How To Hit Down On The Golf Ball (Video) - by Pete Styles
How To Hit Down On The Golf Ball (Video) - by Pete Styles

There’s quite a lot of golf instruction and magazines and things that you’ll will see and hear on the TV about improving your golf, we’ll talk about hitting down on the golf ball. And I guess it’s one of those terminologies that as a golf instructor and as a player, we kind of use a bit flippantly. And maybe from a club golf and amateur golf or a beginner’s perspective, “What do you mean hitting down on it? You want me to – want me to do that.” That doesn’t look like it’s going to work, that can’t be how you mean hitting down on the golf ball.

So may be we need to explain ourselves a little bit more clearly about this terminology of hitting down, what it means and how it can benefit you as a golfer. So a simple principle being is if a golf ball is on the floor, it’s already on its lowest point, it can’t go lower, neither can a golf club. A golf club cannot come from underneath and try and hit that golf ball in a upwards position. So the club can only come in level and downwards, and actually level is a risk because if there is longer grass here when the ball is sitting down below the longer grass, level is going to hit long grass and that’s not going to work. So the club needs to be on a descending arc. So work on the principle that a golf swing is sort of one big circle, it’s high, it’s low and it’s high again. The ball needs to be at the bottom of that circle and ideally just before the bottom of the circle so the club is still coming down, hits the ball, then the bottom of the arc and then the club rises up. And that’s where we get this concept of hitting down on the golf ball. Now there’s a couple of key elements that I think could encourage you to hit, help you hit down on the golf ball more. Now good impact position is going to be one of the key elements here, so in my address position I’m here, in my impact position I’m here. Now if you follow this concept of the bottom of the arc is now going to be here, bottom of the arc under the center of gravity, the club will be descending, hitting the ball and then go through to its lowest point. So it’s on the downwards part of the arc. So during impact bag exercises could help you with that correct impact position. Couple of other good exercises to get the right feel for this, I’m just going to move forwards to the front of my practice tee here because actually there is a down slope on the front of the practice tee. So if I stand with my body down the practice tee, down the slope, I can feel how my swing would come down a little bit more. So I move forward to this part of the practice tee, lean onto my left side, I can really feel how I’m hitting down, and I can put the club in a good position and move down the practice tee. And as I drag down the practice tee, I can feel how the club would be descending down into the golf ball. And it – guess it’s really just a case of trying to do completely the opposite for what a lot of club golfers do, which is trying to swing up into the ball. The instinct is we need to be behind the ball and hit up, that’s completely incorrect, because if the club – well sorry the ball is on the ground – how can the club come up from underneath? So we can’t without hitting the ball flat. May be if the ball is on a tee peg we can have a bit of that, but if the ball is on the ground there is no chance that we can hit up into it, we have to hit down onto the golf ball, we have to improve that quality of ball striking. So these next few videos are going to really help you with that concept of striking down on the golf ball. 2016-04-18

There’s quite a lot of golf instruction and magazines and things that you’ll will see and hear on the TV about improving your golf, we’ll talk about hitting down on the golf ball. And I guess it’s one of those terminologies that as a golf instructor and as a player, we kind of use a bit flippantly. And maybe from a club golf and amateur golf or a beginner’s perspective, “What do you mean hitting down on it? You want me to – want me to do that.” That doesn’t look like it’s going to work, that can’t be how you mean hitting down on the golf ball.

So may be we need to explain ourselves a little bit more clearly about this terminology of hitting down, what it means and how it can benefit you as a golfer. So a simple principle being is if a golf ball is on the floor, it’s already on its lowest point, it can’t go lower, neither can a golf club. A golf club cannot come from underneath and try and hit that golf ball in a upwards position. So the club can only come in level and downwards, and actually level is a risk because if there is longer grass here when the ball is sitting down below the longer grass, level is going to hit long grass and that’s not going to work. So the club needs to be on a descending arc. So work on the principle that a golf swing is sort of one big circle, it’s high, it’s low and it’s high again.

The ball needs to be at the bottom of that circle and ideally just before the bottom of the circle so the club is still coming down, hits the ball, then the bottom of the arc and then the club rises up. And that’s where we get this concept of hitting down on the golf ball. Now there’s a couple of key elements that I think could encourage you to hit, help you hit down on the golf ball more. Now good impact position is going to be one of the key elements here, so in my address position I’m here, in my impact position I’m here. Now if you follow this concept of the bottom of the arc is now going to be here, bottom of the arc under the center of gravity, the club will be descending, hitting the ball and then go through to its lowest point.

So it’s on the downwards part of the arc. So during impact bag exercises could help you with that correct impact position. Couple of other good exercises to get the right feel for this, I’m just going to move forwards to the front of my practice tee here because actually there is a down slope on the front of the practice tee. So if I stand with my body down the practice tee, down the slope, I can feel how my swing would come down a little bit more. So I move forward to this part of the practice tee, lean onto my left side, I can really feel how I’m hitting down, and I can put the club in a good position and move down the practice tee.

And as I drag down the practice tee, I can feel how the club would be descending down into the golf ball. And it – guess it’s really just a case of trying to do completely the opposite for what a lot of club golfers do, which is trying to swing up into the ball. The instinct is we need to be behind the ball and hit up, that’s completely incorrect, because if the club – well sorry the ball is on the ground – how can the club come up from underneath? So we can’t without hitting the ball flat. May be if the ball is on a tee peg we can have a bit of that, but if the ball is on the ground there is no chance that we can hit up into it, we have to hit down onto the golf ball, we have to improve that quality of ball striking. So these next few videos are going to really help you with that concept of striking down on the golf ball.