How To Hit The Ball Higher And Lower (Video) - by Pete Styles
How To Hit The Ball Higher And Lower (Video) - by Pete Styles

So changing our ball flight isn’t just about changing the direction, the left to right, right to left direction of the flight. We can also change the ball flight nice and efficiently and quite usefully on the golf course by changing the height of the shot, hitting high shots or lower shots, and that could help us if we were playing over something or under something, so over these trees or under these trees. It could also help us if we were playing into a wind. So in a headwind or a crosswind I might choose to have a different ball flight, it could also change the way the ball lands on the green, higher ball flight might land and stop quicker, lower ball flight might land and roll out a bit more. So the height of my shot can be quite variable and that could be something I’d like to do as well. Now I can do all of these by changing clubs or I can do all of these by changing the way I play the same club. So lets go ahead and take an A time. I am going to play the ball back in my stance, grip down, lean the handle forwards a little bit and then weight my left side, and that’s going to produce an A time that looks like a six or a five iron, its going to come out low, its going to shoot forwards, everything I have done there is to de-loft the golf club and hit the ball in a lot lower.

Then if I wanted to hit the same club that hit the ball a lot higher, change the profile of the flight, change the way the ball reacts on the green, I could take the ball slightly more further forwards in my stance, played it to the left side a bit more. I could have the handle back a little bit more, and I could weight more onto my right side, as I hit this I could have a slightly early release and try and hit it with the neutral shaft angle or actually a backward shaft angle. Now the reason inherent risk there with the quality of the ball strike might suffer, so try and only do that when you’ve got yourself in a good lie, but by changing the way I am striking down on the ball I can change the height, the distance and the direction of my shots. And having an understanding of how you can change ball flight for height as well as direction is quite a useful skill particularly for the more advanced golfer to change their flight when they are on the golf course. 2015-10-16

So changing our ball flight isn’t just about changing the direction, the left to right, right to left direction of the flight. We can also change the ball flight nice and efficiently and quite usefully on the golf course by changing the height of the shot, hitting high shots or lower shots, and that could help us if we were playing over something or under something, so over these trees or under these trees. It could also help us if we were playing into a wind. So in a headwind or a crosswind I might choose to have a different ball flight, it could also change the way the ball lands on the green, higher ball flight might land and stop quicker, lower ball flight might land and roll out a bit more. So the height of my shot can be quite variable and that could be something I’d like to do as well. Now I can do all of these by changing clubs or I can do all of these by changing the way I play the same club. So lets go ahead and take an A time. I am going to play the ball back in my stance, grip down, lean the handle forwards a little bit and then weight my left side, and that’s going to produce an A time that looks like a six or a five iron, its going to come out low, its going to shoot forwards, everything I have done there is to de-loft the golf club and hit the ball in a lot lower.

Then if I wanted to hit the same club that hit the ball a lot higher, change the profile of the flight, change the way the ball reacts on the green, I could take the ball slightly more further forwards in my stance, played it to the left side a bit more. I could have the handle back a little bit more, and I could weight more onto my right side, as I hit this I could have a slightly early release and try and hit it with the neutral shaft angle or actually a backward shaft angle. Now the reason inherent risk there with the quality of the ball strike might suffer, so try and only do that when you’ve got yourself in a good lie, but by changing the way I am striking down on the ball I can change the height, the distance and the direction of my shots. And having an understanding of how you can change ball flight for height as well as direction is quite a useful skill particularly for the more advanced golfer to change their flight when they are on the golf course.