Best Fix for Consistent Golf Ball Striking (Video) - by Pete Styles
Best Fix for Consistent Golf Ball Striking (Video) - by Pete Styles

So now we look at ball striking, the ability to get everything that you're doing in your golf swing to result in a nice, powerful strike on the golf ball. Now, for most of your iron shots, you want to think about a downward strike. A downward strike where you hit the ball then you hit the turf. Divots are good. Watch any good players; they're going to take a divot after the golf ball. So the impact position for a good golf swing is here where with a nice down strike onto the golf ball.

Now, you can't have the good down strike onto the golf ball unless you make the right moves in your back swing. And there are two killer moves that will stop you getting a good impact position. The first one is a sway away from the ball. Now, don't think about a sway and loading is the same thing. Loading up is a nice turning, coiling motion into your right leg; a sway is moving through your right leg where the body weight goes onto the little toe of the right foot, the hip and the knee move laterally. So, a sway is a bad movement, but a coil up or a load up is a good movement. So let's make sure that as you turn you press the inside of your right foot and you feel the pressure through the inside of your right knee for the right-handed golfer, and you'll avoid to sway away out onto this side here; too much head, too much lateral movement. Now it's very difficult for me to get back to that ball and certainly very difficult for me to get in front of that golf ball. And that may result, particularly, in fat shots, heavy shots, divot-first shots, which is going to be quite a big problem.

And the second killer move that can result in some bad strikes would be too much vertical movement through the body; so the old, classic lifting your head. Lifting your head doesn't properly describe the movement correctly because lifting your head is this movement. Very few people actually make that movement. That would feel a bit silly to do that. What happens is you life your spine, your chest lifts up in the back swing, therefore moving the head. So from this angle, we would see a problem of the spine angle not being maintained in the back swing and I've stoop up this way. Now I'm going to struggle to get back down to the ball and if I do go down I might go down too low resulting in some heavy shots, but more commonly the spine angle rising. This way would result in a top or a thin shot.

A good way to get the feeling for this would be imagine that you got a pole or a javelin through the head, down the spine, down the back, and into the floor behind me. So, I can make a rotational movement where I stay level to my spine angle here but I'll not make a rotation of standing up because the pole wouldn't let me. The pole is jamming me into the ground and I have to rotate around the pole and not standing up with the pole. So if I can get those two things right, no vertical movements in the back swing, not too much lateral swaying movement in my back swing, my ball striking on my impact position should improve really nicely.

 2012-03-23

So now we look at ball striking, the ability to get everything that you're doing in your golf swing to result in a nice, powerful strike on the golf ball. Now, for most of your iron shots, you want to think about a downward strike. A downward strike where you hit the ball then you hit the turf. Divots are good. Watch any good players; they're going to take a divot after the golf ball. So the impact position for a good golf swing is here where with a nice down strike onto the golf ball.

Now, you can't have the good down strike onto the golf ball unless you make the right moves in your back swing. And there are two killer moves that will stop you getting a good impact position. The first one is a sway away from the ball. Now, don't think about a sway and loading is the same thing. Loading up is a nice turning, coiling motion into your right leg; a sway is moving through your right leg where the body weight goes onto the little toe of the right foot, the hip and the knee move laterally. So, a sway is a bad movement, but a coil up or a load up is a good movement. So let's make sure that as you turn you press the inside of your right foot and you feel the pressure through the inside of your right knee for the right-handed golfer, and you'll avoid to sway away out onto this side here; too much head, too much lateral movement. Now it's very difficult for me to get back to that ball and certainly very difficult for me to get in front of that golf ball. And that may result, particularly, in fat shots, heavy shots, divot-first shots, which is going to be quite a big problem.

And the second killer move that can result in some bad strikes would be too much vertical movement through the body; so the old, classic lifting your head. Lifting your head doesn't properly describe the movement correctly because lifting your head is this movement. Very few people actually make that movement. That would feel a bit silly to do that. What happens is you life your spine, your chest lifts up in the back swing, therefore moving the head. So from this angle, we would see a problem of the spine angle not being maintained in the back swing and I've stoop up this way. Now I'm going to struggle to get back down to the ball and if I do go down I might go down too low resulting in some heavy shots, but more commonly the spine angle rising. This way would result in a top or a thin shot.

A good way to get the feeling for this would be imagine that you got a pole or a javelin through the head, down the spine, down the back, and into the floor behind me. So, I can make a rotational movement where I stay level to my spine angle here but I'll not make a rotation of standing up because the pole wouldn't let me. The pole is jamming me into the ground and I have to rotate around the pole and not standing up with the pole. So if I can get those two things right, no vertical movements in the back swing, not too much lateral swaying movement in my back swing, my ball striking on my impact position should improve really nicely.