Hitting Golf Irons From A Tight Lie (Video) - by Pete Styles
Hitting Golf Irons From A Tight Lie (Video) - by Pete Styles

When a golfer is faced with an iron shaft from a tight lie, golfer often approaches that shot with a little bit less confidence, and sometimes doesn't hit the ball as well as they wold do if the ball was in a nice grassy line. And I often think the issue is actually more mental and psychological than it is physical.

Purely the fact that when the golfer sees the ball sitting upon a nice tuft of grass, they think "Well, that looks easy, it's almost on a little tea peg. I can get the club underneath that ball and lift it up into the air nicely." They'll probably hit that shot well. When we walk and then find that ball on some hardpan, some flat or some dormant grass, we often think, "Oh, that's more difficult, so I need to help it. I need to scoop underneath and lift it into the air." And that is simply not the case. And actually, for lot of golfers they make their situation worse by trying to lift the ball and trying to help the ball up in the air, rather than just trusting a normal and a natural golf swing. So, as a golfer, if we ever find a ball on a hardpan lie where there's not much grass underneath the ball, couple of little changes to your swing. But generally not a massive deal of difference. If we play the ball, just one ball's roll slightly further back in our stance, that should encourage to make sure that we get a strike right first before we hit the ground. So we're going to hit ball before turf. We can also just set our hands slightly to the left of the setup position and our body weight slightly more to the left. This is all for the right-handed golfer. So, we play the ball back, we play the body and slightly more folds. Then play with a nice smooth rhythm and tempo. Don't go trying to hit this ball too hard. You don't – excuse me, you don't need to, the ball's going to fly nicely up into the air anyway as long as you make a good contact with it. So we'll play the ball slightly back in our stance, play the hand slightly ahead and the body weight slightly ahead. Then I'm just going to make sure I play with a nice stable lower half. My left side is going to work well in a down swing just to stabilize myself. I'm certainly making sure I don't lean back and try and scoop the ball up into the air. And I'll try and play the ball relatively cleanly. I'm not going to take a massive pivot because the ball is sitting on that hardpan. I'm not going to find any joy if I try and drive the club too low down into the ground. And if you can make those small subtle changes to your iron game, when you're playing on the hardpan, you should find that it's not too difficult for you. 2016-05-11

When a golfer is faced with an iron shaft from a tight lie, golfer often approaches that shot with a little bit less confidence, and sometimes doesn't hit the ball as well as they wold do if the ball was in a nice grassy line. And I often think the issue is actually more mental and psychological than it is physical.

Purely the fact that when the golfer sees the ball sitting upon a nice tuft of grass, they think “Well, that looks easy, it's almost on a little tea peg. I can get the club underneath that ball and lift it up into the air nicely.” They'll probably hit that shot well. When we walk and then find that ball on some hardpan, some flat or some dormant grass, we often think, “Oh, that's more difficult, so I need to help it. I need to scoop underneath and lift it into the air.” And that is simply not the case. And actually, for lot of golfers they make their situation worse by trying to lift the ball and trying to help the ball up in the air, rather than just trusting a normal and a natural golf swing.

So, as a golfer, if we ever find a ball on a hardpan lie where there's not much grass underneath the ball, couple of little changes to your swing. But generally not a massive deal of difference. If we play the ball, just one ball's roll slightly further back in our stance, that should encourage to make sure that we get a strike right first before we hit the ground. So we're going to hit ball before turf.

We can also just set our hands slightly to the left of the setup position and our body weight slightly more to the left. This is all for the right-handed golfer. So, we play the ball back, we play the body and slightly more folds. Then play with a nice smooth rhythm and tempo. Don't go trying to hit this ball too hard. You don't – excuse me, you don't need to, the ball's going to fly nicely up into the air anyway as long as you make a good contact with it.

So we'll play the ball slightly back in our stance, play the hand slightly ahead and the body weight slightly ahead. Then I'm just going to make sure I play with a nice stable lower half. My left side is going to work well in a down swing just to stabilize myself. I'm certainly making sure I don't lean back and try and scoop the ball up into the air. And I'll try and play the ball relatively cleanly. I'm not going to take a massive pivot because the ball is sitting on that hardpan. I'm not going to find any joy if I try and drive the club too low down into the ground.

And if you can make those small subtle changes to your iron game, when you're playing on the hardpan, you should find that it's not too difficult for you.