Top 4 Tips on Shots Off The Club’s Heel
Top 4 Tips on Shots Off The Club’s Heel
Consistently making contact with the club’s heel in golf is not an ideal ball strike. Those who suffer from this will ultimately see a high spinning ball flight with very limited distance. It becomes even more frustrating in windy conditions and it’s not even worth our time talking about the suffering in wet conditions.
The tips below will give you a great start on becoming confident in striking the ball solidly, especially when under pressure.
Tip #1 Create Space in your Set Up
Generally speaking many golfers who struggle with striking the ball off the heel, don’t give the club enough space from the body in their set up. When a player’s hands start too close to their body, it leads to a very steep takeaway resulting in an outside the line path. A lot of effort and timing is required to get the club back to an ideal impact position.
Therefore, when you take your set up, ensure you have at minimum 8 to 10 inches between the butt end of the club and your belt buckle. If in decent posture, your hands should hang directly below the center of your face. The final position to point out is that for all clubs the hands should be set directly above the ball creating a small shaft lean toward the intended target.
Tip #2 Create Width in your Golf Swing
Width in the golf swing is often overlooked but if you watch any golf on TV you will most likely hear the commentators chatting about how many top professionals have great width in their golf swings. With regards to making solid contact, we don’t need to stretch our bodies in every direction to create width. Increased width will ultimately lead to longer shots, but in order to make consistent strikes on the center of the club face, you just need to be consistent in your width measurements.
Therefore, when you take your set up with ideal hand position 8 to 10 inches from your body, pay attention to the distance from the top of your left wrist (right wrist for a left handed golfer) to your chin. This distance is YOUR personal starting width. The idea is to keep this distance, at minimum, the same in two major positions of the golf swing. Position one is half way back or at the hips. In practice take a slow backswing and stop at the hips. The distance from start position to the hips should be identical. Second position is three quarters or at the shoulders. The distance of your wrist to chin at the three quarter spot should be identical to the first two positions. Key image to look for at all points in the backswing is a relatively straight left arm (right arm in left handers). This ultimately means consistent width has been achieved throughout the backswing and will give you a great chance to make solid contact.
The golfing legend Moe Norman used to have a great drill. He simply put a coin on the ground approximately 18 to 24 inches behind the golf ball and a few inches inside the target line the ball lies on. The purpose of this drill was for a consistent low to the ground inside takeaway. The idea being, that when he started his swing he would make sure the club would brush the grass all the way to the coin before going up in his backswing. Among the many awkward things Moe did in his golf swing, he always stressed the club should be taken away low to the ground and slightly inside to ensure a consistent start of the swing. I believe this drill was one that truly helped Moe hit it solid time and time again.
This tip sounds the easiest but is one of the more difficult actions to accomplish in the golf swing and can be the ultimate connection between solid contact and the desired ball flight. This involves keeping your focus on the destination and not the objective, which for many golfers is very confusing.
The destination in golf is to get the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible. Which means, to send your ball at the target to allow for the easiest shot until the ball is holed. Golf is a target sport, therefore if we focus on a specific target i.e. the flag, hole, tree in the distance, side of the fairway etc. and we make a swing with that in mind, it’s more than probable that our ball will move in that direction.
Many golfers have the objective of just hitting the ball. If we keep the target as our main objective, you’ll be amazed how often you make consistent contact on the center of the club face.
