Fixing Your Balance To Avoid Golf Topped Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles
Fixing Your Balance To Avoid Golf Topped Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles

One of the biggest areas for a golfer to look at if you’re struggling with topping the golf ball is establishing whether your balance is helping you or hindering you. If a golfer has got bad balance, particularly at the point of impact, they’re really going to struggle to get a good consistent strike. So there’s a great little exercise to help encourage a good impact and address set up and balance position. So when I set up to the camera from this way round, I’m going to take my normal stance but then I’m actually going to take my right foot and put it on its tiptoe here. So my right heel has just been withdrawn a little bit but all the body weight is on the tiptoe. What I feel there is it’s very easy to push off forwards, take my body weight over to my left side and actually to help me hit down. And it’s the lack of hitting down that is causing you problems with topping the ball. We’re going to go ahead and hit a few shots here. Now I’ve only got a wedge, I’ve not got a particularly good life for this but I’m going to be able to hit the ball down nice and cleanly hopefully.

So I set myself up on the drive range on the practice ground, stand on that right big toe, so I’m pressing that tip toe down. Quite a lot of body weight on my left side, and I can hit down. And you can see I’m quite steeping to the back of the golf ball there, because my body weight is so far left, I’m hitting down onto that golf ball quite steeply. But that still jams the club underneath the ball and pops the ball out very nicely. And really that steep hitting down taking a big divot is a good part of what you want to try and work on to avoid leaning back and losing balance and topping the ball. So I can hit down on the back of the ball now its big chunks of turf. And for all golfers that have been topping the ball, if you’re leaning back and topping it, that might be the first time they’ve ever experienced that idea of getting forwards and hitting down into the floor. So if that’s the case for yourself, you might start taking divots and think, “That's new, I’ve never done that before.” But taking a divot is a great way of helping you to avoid hitting the top shots, particularly for top shots were related to poor balance.
2016-07-27

One of the biggest areas for a golfer to look at if you’re struggling with topping the golf ball is establishing whether your balance is helping you or hindering you. If a golfer has got bad balance, particularly at the point of impact, they’re really going to struggle to get a good consistent strike. So there’s a great little exercise to help encourage a good impact and address set up and balance position. So when I set up to the camera from this way round, I’m going to take my normal stance but then I’m actually going to take my right foot and put it on its tiptoe here. So my right heel has just been withdrawn a little bit but all the body weight is on the tiptoe. What I feel there is it’s very easy to push off forwards, take my body weight over to my left side and actually to help me hit down. And it’s the lack of hitting down that is causing you problems with topping the ball. We’re going to go ahead and hit a few shots here. Now I’ve only got a wedge, I’ve not got a particularly good life for this but I’m going to be able to hit the ball down nice and cleanly hopefully.

So I set myself up on the drive range on the practice ground, stand on that right big toe, so I’m pressing that tip toe down. Quite a lot of body weight on my left side, and I can hit down. And you can see I’m quite steeping to the back of the golf ball there, because my body weight is so far left, I’m hitting down onto that golf ball quite steeply. But that still jams the club underneath the ball and pops the ball out very nicely. And really that steep hitting down taking a big divot is a good part of what you want to try and work on to avoid leaning back and losing balance and topping the ball. So I can hit down on the back of the ball now its big chunks of turf. And for all golfers that have been topping the ball, if you’re leaning back and topping it, that might be the first time they’ve ever experienced that idea of getting forwards and hitting down into the floor. So if that’s the case for yourself, you might start taking divots and think, “That's new, I’ve never done that before.” But taking a divot is a great way of helping you to avoid hitting the top shots, particularly for top shots were related to poor balance.