Hit Down On The Golf Ball With Different Clubs (Video) - by Pete Styles
Hit Down On The Golf Ball With Different Clubs (Video) - by Pete Styles

So if you got this concept that we should be striking down on the ball, we need to make sure we are striking down on the ball correctly with each individual club as we go through the bag, and also understanding the effect of how striking down on the ball will change ball flights and spin ratios. One of the most obvious clubs to start with when we talk about hitting down on the ball is one of your wedges. So we take for example, a pitching wedge. A pitching wedge has got around about 46 degrees of loft, plenty of loft. It’s kind of one to hit the ball really high up into the air, but again the club will do the hitting into the air, not the golfer.

The golfer’s job is very much to bring the club in a downwards angle, hitting down on the ball that makes the ball go up into the sky with plenty of spin. And with a good wedge you get round about 7 to 10,000 revolutions per minute of backspin so the ball will be spinning pretty straight through the sky quite quickly backwards. That’s because we have lots of loft, lots of hitting down and they combine to create what we class a spin loft which will really start spinning the ball backwards as it flies up into the sky. But I stress it’s not your job to help it go up, the club will do that. As we move then through the mid irons and we take something like a 7 iron. Now, a 7 iron has slightly less loft than a wedge and it’s going to produce a lower ball flight and therefore, as expected, it will produce a lower spin pattern. So round about 5 to 7,000 revs of spin coming from a 7 iron. You don’t need to worry too much about this; you just need to keep delivering the club in the right way. So with a 7 iron we are just very much conscious that we’re hitting down on the back of the ball, still trying to take it to the aft of the ball, not trying to help and scoop the ball up into the air. But because the downswing is not quite so as aggressive as a wedge, the ball isn’t necessarily going to fly as high or spin as much. And take that concept even further as we go towards the driver. Driver for most average golfers might have 10, 11 degrees of loft. Now because the ball is further forwards in the stance as well, the swing arc is less down, more level, and for even some golfers slightly up and it should ideally be slightly up. The ball’s on a tee peg you can afford to come low and then hit up into it. If you are hitting up by a couple of degrees with the club face, by say 10 degrees, the difference between the angle of attack and the club face is actually quite minimal. Therefore, you got less spin. So a driver might only spin backwards at about 2,000 revs per minute – don’t forget we said with a wedge that was round about 10,000 revs per minute – so when you got to wedge, you got loads of angle, loads of down that creates massive spin loft difference, loads and loads of backspin, driver, shallow angle of attack, may be even slightly on the way up with only a 10-11 degree angle on the face to spin loft to be quite low. The ball will rise more slowly into the sky, won’t shoot up into the air, certainly will have a lot less backspin. So when you are pitching as it lands on the green it’s going to back up and spin, your driver lands on the fairway it’s going to bound on and bound down and go forwards. And that’s why we have this different angle of approaches and different golf club lofts to produce very different heights, distances and spin lofts. But it’s important that with your short irons and your wedges, that you really focus on striking down on the ball and with your driver you just let the natural swing arc swing up into it a little bit more. 2016-04-18

So if you got this concept that we should be striking down on the ball, we need to make sure we are striking down on the ball correctly with each individual club as we go through the bag, and also understanding the effect of how striking down on the ball will change ball flights and spin ratios. One of the most obvious clubs to start with when we talk about hitting down on the ball is one of your wedges. So we take for example, a pitching wedge. A pitching wedge has got around about 46 degrees of loft, plenty of loft. It’s kind of one to hit the ball really high up into the air, but again the club will do the hitting into the air, not the golfer.

The golfer’s job is very much to bring the club in a downwards angle, hitting down on the ball that makes the ball go up into the sky with plenty of spin. And with a good wedge you get round about 7 to 10,000 revolutions per minute of backspin so the ball will be spinning pretty straight through the sky quite quickly backwards. That’s because we have lots of loft, lots of hitting down and they combine to create what we class a spin loft which will really start spinning the ball backwards as it flies up into the sky. But I stress it’s not your job to help it go up, the club will do that. As we move then through the mid irons and we take something like a 7 iron. Now, a 7 iron has slightly less loft than a wedge and it’s going to produce a lower ball flight and therefore, as expected, it will produce a lower spin pattern. So round about 5 to 7,000 revs of spin coming from a 7 iron.

You don’t need to worry too much about this; you just need to keep delivering the club in the right way. So with a 7 iron we are just very much conscious that we’re hitting down on the back of the ball, still trying to take it to the aft of the ball, not trying to help and scoop the ball up into the air. But because the downswing is not quite so as aggressive as a wedge, the ball isn’t necessarily going to fly as high or spin as much. And take that concept even further as we go towards the driver. Driver for most average golfers might have 10, 11 degrees of loft. Now because the ball is further forwards in the stance as well, the swing arc is less down, more level, and for even some golfers slightly up and it should ideally be slightly up. The ball’s on a tee peg you can afford to come low and then hit up into it. If you are hitting up by a couple of degrees with the club face, by say 10 degrees, the difference between the angle of attack and the club face is actually quite minimal.

Therefore, you got less spin. So a driver might only spin backwards at about 2,000 revs per minute – don’t forget we said with a wedge that was round about 10,000 revs per minute – so when you got to wedge, you got loads of angle, loads of down that creates massive spin loft difference, loads and loads of backspin, driver, shallow angle of attack, may be even slightly on the way up with only a 10-11 degree angle on the face to spin loft to be quite low. The ball will rise more slowly into the sky, won’t shoot up into the air, certainly will have a lot less backspin. So when you are pitching as it lands on the green it’s going to back up and spin, your driver lands on the fairway it’s going to bound on and bound down and go forwards. And that’s why we have this different angle of approaches and different golf club lofts to produce very different heights, distances and spin lofts. But it’s important that with your short irons and your wedges, that you really focus on striking down on the ball and with your driver you just let the natural swing arc swing up into it a little bit more.