I took a Lesson from the TOUR'S HOTTEST short game coach | Parker Mclachlin on Be Better GOLF

We're stacking up, we're stacking up the odds, we're in Las Vegas, we're stacking the odds in your favor here, okay, okay, are we going to teach me a

lesson

now? It's okay and I'll be a

better

golf

er. I've taken

lesson

s from dozens of people and today I have one of the best

short

game

instructors in the world with me, Parker McLaughlin, Hi Parker, great to see you too. Parker was a winner on the PGA Tour, how many years ago was that? 2008. Okay, so 14 He played professional

golf

for many years and is now focused on teaching the

short

game

, something you always enjoyed doing in the short game. .

I was always good at it, but I did it my way and then, um. I also found a

better

way to do it. It was good. I was lucky to have Paul Azinger as a mentor for several years and he

took

me under his wing and taught me quite a bit about the short game and how things work. works and how the wedge is supposed to be used okay before we go any further I have to ask you a question about Paul so if you grab it like this you can still have how not so just dig it up completely and you can still have a Epic short game, I can attest, yeah, the best sound I've ever heard, like a 40-50 yard shot, was him cutting it out of a grass, that's the most amazing thing or him coming out of the bunker with that, yeah, we saw that. little ping wedge, it's held up so many famous shots from the bunker, it's something special to see it's amazing out of the bunker and with short game, that's why when people always ask me, hey, do I have to weaken my grip, yes, to hit the short game? shots, yeah, so I would say I've heard that before where that's my grip and then it's okay with the short game, now I'm going to put this up or the left hand will go the other way or that, that way they'll go from that way the week on the left hand that way, yeah, and it's like well, I mean, I was lucky enough to be with one of the best and he had the strongest grip of all time, right, yeah, there's no need, there is no need to change. your grip is other mechanics, it's good, the grip is just going to be a band-aid, okay, so whatever grip you have and your grip is fine, you can make that work, so today we're going to go over a lesson, I think.

People have seen the evolution to improve what I'm doing and everything, so you guys can learn from me, so if I'm going to see you for the first time, it's the first thing I usually do. I'm telling you, uh, I would say, I would say, what are your goals for today, what do you want, what do you want to achieve, uh, I want to achieve a little bit, but sometimes, in my chip, I have this great sense of Confidence that I am Like, oh, I'm going to hit some Sizzler and I'm going to control my distance, you know, really contact like I like.

I would really like to get out of a normal lie like the places I play. Rough golf isn't crazy or anything and I feel like when I hit it really well on a normal fairway it gives me a lot of confidence, so yeah, I'd like to improve my contact. I feel Scoopy a little bit sometimes and then sometimes too high and I feel like, well, where do I really want to be in this impact area and just looking at your um, the swings that I had seen just a minute before? I would say it starts with how long you last on the backswing, you have so much time for a 15 yard shot, yeah, yeah, are you going to say I need to throw it all or you know what I've thrown.

A lot of times they let me ride it out and just trust it and then they're 20 feet beyond the hole because by itself from here I could hit this 100 yards. I couldn't couldn't agree more, yes, so you have to do something exactly. right, exactly right, so my goal is to be able to get you to a place where you can feel safe, hitting aggressive shots and not worrying about the ball coming out too, yeah, yeah, because that's where the contact problems come from. because you say I want that good contact the moment you get good contact it's 20 or 30 feet too far and then you back off and this is not going to have Yips in the title but I think that's probably where the yips come from where people have fallen too short and they know it's not enough, they've gone too far, they know it's not enough and there's a kind of yes, wait, yes, yes, exactly, like I like it. once you make a couple of shots, okay, I'm using the Parker Flying Line Wedge here, so let's see, help me with my setup a little bit okay, that's a great example, perfect, that's what you don't want come.

I hate it when you go into a lesson, you just got everything perfect, yeah, oh, yeah, that's better, okay, so I would say here are a couple of things I'd like you to do number one. I would like your feet to come closer together, okay, yeah, they're almost almost touching, okay, and then now, if you were to look at the position of your ball in relation to the target, that's the way forward, yeah, right now you're going to have to tilt everything. your weight like this and then take into account that right or let's just move the position of your ball, okay? go, so you're like the back of the left heel, yeah, right, over and over again, the way I do it is here's our target line.

