How To Swing Your Short Hybrid Golf Club (Video) - by Pete Styles
How To Swing Your Short Hybrid Golf Club (Video) - by Pete Styles

If you've now made the decision that short irons aren't really working for you, and actually shorter hybrid golf clubs are going to go into your bag, let's look at the different techniques that you could now utilize with those different golf clubs. One of the first points is that when you're using a short iron, your swing can be quite steep in hitting down and taking a divot, but actually, as we go to the shorter hybrid golf club, we don't want to be so steep. So the things that we change in our set up and in our swing are designed to flatten the swing plane out a little bit.

So the first consideration would be ball position. With a short iron, you could go ahead and place the ball directly in your feet – directly in the center of your feet. That would be for a pitching wedge, 9-iron, maybe even an 8. But actually for a short hybrid golf club, I just like to position the ball slightly more forward just to stop the club coming crashing down into the back of the ball. Would like it to be a little bit of a softer divot shape. So as I go ahead and hit the ball here, I'm going to have the ball slightly ahead of center, and just try and sweep it into the sky. And you can see as I've hit that, that I haven't actually taken a divot, just brushed the tops of the leaves of the grass. But actually if I had done that with a short iron, I'd normally be taking a divot a roundabout sort of two, three inches in – sort of after the ball, so I'd hit the ball, then I'd hit the turf, because my swing would be on a descending angle of attack. With my hybrid golf club, it's a shallow angle of attack, doesn't really take a divot too much. The other thing that you might have noted in my swing there is it's quite a flat swing when I'm using my short hybrid golf clubs. So it's coming more around my body, it's not coming straight up and down again, which is crashing into the turf, taking a divot as a steeper, short iron swing would be. This is going to be flatter, more around the body, and coming through on a nice angle of attack that doesn't hit down too much. One other word of caution when you're swinging your short hybrid golf clubs, is just to make sure you finish your backswing. Having a short backswing, getting too aggressive in the downswing, is not really going to work. That's going to make it too steep as well. So nice, long, completed backswing, a slightly forward ball position, slightly flatter than normal swing, and that should sweep your short hybrids nicely into the air. 2016-09-26

If you've now made the decision that short irons aren't really working for you, and actually shorter hybrid golf clubs are going to go into your bag, let's look at the different techniques that you could now utilize with those different golf clubs. One of the first points is that when you're using a short iron, your swing can be quite steep in hitting down and taking a divot, but actually, as we go to the shorter hybrid golf club, we don't want to be so steep. So the things that we change in our set up and in our swing are designed to flatten the swing plane out a little bit.

So the first consideration would be ball position. With a short iron, you could go ahead and place the ball directly in your feet – directly in the center of your feet. That would be for a pitching wedge, 9-iron, maybe even an 8. But actually for a short hybrid golf club, I just like to position the ball slightly more forward just to stop the club coming crashing down into the back of the ball. Would like it to be a little bit of a softer divot shape. So as I go ahead and hit the ball here, I'm going to have the ball slightly ahead of center, and just try and sweep it into the sky. And you can see as I've hit that, that I haven't actually taken a divot, just brushed the tops of the leaves of the grass. But actually if I had done that with a short iron, I'd normally be taking a divot a roundabout sort of two, three inches in – sort of after the ball, so I'd hit the ball, then I'd hit the turf, because my swing would be on a descending angle of attack. With my hybrid golf club, it's a shallow angle of attack, doesn't really take a divot too much.

The other thing that you might have noted in my swing there is it's quite a flat swing when I'm using my short hybrid golf clubs. So it's coming more around my body, it's not coming straight up and down again, which is crashing into the turf, taking a divot as a steeper, short iron swing would be. This is going to be flatter, more around the body, and coming through on a nice angle of attack that doesn't hit down too much.

One other word of caution when you're swinging your short hybrid golf clubs, is just to make sure you finish your backswing. Having a short backswing, getting too aggressive in the downswing, is not really going to work. That's going to make it too steep as well. So nice, long, completed backswing, a slightly forward ball position, slightly flatter than normal swing, and that should sweep your short hybrids nicely into the air.