Greg Norman, nicknamed the "Great White Shark" for his aggressive golf style, shows viewers his teaching philosophy when it comes to ball striking and the short game.

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-Hi and welcome to another edition of Golf Channel Academy. I'm...

-Hi and welcome to another edition of Golf Channel Academy. I'm Steve Sands, pleased to be along tonight one of the game's great icons, Greg Norman. We're here in Hobe Sound, Florida, at the Medalist, Greg's home golf course and, Greg, we're gonna talk about a lot of things over the next 30 minutes. We're gonna do some short game work, we're gonna put some irons in your hands and then, of course, we're gonna start our show with your bread and butter, driving the golf ball. You're one of the game's great drivers. Why? If you could make it simple for us. -Well, simple-- my original coach, Charlie Earp, said to me, 'Greg, hit the ball as hard as you can and we'll figure out how to hit it straight,' because he thought the game of golf was a game where if you could dominate it off the tee, you could play extremely aggressively with your iron play which we'll get in that segment so I set up my-- set up my hole, golf hole, by my tee shot and as I developed my skills with driving the golf ball which we'll get into, I became more and more confident, so as my confidence just started to exude on the tee, then it all resonated through the rest of my game, so, to me, driver was the one that kicked it off. -If you had to pass along one technique for us, for the viewers out there, what would the one thing be that they have to do to drive the ball straight? -I don't care whether you're high-handicap, middle, or low-handicap or a professional, you look at all great drivers of the golf ball, we swing from the ground up. A lot of players who play the game of golf, the regular amateur out there who's, you know, [unk] they have a tendency of swinging from the top or throwing the golf club from the top so we try to think swing from the ground up. The great analogy is if you ever tried to chop a log with an ax, what do you do? You swing into the log, you don't swing up away from the log. Same with the golf swing. You're coming down, you're swinging into the ground, and you're bearing your feet into the ground, then you release all that power coming up and out of it. -There are so many things we're gonna talk about over the course of the next 30 minutes. We're gonna get into grip pressures and all kinds of different things but as we watch you hit a couple of drives, if someone had to have a key to hitting the ball a little bit farther than perhaps they hit it right now, what would that key be? -Take your right pocket, your right-- if you're a right-handed golfer, right? And we just call this-- speaks-- stick to right-handed. For me, distance comes from the rotation of your body, not how strong you are in your hands or your forearms but the rotation of your hips and your shoulders. To me, when I was in my younger days, if I wanted to turn on another 15 yards of power, I'd call it RPB, right pocket back. I take my right pocket and I push it away from the ball like this so you're actually feel like you're a piston, you're going back with one piston, the left piston comes forward and then, boom, the right piston goes forward and coming back and the left goes back on your downswing, so to me it was like make sure your right pocket turns but you're staying on top of your right foot. -Is shoulder turn a fitness thing or is it something that can be taught and knee flex and the way your balance is from head to toe as you drive the golf ball, how would you do that and demonstrate it for us. -Well, I think a good way to talk about it first before I demonstrate it, everybody is-- everybody's body is their own fingerprint so your anatomy is gonna dictate which way your shoulders turn so some guys might have-- some people who play the game might have a little tilt in their swing or in their body rotation as they-- if they naturally stand. Some people might turn with their shoulders a little bit shallower, depends on how your back flexibility between your scapulas, your lower back, how flexible you are with your hamstrings and your gluts so it all depends on the person, but don't fight it. I mean, everybody says, 'Well, your swing plane should be here, it should be perfect, should be perfect.' Well, everybody's swing plane, technically, is a little bit different so find out what suits you. A good way of doing it is without a golf club, just putting your arms across your fore-- across your chest like this and then rotate. Now, where are my feeling the most comfortable is where I have no pressure, okay? So, is that my shoulder going too tight for some or too flat for others? I don't know but I know, for me, when I go into this position, I've got a natural full turn without any pressure so practice that in the mirror. You can do that at home all day long, just stand there and just put your arms across your chest and find out what suits you the most and then go from there. -As we close out this segment, if you could give one strong tip to a high-handicapper to give him or her just a little bit more confidence with the longest club in the bag, what would it be? -Visualization. When a high-handicapper gets under pressure, they go out there and they see the out-of-bounds, they see the trees, they see the bunker, they see the water, they go, 'Oh, my gosh, I can't go on the water.' When a Tour player gets up there or a good player gets up