If you’ve been playing for any length of time, you will sooner realize that golf course is rather unfortunately all flat. There’s so many hill, so many bumps so many humps. That it’s very rare that you get a perfectly flat line. Now one line you are going to encounter is when the ball is above the feet. So it’s above the level of where you are standing and it’s—it is a tricky shot to hit, especially as the slope gets steeper and steeper and steeper and steeper. Many of the issues face with the shot can be solved in this set up. So actually when you are actually addressing the ball, just by altering your posture, just by altering your stance and just by altering a little bit about the way you actually think about the shot.

So, we got this ball set up here on a very high tee, now on our actual course, the ball this far above the feet, would actually be a very, very difficult shot, but I’ve kind of just exaggerated it here for you. So normally, if I was to set up and imagine this ball was flat against the ground, this would be my normal posture. So tilt it from the hip, knees nice and flexed, back nice and straight. As the ball rises, what you want to be doing is that adopting your spine angle to match the slope. So normally this would be the flat line, but as the ball gets more above my feet, the slope will start to tilt in this away and to match that I need to also match my spine tilt. So I lift my spine tilt slightly more, so I’m a little bit more upright. And you can see here, my knees have remained flexed, the more and more the ball gets above my feet, I’ll start to straighten those as well.

Now with the ball get more above my feet, as well as it is becoming closer to me. So holding the club a little bit more down the grip, leaving a little bit of room here at the top will also help kind of increase the consistency of that strike. So, it changes my set up, I’ve straightened in my back, I’ve straightened my knees and I’ve gripped a little bit more down the club because the ball is a lot more closer to me. Now, something that you kind of have to bear in mind when you hitting it, is because the ball is closer towards you, the club face will actually be tilted and it will point to the right of your target. Now that means it’s going to give a little bit of a draw or a little bit of a hook shape through the air. So what you have to do is adapt to that, adopt your aim as well. So you are going to move your aim more to the left to make sure that hook shape that draw shape is correct. So I’ll give it a go, just off this tall tee here.

So I’ve straightened my spine angle, a little bit of flex on my knees and I’ll grip just a little bit down the club and ill just allow for a little bit of a draw through the air. So it’s either you short swing just as you try to maintain control over the ball and you get a wooden kind of racking angle in full tilt, the shot when the ball is a long way above the feet. Just take your medicine, go choke down on the club, maybe hit a little three quarter shot like that and I’m sure you will see the consistency improve. But apply that to your game next time you are out on the course and hopefully you will see success rate soar when the ball is above your feet.