Pete Styles – PGA Teaching Pro

“How can you improve your long irons?” is a question that I get asked an awful lot by my clients coming into lessons, you feel that they are hitting the ball quite nicely of the tee, they’re not capitalizing with that second shot going into the green, they maybe feel when they’ve got a four or five or six signs in their hands, are not able to strike the ball as cleanly and as efficiently as they would maybe with the seven eight or nine. Here’s a couple of little tips that can help you when you are struggling with your long irons. First thing is that, the long irons will generally find any mistake you’ve got in your swing and exaggerate it slightly, so if you are not striking it particularly well, your long irons will show that a bit more, if you are slicing or hooking the ball, your long irons will show that more. So it’s really just a case of making sure you’ve got the good fundamental swing that you can then your long irons.

One of the key things we want to look for with a long irons is ball position, I see a lot of people play that irons from the center of their stamps tend to find it with the long iron because that’s now quite a steep angle of attack as you are hitting down, the long irons comes out too low, it doesn’t fly very far, lands maybe 150 sort of same distance you would hit an eight or a seven iron and then rolls across the green. We need to fly this ball up a little bit higher so the ball position a little bit more ahead of center not quite so far up to the left foot like you would do for a driver but just nicely ahead of center, middle of the left half is fine for most of your long irons.

Then as you’re striking the ground, we should just be bruising the surface, we don’t really want to dig down into the ground and take big chucks of tuff like we do with the short iron or a wedge but likewise we don’t want to flick the ball off the surface like you might do with a driver or a three wood. There should be some contact on the ground but it should just be a light scarfing of the tuff just taking the blades of grass but not deeply down into the roots. Then we’ve got a nice solid setup, some good posture, good grip and just make sure the knees the hips the shoulders are all square because that’s ball is now slightly off center, we often see golfers start to aim their shoulders down the left and side likewise drive it goes more forward shoulders aim more left.

So make sure everything is square with a nice left sided ball position, then as you make your swing, good completion of the backswing turn clipping the ball nicely off the surface with a good full extension through. There’s no point hitting a long iron if you are not going to hit it with confidence, if you are just going to stare it down the middle with a little poke you might as well take a club that you are more comfortable with a 7 iron or something like that and hit that one well. So here I’ve got my 5 iron, I’ve got the ball nicely ahead of center, good setup position, I’m going to pick it nicely and clean off the surface, clip it away nicely with a good balance follow through and I think if you could employ those techniques that will help you hit your long irons better.