there, they know the spot they wanna hit that golf ball to. They don't see the out-of-bounds. They don't see the trouble so we get up there and we're fixated on where we want the ball to go and how we want the ball to get there, so when I play with these pro-am players, I tell them, 'Don't think about the trouble, think about where you want the ball to finish, not where you don't want the ball to finish so that way it'll relax your mind. If your mind's relaxed, what happens then is your forearms and your grip pressure get relaxed. The biggest fault I see is people getting to the tee and they go, the 'death grip,' you know, you get the whites of your knuckles showing up there, and all of a sudden your forearms are tight and your shoulders are tight so when you get back to here, something's gotta give, and what normally gives is your weakest muscles which is probably your little finger, the next finger, that will release and then all of a sudden now the club's dropping, you've lost all your power buildup here, now what are you gonna do? You're gonna regroup, so then, [unk], like this and they throw the club, so it's relaxation. If you started with a nice, relaxed position, your muscles are gonna allow you to build up more tension as you turn and the more you turn, the more you coil around this lower part of your body and now everything's ready to unwind. This position. Now you know. -Okay. -The amateur, they get too tight because their mind puts them in that position. -Still ahead, Greg Normal recalls the best tip he's ever received. -And Nicklaus came up to me at the dinner table... -We are back with the great Greg Norman here in Hobe Sound, the Medalist. Golf Channel Academy, and, Greg, on the golf course and your great life here playing professional golf, what's the best advice you ever received? -I'd have to say '86, July. Saturday night, British Open. I was leading the golf tournament-- -Turnberry? -Turnberry, yep. And Nicklaus came up to me at the dinner table and he said, 'Greg, tomorrow, just think about your grip pressure. Grip it nice and soft.' You know, you hear advice all the time and, you know, people were very, very encouraging for me to go on and win that golf tournament, and so when I woke up the next morning, I actually thought about it, I actually wrote it down so I wouldn't forget about it the night before. We had late tee times like 3:20, ridiculous tee times, so, you know, I actually thought about it and the first thing I did in the morning when I picked up a golf club in my room was that I actually felt it and, yeah, I don't-- I think we become oblivious to it because it's just an automatic thing for us. It's like the regular person driving to work. I mean, sometimes, we get, you know, tense by grabbing the steering wheel. Just think about what you're doing with a cup of coffee or writing with a pen or whatever, even holding your cellphone and you can learn to relax those muscles so Nicklaus probably gave me the best tip of all and then I went on, obviously, went on and won the golf tournament so I'd have to say it worked. -The first of your two Open Championships, one of the great weeks of your life, I'm sure, on the golf course, '86 at Turnberry. Let's move on now to grip pressure as well as we go through the iron play and what's the key as you line up? You told us what it's like to line up a drive. Do you do the same thing for iron play or is it a totally different routine for you? -No, it's the same routine, Steve, absolutely the same routine but let me just explain. I think the biggest fault that amateurs get into when they play, I don't care how good or bad you are, they don't know exactly how far they hit a 7-iron or a 5-iron or a 3-iron or 4-iron. When we play, at the prime of our golf, we err on the side of safety. Like we don't try and hit our golf club the maximum every time, our irons especially. Drivers, yes you can 'cause you're not worried about controlling distance as there's water at the end of the fairway. With your irons, you are concerned about controlling of the distance, so, to me, all the amateurs out there, you should learn how far you hit your golf ball with each respective club. Now-- and don't try and hit it to the max all the time so you throttle back to control the distance, and the lower the club gets, from a 7-iron to an 8-iron to a 9-iron to pitching wedge, now you gotta be really precise as you possibly can, whatever your capabilities are, of knowing that distance, 'cause they use score in golf clubs. The normal 7-iron, I can-- let's just say it's 165, 168, 170. If you wanna step on it, you can get it out to maybe close to 180, if I wanted to, but then it's the controlling of the ball flight is what's gonna determine that so it's the same routine, I get behind, I visualize the shot, I visualize the ball flight I wanna get, and then I'll just, right now, this is just a normal swing, no difference. So that's just a regular 7-iron. -Alright, hopefully people can see this. Buddy Antonopoulos who's the head pro here at the Medalist, been here with you a long, long time, was telling us something that you're famous now for picking the ball. -Uh huh. -Not having a lot of divots. Not just on the golf course but on the range as well. Take us through the process of how you became that type of player when a lot of pros we see, you know, at the end of a range, you know, they've been hitting balls for 50 minutes or 60 minutes, they've got just a huge chunk of divots. Why are you the exact opposite? How did that happen? -Well, that's got a lot