Why It Is Important To Strike The Centre Of The Club Face (Video) - by Peter Finch
Why It Is Important To Strike The Centre Of The Club Face (Video) - by Peter Finch

When looking to produce spin, striking the center of the club face is very, very important because you’ll be hitting the shot near the sweet spot of the club. When you strike the ball near the sweet spot of the club, that produces the maximum amount of ball speed. When the maximum amount of ball speed is produced, the more revolutions of spin that you are likely to see. It is as simple as that. If you start to strike towards the heal or if you start to strike towards the toe, the effect and the amount of backspin that would produce from those two spots is greatly decreased. The only time when it’s increased with a toe or a heel strike is with the driver, and that’s overall spin numbers moving to the right and moving to the left.

If you’re using a very, very high lofted wedge like this 56-degree sand wedge, striking out the toe or the heel will decrease the amount in backspin which is being applied to the ball. Now there’s a few drills that you can use to actually help find the center of the club face, the easiest one is this tee drill. All you need is a couple of tees placed either side of a golf ball, the golf ball placed down in the middle, and the whole point of this is to try and strike the shot without clipping the tees away, so that quite tight gap there to actually get. But if I’m actually going to hit the ball I might have actually missed the tees, I know I’m going to be in and around the center of that club face. So again, the setup, just the standard little wedge setup for me here, I’m going to move back and through, trying to catch the ball first and then that turf, but you’ll just notice here how I took out the inside tee. So what that means is, as I came through impact, my club was moving a little bit too much on the inside and my impact position there is slightly out of the toe. Therefore, the amount of backspin that I would have actually produced on that shop was less than if you would have hit out at the middle. A great drill like that will also give you feedback if you’re moving too much on the inside like I did there or you’re coming too much from out of it. So give that drill a go, try and find the center of that club face a little bit more, and try and produce the maximum amount to spin that you can. 2016-09-02

When looking to produce spin, striking the center of the club face is very, very important because you’ll be hitting the shot near the sweet spot of the club. When you strike the ball near the sweet spot of the club, that produces the maximum amount of ball speed. When the maximum amount of ball speed is produced, the more revolutions of spin that you are likely to see. It is as simple as that. If you start to strike towards the heal or if you start to strike towards the toe, the effect and the amount of backspin that would produce from those two spots is greatly decreased. The only time when it’s increased with a toe or a heel strike is with the driver, and that’s overall spin numbers moving to the right and moving to the left.

If you’re using a very, very high lofted wedge like this 56-degree sand wedge, striking out the toe or the heel will decrease the amount in backspin which is being applied to the ball. Now there’s a few drills that you can use to actually help find the center of the club face, the easiest one is this tee drill. All you need is a couple of tees placed either side of a golf ball, the golf ball placed down in the middle, and the whole point of this is to try and strike the shot without clipping the tees away, so that quite tight gap there to actually get. But if I’m actually going to hit the ball I might have actually missed the tees, I know I’m going to be in and around the center of that club face.

So again, the setup, just the standard little wedge setup for me here, I’m going to move back and through, trying to catch the ball first and then that turf, but you’ll just notice here how I took out the inside tee. So what that means is, as I came through impact, my club was moving a little bit too much on the inside and my impact position there is slightly out of the toe. Therefore, the amount of backspin that I would have actually produced on that shop was less than if you would have hit out at the middle. A great drill like that will also give you feedback if you’re moving too much on the inside like I did there or you’re coming too much from out of it. So give that drill a go, try and find the center of that club face a little bit more, and try and produce the maximum amount to spin that you can.