Fat Golf Shot Drill: Stone ahead drill (Video) - by Pete Styles
Fat Golf Shot Drill: Stone ahead drill (Video) - by Pete Styles

Here is a great exercise if you’ve been fatting the golf ball by taking too much ground too early. And this drill is excellent because it really emphasizes the fact that you still should take a divot. I'm not encouraging you to swing higher in the air, taking it divot and hit in the ground, this perfect, acceptable and encouraged but it requires you to take the divot after the golf ball.

So what I've done here is I’ve just placed a little ball of newspaper, just slightly after the golf ball. And maybe I would use something a little bit smaller in my own practice, sometimes just a little stone chip or even just a blade of grass if I was practicing on a range mat. Any bit of floor for dirt that you can put, around about 4 to 5 inches after the golf ball. Here, I've used a piece of paper. So hopefully it shows up on the camera. The encouragement I would give you here is that you should be moving forward. And actually that piece of paper or fluff, that’s your target to hit, not the golf ball. Don’t get too focused on where the golf is and how to hit that. Hit beyond and through the golf ball down in to the piece of fluff or little stone. So if you can get forwards, shifting in to the little stone there, the ball will just literally get in the way. The ball sits here. Your club comes down, takes the ball as the club descends in towards the stone, rather than leaning back and scooping and trying to hit the ball up in to the air. So my focus here is make my normal swing and shift the fluff.

And you can see on the mat, the fluff is gone, the piece of paper is gone and also the golf ball is gone. And the golf ball went with a really good strike. I wasn’t leaning back, catching heavy in to the floor. You could imagine if I leant back, hit the floor here, the club would bounce up over the top of your piece of paper or fluff. You’d hit the ball on the way up but you wouldn’t get a good contact. And if the line is not very good, hitting the ground first, it’s just simply not going to work for you. So by having something 5 to 6 inches in front of your golf ball, it really encourages you to stay down and focus. So this is a really good way. When you get to the driving range, get little pieces of grass that have been there from someone else’s shoes, line them up in front of the golf balls and just flick them away, and the golf ball just gets flick away with a much better contact as well. Try that. Try to eradicate your fat shots by having something to focus on in front of the golf ball.

 2012-11-28

Here is a great exercise if you’ve been fatting the golf ball by taking too much ground too early. And this drill is excellent because it really emphasizes the fact that you still should take a divot. I'm not encouraging you to swing higher in the air, taking it divot and hit in the ground, this perfect, acceptable and encouraged but it requires you to take the divot after the golf ball.

So what I've done here is I’ve just placed a little ball of newspaper, just slightly after the golf ball. And maybe I would use something a little bit smaller in my own practice, sometimes just a little stone chip or even just a blade of grass if I was practicing on a range mat. Any bit of floor for dirt that you can put, around about 4 to 5 inches after the golf ball. Here, I've used a piece of paper. So hopefully it shows up on the camera. The encouragement I would give you here is that you should be moving forward. And actually that piece of paper or fluff, that’s your target to hit, not the golf ball. Don’t get too focused on where the golf is and how to hit that. Hit beyond and through the golf ball down in to the piece of fluff or little stone. So if you can get forwards, shifting in to the little stone there, the ball will just literally get in the way. The ball sits here. Your club comes down, takes the ball as the club descends in towards the stone, rather than leaning back and scooping and trying to hit the ball up in to the air. So my focus here is make my normal swing and shift the fluff.

And you can see on the mat, the fluff is gone, the piece of paper is gone and also the golf ball is gone. And the golf ball went with a really good strike. I wasn’t leaning back, catching heavy in to the floor. You could imagine if I leant back, hit the floor here, the club would bounce up over the top of your piece of paper or fluff. You’d hit the ball on the way up but you wouldn’t get a good contact. And if the line is not very good, hitting the ground first, it’s just simply not going to work for you. So by having something 5 to 6 inches in front of your golf ball, it really encourages you to stay down and focus. So this is a really good way. When you get to the driving range, get little pieces of grass that have been there from someone else’s shoes, line them up in front of the golf balls and just flick them away, and the golf ball just gets flick away with a much better contact as well. Try that. Try to eradicate your fat shots by having something to focus on in front of the golf ball.