to do with my swing plane. My swing plane was very, very up. You know, I had the nice-- back in my younger days, it was up so therefore I stayed tall. My chest was high all the time. I never had any drop into it. You'll see some of the players-- Tiger hits a lot of drop and you see his head go down. I was the opposite. I stayed very high and staying high, my right foot used to slide. -Right. -'Cause I generated so much power but my body stayed up so therefore, my shot angle stayed in a nice plane but it wasn't digging into the ground. And the other thing, too, is the grass I used to practice on wasn't very good 'cause it was always gnarly, into the grain, and it wasn't like manicured like here so you couldn't-- if I was into the grain, if your clubhead miss hits the shot a little bit, the club would dig into the ground. -Is that something you recommend to the amateur player or would you rather them dig a little bit? -Oh, I think the angle of attack of the golf club should be down. It should be ball-turf, no question. How much turf you wanna take is totally up to you. It depends on your shoulder rotation, obviously if you're playing your shot. I was just the picker, you know? Steve Stricker is about the only one out there now that I see picks the golf ball. He even picks it off the tee on a par 3. So, you know, again, it's just the player's preference. I liked it because it allowed me, especially in wet conditions, I had more control of the golf ball in wet conditions 'cause I wasn't grabbing some grass which was moist in between the ball and the clubface 'cause my angle of attack was so steep and yet so shallow I could get away with it. One tip that I could give amateurs, from a 7-iron, 8-iron or whatever, if you're having problems with your rhythm or understanding body rotation and we can probably get this in the pitching later on, but take your same golf club and instead of trying to hit the golf club flat out, address the ball and swing at 50% power but a full swing. This is really hard to do but it's actually a great training mechanism. So you actually stand-- here you go. -And what does that-- -And it teaches you, tells you where your body is at all times. It is actually a fantastic training tool. Trying to hit-- if you hit the ball 150 yards with a 7-iron, try and hit it 75 yards, with a full swing. Do that a couple times then go and have a full swing and you'll all of a sudden, 'Now I know where my clubhead is. I know where my arms are. I know how my body is rotating,' is it rotating, is it rotating, okay, I'm good, I'm good, now I've gotta hold that. Same deal. Now you're gonna rotate through. And then you'll feel everything. You really don't feel it when you're going at it flat out. -Coming up, Greg Norman faces one of the most intimidating short shots in the game, and explains how you can improve your pitching. -Go down the bottom of the grip, right? Get very close to the ball, on top of-- -For the best in golf instruction, go to GolfChannel.com. -We are back on the Golf Channel Academy and speaking of academy, you have a new academy coming out. Got one in China, now you're gonna have one in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. What's that all about? -Well, it's about giving back in all the ways I possibly can. You know, Myrtle Beach is a great location for me. I have built a golf course there at Barefoot Landing, I've got a restaurant there and, you know, the academy is all about making that transition from a college player into a pro player. A lot of people think it's real easy but at the end of the day, to make that leap is a big leap and there's a lot-- it's not just the technique of playing the game of golf, it's all the other components that come with it, Steve, so, you know, it's an honor. It really is. I'm looking forward to it. It's our stepping stone into the United States-- -Right-- -From an academy standpoint so tied in with one in Australia, one in China, one here, we're actually really punching the grass so it's going pretty good. -I'm sure it will be a huge success and really help grow the game of golf especially in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area. Okay, we are now-- -Uh huh. -In the short game area and this is a very scary shot for amateurs. We've seen the technique you've given us from a driving perspective and the iron play but here, we're about 15 yards short of a bunker and then you've got, I'd say about 10 to 15 yards of green to work with for a pin. It is a very difficult shot for amateurs to hit. Why? -Especially off a real tight lie, too. -Right, right. Is this another mental, visual thing? -Of course it is. What the amateur sees is the big bunker right there in front of them so that's a daunting visual aspect for them but before we get into that, a lot of-- especially off tight lies like this, a lot of the secret to a good short game is making sure you have the right golf club. I mean, golf clubs nowadays have a lot of bounce on it. -Right. And when you get on a real tight lie, that bounce is gonna dictate how that leading edge strikes the golf ball so if you have too much bounce, that's gonna hit the ground first, that's gonna speed up the clubface a little bit and the leading edge is gonna not go underneath the ball, it's gonna hit a little bit above the bottom of the ball, that means the ball's gonna go lower. -Right. -And less spin so you've got to understand what your golf club's got for you, and you can make a little slight adjustment to the way you position the golf club so let's just assume your