Producing a relatively high ball flight with your irons is going to be a good thing on most occasions.

Unless you happen to be playing on a particularly windy day, being able to hit your irons high in the air is going to make the game of golf quite a bit easier. For starters, you’ll be able to stop the ball quicker when it lands, meaning you can hold firm greens and set up birdie putts. Also, you should gain carry distance when you hit the ball higher, allowing you to attack the green with a shorter club from any given distance. It’s no coincidence that most of the top players on the PGA Tour are able to hit the ball extremely high with their irons. This ability is a competitive advantage, and you would be wise to add it to your game.

Of course, saying that you want to hit your irons higher is one thing – making that happen is another thing entirely. It’s not easy to hit high iron shots, as you need to execute on a number of points before you can see the ball fly high up into the sky. One of those key points is the position of your hands at impact. If your hands are too far forward when you strike the ball, it’s nearly certain that your shots are going to fly too low. Find a way to move your hands back at impact and a higher trajectory should be the natural result.

In this article, we are going to provide some tips on how you can adjust the position of your hands during the swing. Additionally, we’ll talk about some other points you should keep in mind when trying to eliminate those pesky low iron shots. Even if you don’t wind up learning how to hit the ball way up in the air, even moving up to a moderate trajectory will be a nice boost to your game as a whole.

All of the content below is based on a right-handed golfer. If you happen to play left-handed, please take a moment to reverse the directions as necessary.

Getting Off to a Good Start

Like so many other things in golf, having success with the position of your hands and impact comes back to positioning yourself properly at address. If you can use a solid address position over and over again, it will become much easier to strike the ball properly at the bottom of your swing. No, using a good address position doesn’t guarantee you success with your swing, but it will allow you to get off on the right foot. If you can combine a good address position with solid fundamentals throughout the rest of the swing, you’ll be well on your way to a positive outcome.

So, what does a good address position look like? Where should your hands be before the swing begins? Let’s take a look at some answers to those questions.

• Square and solid. Before we even talk about the position of your hands, we should say that your stance should be both square and solid. What does that mean? First, square means you need to have your body in a position which is square to the target line from top to bottom. Your feet, knees, hips, and shoulders should all match up nicely with the target line. While it is not necessarily required to be in a square position, life on the course will be much easier if this is your standard way of making swings. As for solid, this mostly has to do with the position of your knees as you stand over the ball. Make sure to include plenty of knee flex in your stance, as this is going to help you feel solid over the ball and maintain stability as the swing develops. The right amount of knee flex at address will vary from player to player, so experiment on the range in order to find your perfect position.
• Hands where you would like them at impact. The best way to set your hands at address is to place them where you would like them to land when you actually strike the ball. For a standard iron shot that you are playing from a fairway lie, that usually means that your hands should be just slightly in front of the position of the ball. By in front, we mean closer to the target, or left of the ball as you are looking down from above. Since you want to hit down on the ball with your irons, setting your hands just barely in front will promote the type of downward strike that produces solid results. If you were to set your hands too far forward of the ball, you would be encouraging the kind of low shots that we are trying to avoid in this article. Set up with your hands either directly over the ball or just slightly in front and you should be ready to go.
• Comfortable ball position. Positioning the ball correctly in your stance is one of those things that often goes overlooked in golf. Proper ball position is a key fundamental, and you will always struggle to play well if you don’t line up with the ball in a good place. As a general rule of thumb, you should line up with the ball directly in the middle of your stance for wedges, and gradually move it forward from there as the clubs get longer. Many amateur golfers go wrong on this point, and they pay the price as a result. If you stand too far forward – meaning you play the ball way back in your stance – it’s inevitable that your hands are going to be well in front of the ball when you make contact. Therefore, you’ll wind up with a low ball flight, and you will be limited in terms of what you can do with your irons. Experiment during practice with various ball positions until you are able to settle on a position for each club which seems to yield good results.

You don’t want to spend your golf swing trying to make up for errors which were committed before the swing even began. If you use a poor address position – or even a good address position which contains one major mistake – you’ll always be trying to get back on track before impact arrives. Sometimes, you’ll be able to make the necessary correction and save your swing. Most of the time, however, you won’t. This is not a consistent way to play the game, and it will also be hard to develop any meaningful level of confidence. Take the time to build a quality address position and one big hurdle will be cleared.

