How Can I Stop Fat Golf Shots? (Video) - by PGA Instructor Dean Butler
How Can I Stop Fat Golf Shots? (Video) - by PGA Instructor Dean Butler

So, how can I stop fat shots? The key here is to make sure that when we swing, we keep in front of the ball. A fat shot: a fat shot is where we come in and we catch the ground behind the ball and we call it fat because they are heavy. It’s basically where you hit the ground first, okay. I’m sure we’ve all experienced that sort of shot.

What tends to happen on those shots is, the swing – as you swing the club back, the body weight tends to stay back on the back foot, which is here. So I come down and I catch the ground very, very early because my weight is too far back. So I’m hitting the ground very, very early. So the key impact is to keep the weight very, very much forward, so we are actually hitting down and through. Now we are hitting down and through, all of a sudden this sort of area here, which is where the fat heavy shots come from, is taken away, is out of the equation completely. So, if we set ourselves up and we focus from here, actually keeping that weight on the front foot, which is the left foot, the one that hits the target, then we are going to come as you can see here, at a completely different angle. So we are hitting down and through. So as always, these things aren’t always as easy as it may sound. So nice little drill for you. I’ve got a ball here, I imagine you’ve got a tee peg. You put this tee peg in the ground and what we want you to do is take your normal set up. Get yourself set up to the ball as you would normally do. What I want you to focus on as you come into the hitting area, is I want you to focus hitting the ball and the tee. So as I come down, I’m going to come in, hit the ball and also catch the tee peg. Now to do that, you can see my weight is very, very much on my front foot. So what we were doing wrong before was being on the back foot. So straight away we’ve gone from one extreme to the other extreme. It’s a very, very simple technique, simple method. Pull the ball there, put a tee peg about six inches in front and focus on hitting the ball and then the tee peg. So if I pull that here, move that out of the way, you are going to get this sort of strike where I hit down and through. So I’m going to watch my weight on this left side of impact, it’s forward, back, and you can see my weight is very much on my left-hand side here and I’ve hit down and through. Put that into practice, there is no chance of you hitting a fat or a heavy golf shot. 2014-05-14

So, how can I stop fat shots? The key here is to make sure that when we swing, we keep in front of the ball. A fat shot: a fat shot is where we come in and we catch the ground behind the ball and we call it fat because they are heavy. It’s basically where you hit the ground first, okay. I’m sure we’ve all experienced that sort of shot.

What tends to happen on those shots is, the swing – as you swing the club back, the body weight tends to stay back on the back foot, which is here. So I come down and I catch the ground very, very early because my weight is too far back. So I’m hitting the ground very, very early. So the key impact is to keep the weight very, very much forward, so we are actually hitting down and through. Now we are hitting down and through, all of a sudden this sort of area here, which is where the fat heavy shots come from, is taken away, is out of the equation completely.

So, if we set ourselves up and we focus from here, actually keeping that weight on the front foot, which is the left foot, the one that hits the target, then we are going to come as you can see here, at a completely different angle. So we are hitting down and through. So as always, these things aren’t always as easy as it may sound. So nice little drill for you.

I’ve got a ball here, I imagine you’ve got a tee peg. You put this tee peg in the ground and what we want you to do is take your normal set up. Get yourself set up to the ball as you would normally do. What I want you to focus on as you come into the hitting area, is I want you to focus hitting the ball and the tee. So as I come down, I’m going to come in, hit the ball and also catch the tee peg. Now to do that, you can see my weight is very, very much on my front foot. So what we were doing wrong before was being on the back foot. So straight away we’ve gone from one extreme to the other extreme.

It’s a very, very simple technique, simple method. Pull the ball there, put a tee peg about six inches in front and focus on hitting the ball and then the tee peg. So if I pull that here, move that out of the way, you are going to get this sort of strike where I hit down and through. So I’m going to watch my weight on this left side of impact, it’s forward, back, and you can see my weight is very much on my left-hand side here and I’ve hit down and through. Put that into practice, there is no chance of you hitting a fat or a heavy golf shot.