Knock Down Golf Shot (Video) - by Pete Styles
Knock Down Golf Shot (Video) - by Pete Styles

So now let's look at the knock down or a punch golf shot. Really useful shot this one. A bit of a abbreviation of your normal full swing, but really useful particularly if you're out there on a windy day, if you ever watched the open--the British Open played out on the coast normally have a links golf course that are very susceptible to the wind. And any high-flying golf shots are really going to struggle to be controlled in swirling wind conditions like that.

Now for you to be able to play a knock down or a punch golf shot, think about distance, club selection and then how you can actually adopt your body to be able to play that shot. So if we've got a distance, let's say we've got 120 yards that might be, let's say a nine iron. But if I'm playing that 120 yards shot into a head wind I could take the nine iron and I could hit it really, really hard to try and get it there. But the extra power I put into that creates extra back spin. Now that extra back spin makes the ball climb; the more it climbs the more it's effective by the wind. Then it could actually come back even shorter because I've hit harder trying to hit it higher.

So rather than hitting a nine iron from 120, why don’t we go to an eight-three even a seven iron and then hit a little bit of a knock down, little bit of a punch shot. Now the way to actually play this shot is play that more from the center, maybe even slightly back of centering your stance. So play it slightly behind the middle. That should encourage you to get a little bit more body weight and a bit more hands ahead on your left side at impact which would deloft the golf club, therefore flying the ball and off a lot lower towards that target making it much less susceptible to the head wind or even into a crosswind.

So think about pitching the ball in lower, forcing it forwards and under the wind rather than flirting it high up in the air and getting to blow around too much. So we'll play the ball back of center slightly, lean into the left side with the body and the hands for impact and particularly feeling like you don’t need to activate the wrists too much. We really don’t want to scoop underneath the golf ball too much. Anything that has a lot of hand action this way and in this way again is just going to knock the ball open to the air which it can't--productive. We want to hit this ball low and forwards so we play the ball back of the stance slightly maybe even grip down on the golf club to get rid of a bit of extra power and energy that we don’t need on the left side that's impact and hit down into the ball. And feel like you're just trying to punch the ball out that as low as you possibly can.

You'll also notice a little bit of three-quarter follow through here when I'm controlling the distance that the ball's going. And I'm not letting my hands fully flick through because I just don’t need that extra power. What I need is control and a nice low flight to get it under the wind, to control it particularly on those breezy days.

 2012-04-20

So now let's look at the knock down or a punch golf shot. Really useful shot this one. A bit of a abbreviation of your normal full swing, but really useful particularly if you're out there on a windy day, if you ever watched the open–the British Open played out on the coast normally have a links golf course that are very susceptible to the wind. And any high-flying golf shots are really going to struggle to be controlled in swirling wind conditions like that.

Now for you to be able to play a knock down or a punch golf shot, think about distance, club selection and then how you can actually adopt your body to be able to play that shot. So if we've got a distance, let's say we've got 120 yards that might be, let's say a nine iron. But if I'm playing that 120 yards shot into a head wind I could take the nine iron and I could hit it really, really hard to try and get it there. But the extra power I put into that creates extra back spin. Now that extra back spin makes the ball climb; the more it climbs the more it's effective by the wind. Then it could actually come back even shorter because I've hit harder trying to hit it higher.

So rather than hitting a nine iron from 120, why don’t we go to an eight-three even a seven iron and then hit a little bit of a knock down, little bit of a punch shot. Now the way to actually play this shot is play that more from the center, maybe even slightly back of centering your stance. So play it slightly behind the middle. That should encourage you to get a little bit more body weight and a bit more hands ahead on your left side at impact which would deloft the golf club, therefore flying the ball and off a lot lower towards that target making it much less susceptible to the head wind or even into a crosswind.

So think about pitching the ball in lower, forcing it forwards and under the wind rather than flirting it high up in the air and getting to blow around too much. So we'll play the ball back of center slightly, lean into the left side with the body and the hands for impact and particularly feeling like you don’t need to activate the wrists too much. We really don’t want to scoop underneath the golf ball too much. Anything that has a lot of hand action this way and in this way again is just going to knock the ball open to the air which it can't–productive. We want to hit this ball low and forwards so we play the ball back of the stance slightly maybe even grip down on the golf club to get rid of a bit of extra power and energy that we don’t need on the left side that's impact and hit down into the ball. And feel like you're just trying to punch the ball out that as low as you possibly can.

You'll also notice a little bit of three-quarter follow through here when I'm controlling the distance that the ball's going. And I'm not letting my hands fully flick through because I just don’t need that extra power. What I need is control and a nice low flight to get it under the wind, to control it particularly on those breezy days.