How To Compress Your Irons Like A Pro – by PGA Pros Pete Styles & Matt Fryer
How To Compress Your Irons Like A Pro – by PGA Pros Pete Styles & Matt Fryer

In this video tip PGA golf professionals Pete Styles and Matt Fryer explain the often talked about concept of compressing the golf ball. We often hear on television the commentators talking about compressing the ball. Many amateur golfers misunderstand this term and during this video Matt and Pete will go through this process and help you to understand how striking the golf ball then the turf, and also using the club face for feedback can help you get a feeling for whether you are, indeed, compressing the golf ball and how this can affect your shot.

One of the things that we see demonstrated on T.V. all the time when watching golf is how pure and how crisp the iron strikes are. Absolutely when you see the tour players as you can and you can see that all of their iron shots go the distance are expecting it to go sound really nice on the T.V. and I tell you if you ever get a chance to go and watch a live golf event head to the practice range, and open your ears as well as your eyes you have to just listen for the quality ball striking Matt. Definitely I remember seeing my fathers clubs and you can cut up the size of a dime or a 10 piece piece right out of the center just a rough mark of where he was getting it pretty much every single time. So when we're talking about that you touched on strike location now so we're looking obviously for a strike that's coming from the center of the golf club we don't want to see it coming too much from the heel or the toe of the golf club because it will alter the shot.

So if we were going to jump in and give us 2 facts or maybe one drill and one thing we can alter to help us get that. Absolutely so one of the things I'd like to start with is to explain the importance of strike. If we bounce the ball up and down on the club face me you can do this you start to feel where the sweet spot is also quite important you start to feel where there's no energy you actually experience that ball towards the tempo comes off or lower dives you falls off and I can't keep that up. So if I've got a 100 yard wedge shot and it hits the toe it is not going to go a 100 yards it is probably going to go 60, 70, 80 yards it might go straight and high but it's not going to reach my target. So the center of strike is super important like Matt says we're looking for that dime mark or a 10 pence piece mark right in the center of the club face. So Matt stick a couple tees in for me and I like them you're still the same width or give me half a inch and you always like a goal or a gate for you to pass through here would you say. Yeah you know I think you know the idea is that if I was to push the heel too much towards the ball the ball would be shanked but also the tee would get knocked over, and then if I pull the club to much back as if I'm going to hit the toe have this tee would get knocked over. So you get my challenge definitely and you know is this a drill if you've done it that this is something that I see Tiger do with a lot with the putter and he was working on strike location so it makes sense for us to do it with an iron.

Well I'm hoping to hit the ball well and if I look back down at the turf, could be in the hole that one. Now but that's not what I look back at the turf I can see my tees are quite still in place which I'm happy about I can also see the divot is right in middle. Slap bang in the middle there, and if we were to let's say talk about the balance or distance from the golf ball they'd be something that could affect where we get the ball on the face. I think particularly relevant that would be if I consistently knock the tee peg over. So for example if I always knock that tee peg over but I think and I was shanking the ball the 2 things I would look at would be distance and balance. First thing would be if I'm too close I'm crowding that ball I don't have enough space I'm going to be tempted to swing away and I would hit the outside tee peg and we are going to see strikes hitting the heel and the ball which is sideways, or if I was falling over sometimes you get a golfer that is determined to not get too close he stands so far away from it it still falls over over and he still hits that heel. OK so that could be making a good swing but just a little bit too far too close and get about strike location.

Absolutely and likewise the opposite way round the other one I could be too far away and hit the inside one I could be rocking back onto my heels and hit on the inside one. So I think it's really important to use drills like that to feed back or just have a really good look at your club face after every shot the hit off turf. There might be some grass imprints or some odd imprints or even get some like face stickers put some so dry shampoo as well what we use at the range. Dry shampoo or athlete's foot spray spray it on leaves and white residues after a couple of balls can be really eye opening we can see where you are hitting it, and if you're hitting it toe, heel, top, bottom and then you're not hitting in the middle and certainly pick one place consistently then that's something you go ahead and work on because we know how important the strike is about giving us the correct distance for our golf shots. Excellent and as you know as we saw there with that drill straight away and to strike in a fantastic golf shot there so it's a big thing and strike location as well directionally big thing plays a part in now so if we can get a really good strike guys by going through the things Pete said. Our number one have a little go of the gate drill see where your strike location as well with a bit of feed back from some spray or face tape on there if you see that you have a consistent miss either toe or heel you can then check a couple of things in set up and your balance throughout the golf swing to see if that is a cause of that problem. From there you can work on it and work back to a more centered strike and hopefully from there you'll start to see more consistency and find the middle of that face more frequently.