golf club is perfect, okay-- -I don't wanna speak for everybody but I think they think the technology only is for the long game. It actually takes-- -Yeah, it's great for the short game as well. -Great for the short game. -Absolutely. I mean, my golf club, I grind it off to like 6-1/2, 7 degrees bounce. -Right. -There might be some golf clubs out there with 10 degrees of bounce so you just gotta be aware of your golf club. It's there to help you, use it, so just make sure it's positioned right but, you know, let's go back to the technique. A lot of people, because it's tight, they see a bunker there, now they gotta get the ball up so what-- the biggest fault I see with amateurs is they over swing with the short shot. They get back here too long and then they come again and go, 'Oh, my gosh, I've got too much of a backswing for the distance of the shot,' so they decelerate, the clubhead passes your hands and what happens, you either blade it, you chunk it 'cause you hit it fat-- -Right. -You'd have gone over the green or in the bunker. One of the things that I taught myself and you watch every great player does, make sure you go-- your swing is a little shorter and you accelerate through the ball with the clubhead and the way to think about doing that is, it's a mini golf swing, no matter whether you're hitting a 300-yard drive or whether you're hitting a 30-yard chip shot, pitch shot, you gotta have a little bit of body rotation. The hands create the problems. The more pressure you get on there, the tighter your grip gets so your hands take over. We have to eliminate the hands. That's why I chip without a glove. I like to feel that grip in between my fingers and in the palm of my hands so it's really floating. So grip pressure is crucial and make sure that the arc of the swing, like, again, is dictated by your body rotation. The arc, I like to keep it flat and simple and just make sure you speed your clubheads with the speed of the rotation of your body, just like a mini golf swing. -I think it's important it's important to notice that when you're taking it back, I mean, you're literally taking it back. Hip high almost. It's almost fascinating to watch and people do make that long, looping swing-- -Yeah-- -And that's the biggest mistake they can make. -And if you wanna practice something interesting about getting clubhead speed, go down the bottom of the grip. -Right. -Right? Get very close to the ball, on top of it, and now the only way is with the same backswing, really accelerate through. Now, you have to give more body rotation and you put more spin on the ball, a little bit more control but very few people actually go all the way down but it's a practice routine and a tip that you can use to get the feel of the golf club accelerating through the ball. -What's the bigger miss for amateurs, short into the bunker here or skull it and go deep? -I think it's what they last look at and it's the bunker. They see the bunker, it's in their mind, so they're in fear of it, your subconscious takes over, that's where it's gonna go most of the time. -If you had to give a very good player, low handicap, one tip on the short game as it pertains to what we've seen the last few minutes here, what would that tip be to make them really perfect this shot? -Shorten your swing to 50% of what you think you're doing and I don't care whether you're only going to hip high or whether you're going to knee high, whether you're going to shoulder high. Shorten that swing up 50% and accelerate through. If you can do that, now you're teaching your body to keep unwinding and keep rotating through the short shot. It's not-- no different than a guy hitting a punch shot into the wind. A punch shot happens, he takes a three-quarter swing and what happens? He just powers, he rotates that lower body a little bit more to keep the ball low and stay on top of it, right? Same, no different with the short game. It's just a little bit more touch, a little bit more feel and not as much power being imparted by your body rotation. -We are back with Greg Norman here at the Medalist and the weather here is perfect. The weather in Hawaii sometimes not so perfect. A lot of wind over there. Australians are used to that. Is that one of the reasons you think as the 2011 season kicks off again on the Golf Channel in Kapalua that Australians perform well there? -That's I think one of the reasons that the guys like to play a lot of wind no matter where we play, in Sydney, Melbourne, in Queensland, Perth, we do get a lot of wind in Australia but I also think it's the type of grass. I think it's very grainy greens. I've played there before, the ball releases a lot, the ball breaks a lot, you look at Adam Scott winning in Singapore. -Hmm. -Very grainy greens so we grew up on very, very grainy greens so I think there's a little bit in the grain to my understanding, really, you know, the Aussie guys are fabulous. You know, they promote the game of golf not only for themselves but for the game of golf, for tournaments around the world but also for the Australian flag. -One of the reasons that the game is where it is today is because of people like yourself, got a lot of flair, a lot of talent, you enjoyed it, and you made it enjoyable for people to watch and come out and see you on a regular basis. Greg Norman, it's been pleasure for the last half hour. Golf Channel Academy with the great Greg Norman. Thanks so much for spending the last 30 minutes with us. We'll see you again real soon.

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