in your head the better it’s going to be okay and then you want to if you hit a PO shot you just want to rehearse it maybe one swing put the club in the bag and off you do you walk head up again good body

Language and continue doing that again and again yeah I love that but now you go to the tour and some of the players are standing there for hours and hours and hours hitting balls well what are you telling your mind yeah so even that some of the players that struggle if you

Had to walk up to them and said oh you know tiger I believe you’re driving at Poly you can’t hit your drive in the Fairway what is he going to say to you you out of your mind I can hit in the Fairway yeah okay so now what are you

Thinking to hit in the Fairway no I’m feeling I’m trusting and me as your Co coach what is the one thing we came up with that you can trust in and do so it’s not three different thoughts it goes back to one and maybe a waggle a

Thought a setup position so most of the time with great players their confidence comes from their setup so I know if I put the ball forward every time Patrick candley love him stands there like this gets where the club’s going if you look at his swing on

Video hey us coaches can get pretty critical on anybody’s swing and he goes like this out boom through holds it hits little Fades and wins how many million yeah simple and then what happens to his full swing goes into his short game so if you really want to go from good to

Great It Go has to go through your entire game but if you stay in a technical mindset it’s going to get into your short game and then it’s goodbye Gary great stuff again you’ve taken three golfers two number one you’ve helped someone else who is at number one

So you’ve worked with four number ones over your career I mean you can’t get more impressive than that um you’re a legend of the game developing Juniors really appreciate you today well thanks for having me and uh you know I just keep going and enjoying the game

Enjoying coaching the game and I love going worldwide to inspire young teachers and you know like I said we met so many years ago and look at you today so I’m very proud of you and congratulations on everything that you’ve achieved I appreciate that and

You did inspire me I I worked for you I mean it was probably almost 20 years ago and it was it was an inspiring environment to be around so thank You