How do you hit a shot from a downhill lie? (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
How do you hit a shot from a downhill lie? (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

If you find yourself in a position where your golf balls come running down the fairway and it’s finished down a down slope, so here my left foot would be lower than my right foot, and my slope is tilted this way. There’s a couple of considerations that I could make here to try and to encourage the best possible shot from this situation. The first thing I’d like to try and do is align my body to the hill. So imagine that I can actually play the ball from flat lie by changing my body position. So I’m going to lean quite aggressively into my left side, get my shoulders nicely tilted down the hill, let my right foot come up on the hill, and my spine angle would then be perpendicular to the hill. Now for a lot of golfers this so much seems counter intuitive. When they were on a down slope, they almost want to lean back and try and scoop the ball back up into the air.

The reality of that is they’re just going to ground the club out way too early. The club would be hitting the ground as they’re leaning back so it’s important that we lean with the slope. Then as we hit this there will be a big follow through onto the left side and the strike of the ball might come out quite low. We’ve also got to consider from this position that that position would probably result in a push or a faded golf shot. So something that would start down the right side and then push out to the right a little bit further as well. So I would actually like to compensate for that in our alignment phase. So if I’m on a down slope here, I’m going to aim down the left hand side of the fairway, left hand side of the green, tilt myself forward with the hill, high right shoulder, low left shoulder, and then plan to play a little bit of a chopped off cut. The ball will come out low and move left to right in the air. And that’s how you can get the best out of those downhill lie golf shots. 2015-03-31

If you find yourself in a position where your golf balls come running down the fairway and it’s finished down a down slope, so here my left foot would be lower than my right foot, and my slope is tilted this way. There’s a couple of considerations that I could make here to try and to encourage the best possible shot from this situation. The first thing I’d like to try and do is align my body to the hill. So imagine that I can actually play the ball from flat lie by changing my body position. So I’m going to lean quite aggressively into my left side, get my shoulders nicely tilted down the hill, let my right foot come up on the hill, and my spine angle would then be perpendicular to the hill. Now for a lot of golfers this so much seems counter intuitive. When they were on a down slope, they almost want to lean back and try and scoop the ball back up into the air.

The reality of that is they’re just going to ground the club out way too early. The club would be hitting the ground as they’re leaning back so it’s important that we lean with the slope. Then as we hit this there will be a big follow through onto the left side and the strike of the ball might come out quite low. We’ve also got to consider from this position that that position would probably result in a push or a faded golf shot. So something that would start down the right side and then push out to the right a little bit further as well. So I would actually like to compensate for that in our alignment phase. So if I’m on a down slope here, I’m going to aim down the left hand side of the fairway, left hand side of the green, tilt myself forward with the hill, high right shoulder, low left shoulder, and then plan to play a little bit of a chopped off cut. The ball will come out low and move left to right in the air. And that’s how you can get the best out of those downhill lie golf shots.