I would think as a golfer there is no better feeling than getting the club in the slot coming into the golf ball. It makes it feel very powerful, very controlled and like you are going to have that club in the slot all day to keep the ball on the flag all day. But if you have never experienced having the club in the slot coming into impact, it can be quite a difficult thing to understand. So here I am addressing the golf ball down the line for you, setting myself up, swing up to the top and then I drop the club there, into the slot, so the slot happens from right about the shoulders to hip level.

The shaft of the golf club should be pointing nicely on the target line on the golf ball line and I can just pull the club down to make impact. If the club was outside of that position, this club doesn’t point to the ball, I’m going to miss the slot, miss the shot unless I make a correction and it’s the corrections that we don’t need when we’ve got the club in the slot. Likewise if the club was too steep, it’s not in the slot here I’m going to have to make a correction to hit the ball effectively.

So what we would to try and achieve during a nice little drill is the feeling of getting the club in the slot, driving it up and down in that slot. So we take an address position to the golf ball, we swing the club nicely up to the top and we pull it down and from this position I feel like the butt end of the club points directly at the ball and now in the slot. So I’m going to just pump that club up and down a few times, feeling like any minute now I could release that club head into the ball to hit the ball well. And that pumping feeling there using my hands, my arms, my shoulders to keep the club in the slot is a great way of rehearsing the muscle memory, the feeling that you need to hit that ball nicely from that inside position slot position.

So here we go with the drill, nice setup position, up the top and down into the slot, up, down, up down a few times before you hit it and generally speaking you are going to get a good contact to that and you are going to hit it straight down the middle. The strike maybe takes a bit of getting used to because you are going from this pumping position up and down position but when you strike it you will hit it as clean and as straight as anything else you’ve hit all day. If you are struggling with a strike drop down to a shorter club and stick the ball on a tee peg just to make life a little bit easy for you with that contact but practice getting the club in the slot, and you’ll be hitting it straighter and ripping the flag out all day long.