2019-01-04

In this video tip PGA golf professionals Pete Styles and Matt Fryer explain the often talked about concept of compressing the golf ball. We often hear on television the commentators talking about compressing the ball. Many amateur golfers misunderstand this term and during this video Matt and Pete will go through this process and help you to understand how striking the golf ball then the turf, and also using the club face for feedback can help you get a feeling for whether you are, indeed, compressing the golf ball and how this can affect your shot.

One of the things that we see demonstrated on T.V. all the time when watching golf is how pure and how crisp the iron strikes are. Absolutely when you see the tour players as you can and you can see that all of their iron shots go the distance are expecting it to go sound really nice on the T.V. and I tell you if you ever get a chance to go and watch a live golf event head to the practice range, and open your ears as well as your eyes you have to just listen for the quality ball striking Matt. Definitely I remember seeing my fathers clubs and you can cut up the size of a dime or a 10 piece piece right out of the center just a rough mark of where he was getting it pretty much every single time. So when we're talking about that you touched on strike location now so we're looking obviously for a strike that's coming from the center of the golf club we don't want to see it coming too much from the heel or the toe of the golf club because it will alter the shot.

So if we were going to jump in and give us 2 facts or maybe one drill and one thing we can alter to help us get that. Absolutely so one of the things I'd like to start with is to explain the importance of strike. If we bounce the ball up and down on the club face me you can do this you start to feel where the sweet spot is also quite important you start to feel where there's no energy you actually experience that ball towards the tempo comes off or lower dives you falls off and I can't keep that up. So if I've got a 100 yard wedge shot and it hits the toe it is not going to go a 100 yards it is probably going to go 60, 70, 80 yards it might go straight and high but it's not going to reach my target. So the center of strike is super important like Matt says we're looking for that dime mark or a 10 pence piece mark right in the center of the club face. So Matt stick a couple tees in for me and I like them you're still the same width or give me half a inch and you always like a goal or a gate for you to pass through here would you say. Yeah you know I think you know the idea is that if I was to push the heel too much towards the ball the ball would be shanked but also the tee would get knocked over, and then if I pull the club to much back as if I'm going to hit the toe have this tee would get knocked over. So you get my challenge definitely and you know is this a drill if you've done it that this is something that I see Tiger do with a lot with the putter and he was working on strike location so it makes sense for us to do it with an iron.

Well I'm hoping to hit the ball well and if I look back down at the turf, could be in the hole that one. Now but that's not what I look back at the turf I can see my tees are quite still in place which I'm happy about I can also see the divot is right in middle. Slap bang in the middle there, and if we were to let's say talk about the balance or distance from the golf ball they'd be something that could affect where we get the ball on the face. I think particularly relevant that would be if I consistently knock the tee peg over. So for example if I always knock that tee peg over but I think and I was shanking the ball the 2 things I would look at would be distance and balance. First thing would be if I'm too close I'm crowding that ball I don't have enough space I'm going to be tempted to swing away and I would hit the outside tee peg and we are going to see strikes hitting the heel and the ball which is sideways, or if I was falling over sometimes you get a golfer that is determined to not get too close he stands so far away from it it still falls over over and he still hits that heel. OK so that could be making a good swing but just a little bit too far too close and get about strike location.

Absolutely and likewise the opposite way round the other one I could be too far away and hit the inside one I could be rocking back onto my heels and hit on the inside one. So I think it's really important to use drills like that to feed back or just have a really good look at your club face after every shot the hit off turf. There might be some grass imprints or some odd imprints or even get some like face stickers put some so dry shampoo as well what we use at the range. Dry shampoo or athlete's foot spray spray it on leaves and white residues after a couple of balls can be really eye opening we can see where you are hitting it, and if you're hitting it toe, heel, top, bottom and then you're not hitting in the middle and certainly pick one place consistently then that's something you go ahead and work on because we know how important the strike is about giving us the correct distance for our golf shots. Excellent and as you know as we saw there with that drill straight away and to strike in a fantastic golf shot there so it's a big thing and strike location as well directionally big thing plays a part in now so if we can get a really good strike guys by going through the things Pete said. Our number one have a little go of the gate drill see where your strike location as well with a bit of feed back from some spray or face tape on there if you see that you have a consistent miss either toe or heel you can then check a couple of things in set up and your balance throughout the golf swing to see if that is a cause of that problem. From there you can work on it and work back to a more centered strike and hopefully from there you'll start to see more consistency and find the middle of that face more frequently.