How To Adjust Distance For Downhill Shots In Golf Golf Tip (Video) - by Pete Styles
How To Adjust Distance For Downhill Shots In Golf Golf Tip (Video) - by Pete Styles

We often find it nice to go and play a challenging golf course; a golf course that has a few more features and undulations than your normal golf course. But it’s often more difficult to play that type of golf course because your yardages are going to be different, if you have to play uphill and downhill golf shots. So if we were to look at how we could adjust that yardages to try and minimize the effect of the yardages. This could be quite a helpful little of tip for you. If I take my seven iron I know my normal seven iron distance, let’s just keep it simple for everybody; it’s 150 yards. So I take a normal seven iron it’s going to go 150 yards. But if I’ve got an elevation change, that’s going to change the distance of the shot and it’s important that you can adjust your club selection rather than just thinking, well, I’ll just hit this one harder. So let’s suggest we’ve got a downwards hill here, we’ve got a downward slope. So if it goes downwards, I’m going to hit the ball further than I expect because as the ball gets down to where the ground would normally be, the ground’s not there, the ground’s down here. The ball is still coming down. It’s probably coming down at around about 45 degrees.

So for every yard I lose in height vertically, I gain a yard horizontally. So if it’s a 10 yard drop, it’s going to be 10 yards further as the ball comes down. So when you are setting up to the ball you need to have a good assessment of how high the ground is that you are standing on, how high the ground is you are hitting onto and make the relevant adjustments. If it’s a 30 foot or 10 yard drop, I would change by one full club. I would drop my seven I’d go down to an eight. I would make the same swing and as the ball comes down, it’s going to fly that 10 yards further as it drops 10 yards lower and end up nicely next to the flag and on the green. The other consideration you might have here is if you are actually hitting the ball already from a down slope, so if the ground is pointing down towards target and you are stood on that ground, whatever the angle of the ground he’s doing is probably going to affect the angle of shot that you are hitting. So if I’m tilting into my left side because I’m on a down slope, if my spine angle tilts forward, my shaft would tilt forward. The angle of that shaft would take the loft off the club. So if it’s a three degree, four degree tilt forwards, anywhere between three and four degrees is one full club. So again, if I’ve got seven iron but I want a three or four degree hill, I now need to be hitting an eight and eight would go the same distance as seven. So count to the direct, sorry the distance of the hill is here but also what’s the hill like here. Way all locked up in the pre-shot routine, make your club selection accurately and then confidently step forwards and hit the shot. 2014-03-27

We often find it nice to go and play a challenging golf course; a golf course that has a few more features and undulations than your normal golf course. But it’s often more difficult to play that type of golf course because your yardages are going to be different, if you have to play uphill and downhill golf shots. So if we were to look at how we could adjust that yardages to try and minimize the effect of the yardages. This could be quite a helpful little of tip for you. If I take my seven iron I know my normal seven iron distance, let’s just keep it simple for everybody; it’s 150 yards. So I take a normal seven iron it’s going to go 150 yards. But if I’ve got an elevation change, that’s going to change the distance of the shot and it’s important that you can adjust your club selection rather than just thinking, well, I’ll just hit this one harder. So let’s suggest we’ve got a downwards hill here, we’ve got a downward slope. So if it goes downwards, I’m going to hit the ball further than I expect because as the ball gets down to where the ground would normally be, the ground’s not there, the ground’s down here. The ball is still coming down. It’s probably coming down at around about 45 degrees.

So for every yard I lose in height vertically, I gain a yard horizontally. So if it’s a 10 yard drop, it’s going to be 10 yards further as the ball comes down. So when you are setting up to the ball you need to have a good assessment of how high the ground is that you are standing on, how high the ground is you are hitting onto and make the relevant adjustments. If it’s a 30 foot or 10 yard drop, I would change by one full club. I would drop my seven I’d go down to an eight. I would make the same swing and as the ball comes down, it’s going to fly that 10 yards further as it drops 10 yards lower and end up nicely next to the flag and on the green. The other consideration you might have here is if you are actually hitting the ball already from a down slope, so if the ground is pointing down towards target and you are stood on that ground, whatever the angle of the ground he’s doing is probably going to affect the angle of shot that you are hitting.

So if I’m tilting into my left side because I’m on a down slope, if my spine angle tilts forward, my shaft would tilt forward. The angle of that shaft would take the loft off the club. So if it’s a three degree, four degree tilt forwards, anywhere between three and four degrees is one full club. So again, if I’ve got seven iron but I want a three or four degree hill, I now need to be hitting an eight and eight would go the same distance as seven. So count to the direct, sorry the distance of the hill is here but also what’s the hill like here. Way all locked up in the pre-shot routine, make your club selection accurately and then confidently step forwards and hit the shot.