In this video, Golf Monthly Top 50 Coach Trey Niven takes a look at the swing of former Premier League footballer, Jay Bothroyd. Since retiring from football Jay has devoted his time and effort to his golf game and has quickly reduced his handicap. But what does he need to do to reach the next level? We take a look at Jay's swing and the tips and drills that will hep him improve
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00:00Hey guys, Trey Niven here, Top 50 UK coach. I'm joined with a very special guest of mine,
00:06Jay. We also got the Out of Bounds show which we've been hosting at the minute. We've just
00:11been playing a few holes out at Hadley Wood, amazing golf course, amazing weather today.
00:16Spotted a couple things in your swing, Jay. Just a couple? Just a couple, yeah. All right. Not giving
00:20you too many though because I don't want you to get too good. Oh well, I need you to show me how
00:24good you are. Okay. So these tips could potentially get my handicap down. Which is what now at the
00:29minute? 6.7. 6.7. I've done some work in the winter. Things are looking good. I'm improving.
00:36But obviously, you say you're a Top 50 golf course coach. We're going to get you down. Show me then.
00:41I think before I give you some tips, we're going to get down to five and below. Yeah? Deal? Deal.
00:51Tell you what, Jay. Strike perfect. A little bit right there. And off balance. Yeah. Do you think
00:56that's something you see in your game typically? Yeah. I don't feel confident. You know, there's
01:02some days you turn up and, you know, you feel good with your driver. Yeah. But more often than not,
01:06I don't feel confident from tee to fairway. Yeah. When I'm on the fairway, I feel really good. And I
01:10think that's why my scores are low. Yeah. If I can improve on my tee shot, I think my score will come
01:17down dramatically. So that's what I struggle with, I think. Just hit one more drive for us, Jay. But I think
01:22driver's going to be the one that we look at today. It's a good shot, actually.
01:33Well done. So I think, again, you hit some really good tee shots. You hit, I would say, more shots
01:40right than left. Yeah. But you can still have a bit of a left miss as well, can't you? Yeah. But it's
01:45the right shot we've got to probably look at first. Yeah. It's like that kind of, sometimes I just like,
01:50you know, that kind of knuckleball. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So firstly, in that, what's really important
01:56to understand, especially for the people at home is if it's a directional miss, say right or left,
02:02what do you think is causing that? What's the physics, what's happening at impact to cause that,
02:07do you think? My face is going to be closed. A hundred percent. Yeah. So you've got to go straight
02:11to the club face. Yeah. If it's right, left, high or low, it's generally where the loft is pointing.
02:17So you've got to think, okay, how do we potentially, if it's low, less loft, if it's right,
02:22it's also closed. Yeah. So how do we bring that club face back and get it, get it straight? So I
02:28think just looking at your swing out on the course and just on a video then, just set yourself up to,
02:34as if you was going to hit one. Good. Hold that there. And just take the club back to my hand here.
02:40Great. So this part for you, if we slow the video down, what you saw, you saw your grip
02:45start to twist the club quite a lot early on. Yeah. So now he's taking all the loft off the
02:50golf club and actually shut in the face. Okay. So if you did nothing from here and let's just say
02:54you brought the club back down with no twist, you can see club face is pointing a little bit low and
03:00then I'll probably do that right. Yeah. And then you add things in to try and compensate for that
03:05kind of loss of loft and shut club face. So everything tries to go. That's another thing that I feel,
03:11I feel like sometimes I do that. Yeah. Yeah. Try and combat it. And then sometimes it works. Yeah.
03:16Yeah. But majority of the time it doesn't. Yeah. And you see the bit that goes up is almost like
03:21your part to save yourself. Yeah. Cause there's a, we don't want to over complicate things. We want
03:26to try and keep it quite simple. So just think it's going low, right. I need some loft and I need to
03:30square the face up a bit more. Yeah. So just bring it back to about my hand again. So about waist height,
03:35just to there. Perfect. I want you to focus on getting that club face pretty perpendicular to
03:41the ground. So more of like the toe up, the toes down, left loft. Yeah. This is a little bit more.
03:48So this is just really simple, just takeaway piece. Okay. You might focus on this little logo here or
03:53your watch. Yeah. Pointing up more. That way. Yeah. That's probably overdone, but I'd rather you
03:59over exaggerate it a little bit to practice it at the start. Okay. So just do that one more time.
04:06Okay. That's good. And again.
04:11Good. That looks really good. Okay. We're going to hit one now.
04:17Lucky. Try again. Feel a bit different. Yeah. Yeah.
04:21That feels really different actually.
04:26So just ever so slightly feeling that watch up to the sky.
04:29Good. So that one, it's like the opposite way a little bit now. Yeah. Definitely didn't have any of
04:38that hook spin on it, did it? Yeah. So you can see whatever you change there in that early phase,
04:43change how the face was impacting the ball. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'll tell you one thing for me,
04:49that when I, right now, where my game's at, I just want to see my,
04:55in an ideal world, obviously fairway. Yeah. But just down there in play, even if it was in the rough,
05:00I feel confident from there. Yeah. That I can still get to the flag with my irons. Yeah.
05:05Because I feel my iron play is good. Yeah. Yeah. I'd work on club face really simply. Don't overcomplicate it.
05:11Like there? Yeah. Just feeling like that watch is pointing up more to the sky. As simple as swinging
05:16back to here. That's it. That's right. And just check where the face is. Do it again. That's it.
05:20Just keep it as so simple as that. Yeah.
05:29Good. And then you can even rehearse that into a little practice swing and then hit one.
05:35That's it. Like Justin Thomas practices that really early part, doesn't he?
05:38Oh, okay. Right there. That's it. And then you go and hit. Okay.
05:49And then what I think on top of that, if you did start to see some go out that way,
05:54what that is, is you're almost your old release, like you hanging on to trying to add loft. So now
06:00you can just allow your hands and arms to release. I'll tell you, for me being a football player,
06:05yeah. I respond well to feel. Yeah. Like as an analogy, you know, so for me, when I've seen that
06:14my practice swing, my practice thing feels like my, that's the way my real swing should be. Yeah. So,
06:21for example, that's my practice swing, but I can't replicate that with my real swing. Yeah. And that's
06:28where I'm. But the more you do of that though, in your practice, so if those last two have gone a little
06:35bit left, add the same first move in, but react to it, try and bring it back now. Okay. Through the ball.
06:43Good try. That was better. Yeah. So educate yourself, like hit different shapes, like rights and
06:49lefts, like educate your hands to be able to figure out where the face is. So the practice for me then
06:54would just be like to there. Yeah. And then back through, square in it. That's it. Good. Happy
07:01with that? Yeah. Yeah. No, I can't give you too much. Because you might beat me.
07:09So a bit of a summary for that one for Jay. He had a little bit of a low right miss for him as a
07:14left-handed golfer. So straight away, got to go for the club face, doing anything that we can in
07:19that session there to square the club face a bit more, find a little bit of loft and just help him
07:25kind of generate a square impact. So just, if you're trying to get your club face a little bit
07:29squarer and trying to find some loft, I'd start with a grip. If you can, if you can't find it through
07:35the grip, try and find it early on in the swing. And that's kind of the approach that we went with Jay
07:41because he's kind of got his grip. He's quite comfy with that. So got to find it in the swing,
07:45try and see the ball do something a little bit different. And then after that, see if you can
07:49bring that ball back to where you want it to finish.