I'm drawing a line perpendicular to that, okay, that's right, even though your feet feel like they're on point. around here ideally I would like your feet to be square, oh okay, but it's not because that gives you a more accurate perspective. Now you see that yes, yes, because so it could be like that and say, hey, it's on my left heel and really. so, I say, hey, it's in my life depending on my starting line, yeah, okay, so my starting lines are basically straight, so I'm going to square up a little bit here, yeah, there you go and let's score right, next I would say that for you it is controlling the backswing what is the driver of the backswing for you your tendency is the hands and arms, yes, that is your type of backswing control mechanism what I want it to be is more body more pivot of the body, so if I can get you more body pivot in the backswing then all of a sudden you can start turning as much as you want on the way and that's where the freedom comes from, that intellectual feeling, I know, yeah, but this is so comfortable, so comfortable, I know, yeah, that's why it's so hard to go from this shot to then get out of the bunker, because I bet outside the bunker you're really good, so I can be because you can spin everything as much as you want, yeah, but it's different here, no, sure, I don't want that much angle of attack down there, so I'll give you this here just as a reminder.

I want you to spin, oh well, but at least it's like that. less I'm not used to being so short, right, oh yeah, but again, that's my goal. I'm taking your ball speed away, yeah, so I can build it back up there, yeah, that was it, oh, it sure was. Yeah, I guarantee when you go watch this and look at what you just did on the last one versus the first one, you'll be like, "Okay, that last one looked like a Tour player." Okay, that was really nice, kid." that was really close and again it comes back to now that we're building a nice shallower angle of attack, trust the ground again allowing yourself to skim the ground, okay, trust the interaction of the ground, yeah, like that, that one you could I see he was here and he definitely wanted to get the ball first, yeah, okay, now you're doing a good job of building a shallow angle of attack, just trust the ground, let this stick rub Look, I'd rather see that lady than the one you hit before that was like that is weird, so I'm building and trusting this pivot-driven movement is enough and then also trusting that hey, it's okay to get some absolutely now watch. the position of the ball, it's sneaking too much forward, there you go, yeah, so for me, I mean, it could go square like that I know for sure, you know for sure where it is. conscience back here, okay, come on, yeah, you have a lot of room, right?, but again. you're doing it with your body turning oh, I love that nice flight with a good spin too, right, yeah, what I'm used to doing is taking a bigger swing and then leaving the face more open because I've always done that.

I was like, oh man, I want that face to be open in case I make a mistake and that way I can slide. I feel like if I

took

a more square face, it would dig in and then the mistake isn't just a small mistake. it's like a mess, yeah, yeah, so ideally for you we can build that open face with the movement that we're building right now, okay, and then you can rotate harder, okay, the right thing for your DNA and how much. You like to build a wrist hinge in the backswing, right? I just don't want you to fall into that again.

Okay, so how do I begin to develop my personal feelings about how far to hit it? You know, we listen. about the clock system and things like that, but what drills, what kind of things do you like to start with so that I'm okay, this is my checkpoint to know one, I wasn't very skilled and two, what was an appropriate backswing length. for that kind of carry, yeah, we can, we can catch you, no, go ahead, you can say we can get you into that pause drill, okay, so I get to the top and I pause and then again we're still going to try to get there to this highest flag here um, but we're going to get to the top of our swing and we're going to pause, okay, from this point you will be encouraged to rotate and deliver speed to the ball to get to that, so I'll give you an awareness here, yes, yes, somewhere in there, go ahead, perfect, okay, now, oh, you really rotate a lot more when you do the pause exercise, it's not so crazy, yes, yes, because if I It was if I'm in flow here and then the buttons can stop because there's momentum exactly here there's no momentum so you just have to go so let's do one for the camera here okay so we're.

I'm going to go up and pause I don't know I don't want to press a uh, you're okay, okay, you're not going to press it, pop and pause, okay, go okay, but look what your buttons are now, right? oh yes, if you look like a

tour

player now, yes, yes, of course, if you are, if my goal is here and I look like this. I don't look like a

tour

player, that's Mr. Haverstrom of yes, I want, I want to look like that. Yeah, sure, but this is how you look right now, okay, let me pause again, that's good.

Well, go to the top and take a break. Yes, that's the drop kick. Yes, it's still decent. You can still see it's good. It's still got some spin so yeah, I'm 50 50, I even feel like there's five percent more weight in there, okay, go good, good, good, see if we can brush that grass an inch before the ball. way I think I'm not trusting that that's enough, it's true, yes, yes, it's very beautiful, that was good now, there is no awareness of where we are trying to go, yes, of course, but just there like that it was incredible, yeah, right, right?

Great, it felt good, it felt really good and it's going to be easy for you to start figuring out your distance control because you're going to operate it by turning these right buttons, yeah, there it's beautiful, there we are stacking. We're stacking the odds right, we're in Vegas, we're stacking the odds in your favor here, okay, okay, that's really delicious, yeah, but you, I would even say it was probably half an inch behind, a quarter of an inch. behind. yeah, yeah, yeah, but you can start to hear it's a deeper sound when I'm at home and I'm like, okay, I've got an hour to work on my chipping or my short game.

I have a facility like this in Long Beach, what do you think I should work on? I would. I would spend 20 minutes doing it.