What Is Ballooning Golf Ball Flight And How Should I Stop It? (Video) - by PGA Instructor Dean Butler
What Is Ballooning Golf Ball Flight And How Should I Stop It? (Video) - by PGA Instructor Dean Butler

Okay, so the question is, what is a ballooning golf ball flight and how do we actually stop it. Well first of all, let’s describe what a ballooning golf shot is. Wherever you are, you know some people call it ballooning and we call it skying it, it’s when you sky the ball, it’s the same terminology ballooning in the sky, it means basically when you get right underneath the ball, so a good demonstration would be I’ve got my driver, I’ve set my ball up ridiculously far, far too high for the golf club, I’m going to set myself up and if I was to swing and hit this ball now, I would literally go right underneath that ball, and the ball would come off the top of the club, and when it comes off the top, it comes off the roof and that’s where we get this ballooning, where we get right underneath it. I’m sure some of you senior golfers over the years as indeed I have a long, long time ago, have got yourself into a position, made of what you thought was a good swing but you’ve got right underneath it and you struggle to reach that fairway it’s just gone so high, so ballooning and skying mean the same thing and that’s basically what happens.

One of the biggest cause is not just teeing the ball excessively too high but what you actually do in your set up. So I’m going to give you two examples of what causes, most probably the two most common faults, the ballooning, the actual ball. The first one is setting up, with the ball position too central. So imagine you got your driver in your handle you’re 3-wood. By putting the ball in the middle of the stance creates naturally a swing that goes more up, it’s what we call a steep swing, a steep plane. So from here, if I put the ball in the middle my swing would tend to go more up and what goes up has to come down. And you can see as I come down I’m actually hitting very, very low. So I’m chopping up the ball, so that’s one. The second most common fault for skying or ballooning is for actually having a weak grip. A weak grip is one where the left hand is too far to the left, and the right hand wraps itself over, and when we do that the shoulders all of a sudden instead of being parallel, the shoulders disappears and you can’t see this left shoulder now, it’s out of the way it’s what we call an open shoulder position because of this weak grip, and what that creates is a swing that goes very, very much outside the line, and you can see, why I’ve done this almost like I can pick the club straight up, I’ve picked the club straight up outside the line and what goes out comes in, and you can see I’m chopping. So those are the two biggest causes of ballooning. So the best way of actually getting out of those two habits, is to so two things; the first thing is to concentrate on having the ball position more towards your left heel, your front foot, and what that will do is encourage the club to hit the ball a little bit later, so we’re actually hitting the club face into the back of the balls the club comes up. And second is to get a bit more, a bit more of a neutral to strong grip. So what I mean by that, that’s a neutral grip, with the V going almost to my chin, and just go slightly stronger, and by putting those hands further over the top of the club, that will now shallow my swing out. In other words it will take my club a bit more around my body so remember how you couldn’t see the shoulder before? Now we’ve got a slightly stronger grip, the shoulder is here, and that will encourage me to take the club more around sort of in this time, it’s a flatter swing, it’s a it’s a much more shallow arc and you can imagine, from this arc here and I’m coming back into the ball whereas before, we’d be going out, and we were coming down. So now you know the two most common faults of actually ballooning it, but more importantly, how to go, about putting it right. 2014-07-30

Okay, so the question is, what is a ballooning golf ball flight and how do we actually stop it. Well first of all, let’s describe what a ballooning golf shot is. Wherever you are, you know some people call it ballooning and we call it skying it, it’s when you sky the ball, it’s the same terminology ballooning in the sky, it means basically when you get right underneath the ball, so a good demonstration would be I’ve got my driver, I’ve set my ball up ridiculously far, far too high for the golf club, I’m going to set myself up and if I was to swing and hit this ball now, I would literally go right underneath that ball, and the ball would come off the top of the club, and when it comes off the top, it comes off the roof and that’s where we get this ballooning, where we get right underneath it. I’m sure some of you senior golfers over the years as indeed I have a long, long time ago, have got yourself into a position, made of what you thought was a good swing but you’ve got right underneath it and you struggle to reach that fairway it’s just gone so high, so ballooning and skying mean the same thing and that’s basically what happens.

One of the biggest cause is not just teeing the ball excessively too high but what you actually do in your set up. So I’m going to give you two examples of what causes, most probably the two most common faults, the ballooning, the actual ball. The first one is setting up, with the ball position too central. So imagine you got your driver in your handle you’re 3-wood. By putting the ball in the middle of the stance creates naturally a swing that goes more up, it’s what we call a steep swing, a steep plane. So from here, if I put the ball in the middle my swing would tend to go more up and what goes up has to come down. And you can see as I come down I’m actually hitting very, very low. So I’m chopping up the ball, so that’s one.

The second most common fault for skying or ballooning is for actually having a weak grip. A weak grip is one where the left hand is too far to the left, and the right hand wraps itself over, and when we do that the shoulders all of a sudden instead of being parallel, the shoulders disappears and you can’t see this left shoulder now, it’s out of the way it’s what we call an open shoulder position because of this weak grip, and what that creates is a swing that goes very, very much outside the line, and you can see, why I’ve done this almost like I can pick the club straight up, I’ve picked the club straight up outside the line and what goes out comes in, and you can see I’m chopping. So those are the two biggest causes of ballooning.

So the best way of actually getting out of those two habits, is to so two things; the first thing is to concentrate on having the ball position more towards your left heel, your front foot, and what that will do is encourage the club to hit the ball a little bit later, so we’re actually hitting the club face into the back of the balls the club comes up. And second is to get a bit more, a bit more of a neutral to strong grip. So what I mean by that, that’s a neutral grip, with the V going almost to my chin, and just go slightly stronger, and by putting those hands further over the top of the club, that will now shallow my swing out. In other words it will take my club a bit more around my body so remember how you couldn’t see the shoulder before? Now we’ve got a slightly stronger grip, the shoulder is here, and that will encourage me to take the club more around sort of in this time, it’s a flatter swing, it’s a it’s a much more shallow arc and you can imagine, from this arc here and I’m coming back into the ball whereas before, we’d be going out, and we were coming down. So now you know the two most common faults of actually ballooning it, but more importantly, how to go, about putting it right.