In-Swing Problems

Even if you setup perfectly over the ball, it is still possible that your hands will wind up too far in front at impact. This can happen when you make a significant technical mistake during your swing. In this section, we are going to talk about some of the ways your swing can go wrong, and how you can make the necessary corrections. As you read, think about your current swing technique and try to decide whether or not you are making one or more of these mistakes.

• Sliding to the left in the downswing. This is an extremely common mistake, so we are going to start our list here. The golf swing is supposed to be a rotational action with very little lateral movement involved. However, many golfers struggle to make this happen, and instead they wind up sliding from side to side dramatically as the swing unfolds. This often means a slide to the right in the backswing and then a slide to the left in the downswing. If you do slide left on the way down, it’s likely that your hands will end up well beyond the ball at impact – and your shot will fly low as a result. To eliminate the lateral slide in your downswing, you actually need to look first to your backswing. Sliding to the right on the way back is likely to lead to a slide to the left as you swing through. Get rid of that first slide and the second one just may disappear on its own.
• Failing to turn away from the ball. This next point is quite different from the first issue. Here, you are going to fail to turn back properly, hanging on your left side throughout the swing. When that happens, your weight stays on the left and you aren’t in a balanced position to strike the ball. Since most of your body is stuck on the left side, it’s likely your hands will wind up well past the ball at the moment of contact. You won’t have slid past the ball, but you’ll end up past the ball anyway. The focus here needs to be on improving your shoulder turn. By turning your shoulders more fully away from the target, your body will be in a better position and you will be able to swing down aggressively without getting past the ball. Of course, a full shoulder turn is beneficial for a number of other reasons as well, so this is a point that certainly deserves your attention.
• Lack of a release. During the downswing, it is a good thing to have your hands leading the club head. This is called lag, and it is one of the most difficult things to learn in golf. If you are able to master lag, you will have a big advantage over most of the other players at your club. Unfortunately, if you don’t also know how to release the club through the hitting area, that lag isn’t going to do you any good at all. Basically, the problem here is dragging the club through the hitting zone without ever using the right hand to fire the club head through impact. Allow your hands to lead the way down toward the ball but go ahead and use your right hand to turn the club head loose into the ball before it’s too late. Without a good release, your hands will end up much too far forward at impact, and your shots will likely fly rather low.

As is usually the case in golf, it’s not likely that your low ball flight is caused by one specific mistake. Rather, it will probably wind up being a combination of errors that leads to your low shots. For instance, you may have a small problem with your ball position at address, combined with a less-than-ideal release through the hitting area. Even though each problem may be rather minor, they create a major issue when they come together.

So, your job as a golfer is clear – to break down the puzzle and figure out all the places you are going wrong. Maybe it is just one mistake that is giving you trouble, or maybe it’s two or three. Take the time necessary to work through the various components of your swing until you are confident you’ve figured out why your hands are too far forward at impact.

Other Ways to Add Height

It should be clear by now that improving your hand position at impact is one possible way to hit higher iron shots. But what are your other options? If you would like to work toward a higher flight, you may only make it so far by changing the position of your hands. Other adjustments may be required as well, which is what we are going to cover in this section.

Please take a moment to review the three other options below and consider putting these into action during an upcoming practice session.

• Add speed to your swing. This one is easier said than done, of course, but you should be able to hit the ball higher simply by swinging harder. If you can make changes to your swing that result in an increased swing speed, there should be more spin created at impact – and your ball should fly higher when all is said and done. Of course, you don’t want to swing so hard that you start to have trouble making solid contact with the ball. Try to find a nice balance where you are aggressive enough to produce speed while still maintaining control over your body and the club.
• Move the ball slightly forward. We talked earlier in the article about the importance of ball position. If you continue to struggle with the height of your shots, even after making some adjustments, it may be necessary to move the ball a little farther forward in your stance. This should not be a dramatic change – even just an inch or two can make a big difference. If you move the ball up in your stance, remember that there will be a transition period that you need to work through before your ball striking feels solid and comfortable once again. Be as precise as possible during practice to make sure you are positioning the ball in the same place time after time and be patient with the process until the results start to come around.
• Change golf balls. This is a tip which is easy to overlook, but it is actually quite important. You need to make sure that you are playing the right golf ball for your game if you are going to optimize your ball flight. Using the wrong ball could be holding you back, even if your swing is working well. Consider going through a ball fitting process at your local golf facility to gain some insight on which ball models will work best based on the dynamics of your swing. From there, try a few different options out on the course until you can confidently declare a winner.

