If you are struggling to achieve a good trajectory to your iron shots then you need to work on hitting down when you strike the golf ball.

Striking down on the ball makes the ball fly high but it is an action that will go against all of your natural instincts unless you understand how the golf club is designed to work.

If you think of how you would hit a tennis shot into the air, you would lower the racket head down below the ball and then make an upward movement towards the ball, sending the ball up. Think of how you throw a ball into the air. Your arm makes an upward movement. You have an ingrained understanding that to make something go up, you need to make an upward action. However, that will not work in golf. If you attempt to get the club head of a golf club lower than the ball so that you can make an upward movement to get the ball airborne, you will strike the club head into the ground and completely miss hit the ball. Or if the club head does not strike the ground but skims over it before making the upward action, you will now hit the upper part of the golf ball and top it. Either way the ball will stay low to the floor and not go very far. The only club where this action is actually possible and desired is with the driver, where the golf ball is up from the floor on a tee peg, allowing the club head to drop lower than the ball so that you can strike the ball with an upward blow.

The golf club head is designed to be moved towards the ball in a downward action. This downward action striking the back on the ball compresses the ball and forces it up the club face, allowing the loft of the club to spin the ball upwards into the air. If you want to achieve shots that fly high you must strike down on the golf ball and let the club head do the job that it was designed to do. This will feel very counter intuitive but once you understand why a downward action generates height, you will be more willing to work on achieving it.

To help you to achieve a downward strike towards the ball, place a head cover on the floor, in line with the ball on the target line and opposite your right foot. Hover the club head at address and then swing back avoiding any contact with the head cover. Swing down and work on striking down at the ground after the head cover, but again without contacting the head cover. Work on striking the ground where the ball would be. Do this until you feel confident and are achieving the movement successfully and then place a ball in and work on achieving the same movement, striking the ground to the left of the head cover where the ball is, without contacting the head cover.

This drill may be challenging at first, but with a little work you will soon be striking down towards the ball and achieving a much improved trajectory to your golf shots.