Golf Drill Tip: Ball below feet – Compensations (Video) - by Pete Styles
Golf Drill Tip: Ball below feet – Compensations (Video) - by Pete Styles

From watching the previous two videos, you should have understood how the sloping lie affects my golf swing and affects my golf ball. Now in this third video from this series, we are going to look at how you can make some compensations in the setup in your golf swing to try and hit this golf ball as close to your intended target with as good a strike as possible nice and consistently. First step back up onto the mat here, the first thing I have got to guard against is the hill pulling me forwards getting me onto my tip toes and possibly shanking the golf ball. So in my set up position, I want to really flex my knees quite aggressively and shift a lot of body weight back into my heels; that will help me stay a little bit more balanced.

The other fault that I may have in my setup here is being too tall and hitting over the top of the golf ball and spinning or topping it because the ball is lower than I expect it to be. So sitting back in my heels to stop shanking it is another great way of getting the lower down as well. So if you like it, it kind of courses out [Phonetic] [00:01:10], you can change two bad shots in one go but sitting on your heels getting lower down that should stop the shank and it stop the pop all at the same time. So now I maintain a bit more balance on my heels and I am getting lower down to the golf ball. The other thing we talked about the ball will be from this position is it will have a tendency to cut that may be left to right for the right handed golfer. Now unless I am very good and I want to try and drill the ball of this lie turn my hands over from this lie which is quite an advanced skill, its much better just to aim down the left side.

So look at the severity of the slope and the set how much the ball might curve in the air and the real way to get it is just to practice it, try it off different slopes, different severities of slopes, feel how much the ball curves and then simply allow for that to setup alignment. So I am going to set up about 15 to 20 yards down the left-hand side of the flag, sitting down with my knees getting quite a lot of body weight back onto my heels and then making my normal swing from this position. So I aim left and I expect the ball to cut. And this set off down the left hand side cutting back into the yellow flag and actually the alignment pretty close to my intended target. So that was a nice smooth swing on my heels so I didn’t fall forward, I stayed down to focus on the really good contact and the ball cut back in quite nicely.

Another really nice rule of thumb when you are on uneven lies is just swing a little bit more easily, not try and kill the golf ball and jump and hit it as hard as you can. So in that respect you might go up a club or half a club, take one extra swing a bit smoothly, keep your balance, focus on good contact and apply those changes there to try and compensate for the ball been on the slope.

 2013-03-27

From watching the previous two videos, you should have understood how the sloping lie affects my golf swing and affects my golf ball. Now in this third video from this series, we are going to look at how you can make some compensations in the setup in your golf swing to try and hit this golf ball as close to your intended target with as good a strike as possible nice and consistently. First step back up onto the mat here, the first thing I have got to guard against is the hill pulling me forwards getting me onto my tip toes and possibly shanking the golf ball. So in my set up position, I want to really flex my knees quite aggressively and shift a lot of body weight back into my heels; that will help me stay a little bit more balanced.

The other fault that I may have in my setup here is being too tall and hitting over the top of the golf ball and spinning or topping it because the ball is lower than I expect it to be. So sitting back in my heels to stop shanking it is another great way of getting the lower down as well. So if you like it, it kind of courses out [Phonetic] [00:01:10], you can change two bad shots in one go but sitting on your heels getting lower down that should stop the shank and it stop the pop all at the same time. So now I maintain a bit more balance on my heels and I am getting lower down to the golf ball. The other thing we talked about the ball will be from this position is it will have a tendency to cut that may be left to right for the right handed golfer. Now unless I am very good and I want to try and drill the ball of this lie turn my hands over from this lie which is quite an advanced skill, its much better just to aim down the left side.

So look at the severity of the slope and the set how much the ball might curve in the air and the real way to get it is just to practice it, try it off different slopes, different severities of slopes, feel how much the ball curves and then simply allow for that to setup alignment. So I am going to set up about 15 to 20 yards down the left-hand side of the flag, sitting down with my knees getting quite a lot of body weight back onto my heels and then making my normal swing from this position. So I aim left and I expect the ball to cut. And this set off down the left hand side cutting back into the yellow flag and actually the alignment pretty close to my intended target. So that was a nice smooth swing on my heels so I didn’t fall forward, I stayed down to focus on the really good contact and the ball cut back in quite nicely.

Another really nice rule of thumb when you are on uneven lies is just swing a little bit more easily, not try and kill the golf ball and jump and hit it as hard as you can. So in that respect you might go up a club or half a club, take one extra swing a bit smoothly, keep your balance, focus on good contact and apply those changes there to try and compensate for the ball been on the slope.