Chris Ries: Hello everyone, my name is Chris Ries. I'm one of the teaching professionals here at TopGolf located in Alexandria, Virginia. And we're here today working on your golf swing, more specifically your full swing and your long game.

What we're going to talk about next is going through a proper club fit to ensure the equipment that were swinging is fit to us. One of the most important things about getting a proper club fit is making sure that I have the correct grip size. Your fingers of your left hand should just be barely-barely-barely touching the left pad of your thumb. If the grip is too thin or too small the fingers will disappear, and I start to squeeze or grip the golf club too tightly. If the grip is too thick and I have a big gap between here, it makes it very difficult to square the clubface up to hit straighter shorts.

Next and the extremely important is also the proper flex. As I start to swing the golf club down you want the shaft actually bend, we call that putting a load on the golf club there. As I start to square the clubface up, that energy is released right through the impact area. A golf-club that is way too stiff and will not bend or load for me, the golf ball has a very large tendency to go low and to the right, low and to the right. A golf club that is too weak or gets too much flex in it, it's pretty unpredictable with where the ball is going to go. The next element to getting a proper club fit is ensuring that the lie-angle of the golf club is correct for my swing. As players swing down, a lot of players will tend to dig the toe of the golf club into the ground. What this is going to do is slow the toe of the golf club down as it's in the ground, and the heel of the golf club will actually speed up and twist the clubface open, producing a short that goes off to the right.

Other players will swing back, and as they come through they will dig the heel of the golf club. The clubface gets slammed shut and everything should go off to the left. What we want to have happen with the proper lie angle is the golf club should dig perfectly square through the ground. With your existing clubs if your divots start out very small and get bigger, you have the wrong lie angle.

Another extremely important element to club fitting is making sure I get the proper length golf club. As a player swings down, if I consistently hit the golf ball off the toe of the club, I need to have a longer golf club to move the ball towards the center of the face. If I have a tendency to hit the golf ball more into the heel, I actually need a shorter golf club to help the ball hit the middle of the face. So the next time you're in the market for new clubs, its money we'll spend to seek out a certified fitter and a facility that utilizes a launch monitor during the fits. Launch monitors are amazing technology that tells us tones of information about back-spin rates of the golf ball, the physical launch angle and height of the ball it's traveling, and also tells us so many things about the golf club. Is the shaft correct for you? Is the lie-angle and also the length of that club correct for you?

Hopefully these tips will really help you to improve your long game and we'll see out on the link.