Pete Finch – PGA Teaching Pro

A lot of people have been told and a lot of people know that they should hit down on their golf chip shots. But the reason for this is how swing arc actually relates the ball position and how it relates to loft when you are hitting the shot. When you have a downward angle of attack so that club is moving downward through the point of impact, the reason that is important is because you want to hit the ball first and then the turf with most of the short game shot.

Now, that is a lot easier to do with the angle of attack, if it’s descending through the point of impact. However, with the angle of attack descending through the point of impact, your swing arc is going to bottom out after the ball. Now, when that happens and when you can get that consistent strike on the ball, you are going to be able to repeat this a lot, lot more often. Trying to get the club bottoming out at the point of impact exactly is very, very hard to do and by changing ball positions and by moving ball positions around, it will affect how angle of attack and how swing arc works.

For example, if I’m getting setup here and I’m going to pull the ball right opposite of my left toe using the same setup that I have already, my weight forward and my hands just above level with my left thigh here, you can see how the shaft angle is pointing quite straight up. Now, this means that as I move through the ball, the angle of attack and the swing arc is going to be very, very shallow. I’m going to be catching the ground and the ball pretty much exactly the same time.

If I go to the opposite end of the spectrum and pop the ball off my right foot and you again use the same setup hands opposite to left thigh, weight in exactly the same position, my angle of attack is going to be much, much steeper and it’s going to have a more descending blow into the ball and that’s why you need to know where you are going to bottom out the swing arc, because the steeper the angle of attack, the more the swing arc will be moving down, the lower the initial ball flight will be, because you are de-lofting the club as far as dynamic loft as goes.

The further forward the ball goes, the shallower the angle of attack is going to be, it’s going to be bottomed out the ball you are going to be presenting a lot more loft to the club. So, having a knowledge of where your swing arc bottoms out will greatly affect how you can control the overall ball flight of your chip shots.