Are You Topping The Ball? Here's 3 Great Ways To Solve The Problem (Video) - by Dean Butler
Are You Topping The Ball? Here's 3 Great Ways To Solve The Problem (Video) - by Dean Butler

Okay. We are going to talk about Topping in this lesson. And basically what is a top? A top is simply when you come in and you hit the top half of the ball and the ball rolls very, very along – low along the ground or even a very low shot. That’s a classic top. What we are going to tackle in this session is three possibilities of what you might be doing to create that top.

The first one is all about weight transference. A very, very common fault is to do what we call a reverse pivot. First of all let me show you what I mean by the correct swing and then what is the reverse pivot? When you set up here, we have is a conventional seven iron. We’ve got the ball in the middle of the stance here, setting ourselves up. And what should happen here is the weight should be 50:50. As we take the club back, the weight will move back to a 55, 60% position here and then back to the ball. A reverse pivot is where we get over the ball and we do the reverse. As surprise, surprise, the weight doesn’t shift to the right, it goes to the left. And when it goes to the left hand side, we’re going now to try to get ourselves out of the way. Unless we go back – classic top, I lean on the left hand side, I come into the ball, as I’m going back, the club is now lifting up and it’s going to catch the top half of the ball. So you can clearly see that’s a possibility for why you’re topping the ball. The second thing I want to talk about is staying down through the golf shots. So, we are going to talk about the actual posture. When you’re over the golf ball, lots of people will say to you ‘oh, you topped the ball. I think your head came up. Keep your head down’. Well, it’s much probably couldn’t be anything further from the truth. We are talking about the posture. Stay down and through. If I put my backbone over the ball, you can see it’s at a nice angle and we’ve got to try to keep that posture. Now what most are talking about staying down and through is about swinging the club back, the angle my body is still where I was. I’ve pivoted round the axle, I still got that lovely angle of spine, and from here I stay down and through. And you can see the angle of the spine is still there so I’ve managed to pivot away my way around that axle keeping myself down. What tends to happen for most golfers who top that ball, who lose that posture, is to start off maybe with the right posture unless they are coming to the ball, they tend to go – and come up. So you can see straight away, the angle of the spine which was here, keeping my body weight down, the club sat on the ground right behind the ball, if my backbone comes up, the club’s going to come up. So if the club comes up, I’m now going to be hitting higher up the ball, so if anything I guess, so I hope that sounds plain English and very, very simple to the point and it should be okay. And the first thing is we are going to talk about the actual pressure of the grip. When you’re actually gripping the club, the grip pressure should be fairly light and I find a lot of golfers grip far too tight. And when you grip far too tight, your muscles really do tend to tense up and lock and what tends to happen, if I was to grip very, very tight and swing, that impact, what just happened – can you see what happened? My arms bent at impact so it created a sort of lifting action in my arms because it’s so tight. You’ll also notice that if you wear a glove, that you’ll find that the glove tends to wear on the palm, doesn’t it? And on the thumb and you think ‘why’? That’s because of club movement in your hands and it’s caused by generally gripping too tight. So what pressure should we have? Very, very light, very light, a good sort of scenario would be a tube of toothpaste. Take the cap off, hold it. If any toothpaste comes out, you’re gripping too tight. Yes, gripping too tight. Grip nice and light and from that, the hands on the club can actually get back to the ball where you want it to. So there we’ve identified three possibilities. Go out there, put them into practice and it could be that number four or number five, because there are many things that can cause topping not just these three things but these are most probably the three of the most common faults. Go out and put it into practice. 2013-12-11

Okay. We are going to talk about Topping in this lesson. And basically what is a top? A top is simply when you come in and you hit the top half of the ball and the ball rolls very, very along – low along the ground or even a very low shot. That’s a classic top. What we are going to tackle in this session is three possibilities of what you might be doing to create that top.

The first one is all about weight transference. A very, very common fault is to do what we call a reverse pivot. First of all let me show you what I mean by the correct swing and then what is the reverse pivot? When you set up here, we have is a conventional seven iron. We’ve got the ball in the middle of the stance here, setting ourselves up. And what should happen here is the weight should be 50:50. As we take the club back, the weight will move back to a 55, 60% position here and then back to the ball. A reverse pivot is where we get over the ball and we do the reverse. As surprise, surprise, the weight doesn’t shift to the right, it goes to the left. And when it goes to the left hand side, we’re going now to try to get ourselves out of the way. Unless we go back – classic top, I lean on the left hand side, I come into the ball, as I’m going back, the club is now lifting up and it’s going to catch the top half of the ball. So you can clearly see that’s a possibility for why you’re topping the ball.

The second thing I want to talk about is staying down through the golf shots. So, we are going to talk about the actual posture. When you’re over the golf ball, lots of people will say to you ‘oh, you topped the ball. I think your head came up. Keep your head down’. Well, it’s much probably couldn’t be anything further from the truth. We are talking about the posture. Stay down and through. If I put my backbone over the ball, you can see it’s at a nice angle and we’ve got to try to keep that posture. Now what most are talking about staying down and through is about swinging the club back, the angle my body is still where I was. I’ve pivoted round the axle, I still got that lovely angle of spine, and from here I stay down and through. And you can see the angle of the spine is still there so I’ve managed to pivot away my way around that axle keeping myself down. What tends to happen for most golfers who top that ball, who lose that posture, is to start off maybe with the right posture unless they are coming to the ball, they tend to go – and come up. So you can see straight away, the angle of the spine which was here, keeping my body weight down, the club sat on the ground right behind the ball, if my backbone comes up, the club’s going to come up. So if the club comes up, I’m now going to be hitting higher up the ball, so if anything I guess, so I hope that sounds plain English and very, very simple to the point and it should be okay.

And the first thing is we are going to talk about the actual pressure of the grip. When you’re actually gripping the club, the grip pressure should be fairly light and I find a lot of golfers grip far too tight. And when you grip far too tight, your muscles really do tend to tense up and lock and what tends to happen, if I was to grip very, very tight and swing, that impact, what just happened – can you see what happened? My arms bent at impact so it created a sort of lifting action in my arms because it’s so tight. You’ll also notice that if you wear a glove, that you’ll find that the glove tends to wear on the palm, doesn’t it? And on the thumb and you think ‘why’? That’s because of club movement in your hands and it’s caused by generally gripping too tight. So what pressure should we have? Very, very light, very light, a good sort of scenario would be a tube of toothpaste. Take the cap off, hold it. If any toothpaste comes out, you’re gripping too tight. Yes, gripping too tight. Grip nice and light and from that, the hands on the club can actually get back to the ball where you want it to.

So there we’ve identified three possibilities. Go out there, put them into practice and it could be that number four or number five, because there are many things that can cause topping not just these three things but these are most probably the three of the most common faults. Go out and put it into practice.