You don’t want to tear your entire swing apart simply looking for additional height on your iron shots, but it really is helpful if you can find it. If you are persistent in your search, and you try all of the various options available, it’s likely that something will click, and you’ll find a way to hit the ball higher in the air.

Chip and Pitch Shot Issues

Believe it or not, we are going to wrap up this article by talking about the short game. So far, we’ve been talking about how having your hands too far forward at impact can lead to low iron shots. The same is true when talking about chip or pitch shots. If playing a short shot from around the green, placing your hands well in front of the ball at impact is going to lead to a low flight and plenty of bounce and roll. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on your perspective and the type of shot at hand. There is certainly a time and place for low chip and pitch shots, but there are also other situations where you’ll want to send the ball up in the air. In this last section, we are going to provide some tips on how to play higher chip and pitch shots when necessary.

Before talking technique, let’s establish why you would want to play the ball high in the first place. Usually, you are going to opt to play high short game shots when you don’t really have any other option. Most players would agree that playing the ball low to the ground is the easier way to go, so that should always be your default plan. Only when you can’t play the ball low – such as when there is a bunker between your ball and the hole – should you decide to play a high shot. A high shot is going to come down softer and stop quicker than a low shot of the same length.

When a high shot is required, use the following three tips to get the ball up quickly. Of course, you should practice this technique before putting it into action.

• Maximize loft. The first thing you need to do is maximize the amount of loft you have available during the swing. Somewhat surprisingly, many amateur golfers don’t manage to get this point right. If you have a 60* wedge in your bag, you might think that is plenty of loft for any short game shot. So, you just stand up to the ball, leave the face square, and make a swing. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to work in many circumstances. When you need to hit the ball particularly high, you’ll have to open the face at address to add loft. This way, the ball will pop up quickly into the air and come down soft when it lands.
• Right hand through impact. It is the job of the right hand to release the club fully under the ball at impact. Rather than a release where you roll the toe over from right to left, you are going to do your best to hold the face open by ‘scooping’ the club under the ball using your right hand.
• Perfectly steady head. The two tips listed above are going to do you no good whatsoever if you can’t keep your head still throughout the swing. These are delicate shots, and even a slight movement could throw everything off. Set your head in a comfortable position at address and hold it there as you make the swing.

Whether you are hitting full iron shots or short pitches from around the green, the ability to hit the ball high can take you a long way in golf. We hope the advice offered in this article will help you find higher shots out there on the course. It’s probably going to take some time and effort to learn how to hit the ball higher, but the reward will be an improved game which is better able to handle a wide range of situations. Good luck!

If you start with hitting the golf ball too low, particularly with your mid to short irons and considering that you strike the ball well, so you are getting good contact on the ball, you feel like you got the right club but your iron shots fly a lot lower than your partner’s or your colleague’s golf shots that fly higher, we could consider whether you are delofting the golf club through the impact phase, so if I take my 7 iron, I have checked my ball position is correct, just slightly left to center, but I feel as I hit the ball, the club has got less loft on it, there is probably a chance that your hands are too far in front of the golf club, at impact, now that might be caused by the hands being too far in front of the golf ball at setup as well, so as you setup, if your handle points well in front, every degree that my handle is in front of the golf ball is effectively taking loft off the club face.

Now you consider that each club in your bag is 3 to 4 degrees different from the next club it might hand at least 8 to 12 degrees ahead here, I have changed it down by 2 or 3 clubs. Then as I punch into the golf ball of impact, I have got very little loft on my 7 iron and it scooped in too low. So the first thing is to check that your hands aren’t too far ahead of setup, the handle pointing just inside your left hip here is fine, if the handle points outside of your left hip and beyond your body, its probably too much de-lofted already. So keep the golf club little bit more on the hip. I then try and return the golf club back to that same position so impact again, the club does point to my left hip, if the club points beyond my left hip and I have got too much angle break in my left wrist here, there is a good chance I am pointing the ball too low, not hitting it high enough, try and get the feeling that your hands are level or slightly ahead of the golf ball through impact to hit your 7 iron on the neutral loft to a really nice high lying shots, so when ball position is good, hands should be very slightly ahead but not too much. Go ahead and work on that, see if you can get your iron shots flying higher.