You slice. You catch it fat from the fairway. Your game: riddled with a two-way miss. With my plan, that’s all part of your golfing past.
Below, you’ll learn how to nix these errors and get a ton more consistent in your ball striking. It’s a plan that I feel works for everyone — from struggling rec player to the golfers you see on TV each weekend. It’s based on always getting back to a solid impact position, something you can do by rehearsing impact first. Then you’ll be growing the swing to add more speed and power.
In this special edition of GOLF instruction, I’ll show you how to do just that in five easy steps, starting with learning what proper impact should look and feel like while incrementally adding width and speed to your overall swing. They are proven fundamentals that will not only help you, but also give some structure and insight to your regular practice sessions. Guided practice is the best practice, more so than simply swinging for the fences when you’re at the range. Follow along and at the start of the new season, your golfing buddies won’t believe what they’re seeing. Neither will you.
In order to achieve perfect impact, you need to know what it looks and feels like. That’s Step 1 in this learning session. So … with a wedge, follow these steps:
1. With a ball set slightly forward of center, ground your club while setting about 80 percent of your weight on your front foot.
2. Push your tailbone back and rotate your hips 40 to 45 degrees open — as if you’re getting them “out of the way” for the moment you strike the ball.
3. Call this the Holy Grail of impact: Press your hands forward without moving anything else, adding some bend to your trail wrist while keeping your lead arm straight. You know you did it right if your arms, hands and club form a lowercase ‘y’, as you see in the photo above.
4. As you get into these positions, mind your head — set the right side of your face behind the ball. As you’ve probably experienced in your golfing career, moving your head too far in front of the ball tends to lead to a ton of swing misery.
5. Once you’re set, stick a tee between your trail arm and your torso, right in your armpit. Create pressure between your arm and your body to hold the tee in place. Subtle, but this trail arm and body connection is one of the true keys to producing solid strikes, as you’ll learn in Step 2 below.
If you can copy what you see here, you’re on the fast track to better ball striking and lower scores. Practice these impact alignments as much as you can. You can spend time at the range as well as at home grooving this. In the next step, you’ll learn how to guide your swing through this A-plus position.
Once you have nailed the look and feel of a proper impact position in Step 1, it’s time to add some motion to your overall swing. We’ll start small and work into fuller motions in the proceeding steps.
To put this in action: It’s time to reset your lowercase ‘y’ impact position, then smoothly rotate back. The goal here is to transport the lowercase ‘y’ you formed in your mock impact position to a one-third backswing (top photo avove). All you need is a slight shoulder turn and moving a bit of weight from your front foot to your trail foot. Important: Don’t swing past this length at this point in the overall exercise.
Once you’ve set your lowercase ‘y’ mini- backswing, hit the ball, swinging your arms and turning as normal, but cutting off your finish to the point where the club is parallel to the ground (bottom photo above). Check that you’ve posted up solidly on your lead leg. Your wrists will have just a slight re-hinge. This combination of body turn and arm extension is a hallmark of great players. You’ll know you did it correctly when you move from a lowercase ‘y’ to a capital ‘Y’ position.
Big key: Keep the connection between your trail arm and your torso, pinching the tee in your armpit firmly. This is critical to managing your body structure as well as keeping you on plane through the strike.
You’re not looking for big hits here, just solid strikes as you work on your lowercase ‘y’ to capital ‘Y’ motion. If you’re like most of my students, you’ll feel like you’re compressing the ball like never before, even with a “mini-swing.”
Dedicate at least a full range bucket to this drill before even thinking about adding length to your motion.
Suggestion: Start every one of your practice sessions with Steps 1 and 2. You’ll build the ability to create solid ball-first contact every time.
But knowing you can’t play this game in “drill mode,” it’s now time to build an address position that best allows you to achieve the four key impact fundamentals without even thinking. Here’s what to do, in four easy steps:
1. Stand erect with any iron, hinging your wrist to get the club parallel with the ground while keeping both arms snug against your sides. Put the club level to your belt buckle.
2. Without changing anything else, extend your hands away from your body. Checkpoint: The distance between the butt of the grip and your body should equal the distance between your thumb and pinkie when both splayed.