How to: Work the Golf Ball (Video) - by Pete Styles
How to: Work the Golf Ball (Video) - by Pete Styles

As a golfer, it’s always nice to understand why the golf ball has just done what it’s done and also how you can have an effect and how you can control that. So here is a little video about how you should be practicing on the driving range, to feel that you could work the golf ball and you can control the golf ball. So there’s a couple of different options that you could do to alter the flight. You could alter the height, and you could alter the curve and the direction. So let's start by hitting the ball lower. The easiest way to hit the golf ball lower is to hit the ball with less loft, so you could de-loft your golf club by just taking a slightly higher number or lower number should I say. Or actually, you could work the ball by the moving the ball position back and the hand position forwards. So we play the ball, bat with a 7I in here and with the handle pointing more at the left hit for the right-handed golfer, this is not going to be a very low 7I.

This would be struck with a very good downwards angle of attack, driving the ball out low, that’s going to be useful on very windy days, if the ball is sitting in a very bad line, of if I need to get it out underneath some trees. I could play the ball back, play my hands ahead and strike down on it. So the next time, you are on the range, practice that one and see whether you can hit the ball lower utilizing the same club. Then the alternate one for that is in the highest shot, now I will play the same club, but I will play it nearer to my front side here and keep my hands level, maybe not be high, but certainly level, avoiding the head position, which we delofted. So ball, had the hands level and then play that with a more sweeping angle of attack, that will hit the ball higher. The word of caution there is that you do need a good light to play that shot. You imagine that the club is coming in level to the ball and maybe even slightly from beneath, if that ball is sitting down in a bad light, that’s going to be a very grassy contact or even a muddy contact, before call, that’s going to be struggling contact. So if you ever got the ball sitting up in some good grass on the fairway or even in the semi row for a tee peg, I can manipulate that and hit that ball higher. That might be nice, if I am playing downwind holes, I have got to go over a tree, I could manipulate the ball flight, so it goes higher, play it back to make it go lower. It will also be interesting if I could curve the ball, now curving the ball encourages the spin on the ball to change. So a back spinning ball, with most golf shots you ever hit have back spin on them, some degree, that’s going to fly quite straight. If I can tilt that back spin, so it starts to be off axis, that’s going to make the ball curve. So if I can curve it one way or draw, curve it another way, it will fade. Now the way we have the ball curving and we tilt the back spin, is that we have the swing path on the club face not pointing in the same direction. So looking from down the line here, if I was to make my swing path head from what we would class as out to in, across the ball and I have my club face aiming more to the right down that line, so the club is traveling in this direction, but the club aiming more to the right with the club face, then that ball will start to have tilted backspin. And that would curve like a fade and an aggressive exaggerated fade would then curve into a slice. So if I could practice swinging more left with a club face that’s more open to that line, I would start to see the ball fading a little bit. Likewise, if I was bringing the club from behind me to in front of me, what we would class as an in to out path, so in from behind me to out in front of me, with the club face aiming more left than that line. So the face is closed to that path, that ball would start to tilt and spin the opposite way, effectively drawing or an aggressive draw would be a hook spin. So you could experiment on the driving range, by changing the path and changing the face relationships. The more difference there is between the face and the path, the more aggressively that spin would work, then that spin would tilt and more curve would be seen on the ball. If the path and the face are quite square to each other, quite neutral and the difference between the two isn’t very much, the ball would fly quite straight. So if you are curving the ball a lot, consider that the face and the path aren’t lined up at all. And if you are hitting relatively straight golf shots that aren’t curving much, the back spin must be more neutral, therefore the path and the face must be more neutral as well. So if you can understand how to work the ball and how to be a bit more of a shot maker, that could help you out in the golf course, but practice it on the driving range first, get that technique nailed right down, before you take it out on the golf course. 2013-09-16

As a golfer, it’s always nice to understand why the golf ball has just done what it’s done and also how you can have an effect and how you can control that. So here is a little video about how you should be practicing on the driving range, to feel that you could work the golf ball and you can control the golf ball. So there’s a couple of different options that you could do to alter the flight. You could alter the height, and you could alter the curve and the direction. So let's start by hitting the ball lower. The easiest way to hit the golf ball lower is to hit the ball with less loft, so you could de-loft your golf club by just taking a slightly higher number or lower number should I say. Or actually, you could work the ball by the moving the ball position back and the hand position forwards. So we play the ball, bat with a 7I in here and with the handle pointing more at the left hit for the right-handed golfer, this is not going to be a very low 7I.

This would be struck with a very good downwards angle of attack, driving the ball out low, that’s going to be useful on very windy days, if the ball is sitting in a very bad line, of if I need to get it out underneath some trees. I could play the ball back, play my hands ahead and strike down on it. So the next time, you are on the range, practice that one and see whether you can hit the ball lower utilizing the same club. Then the alternate one for that is in the highest shot, now I will play the same club, but I will play it nearer to my front side here and keep my hands level, maybe not be high, but certainly level, avoiding the head position, which we delofted. So ball, had the hands level and then play that with a more sweeping angle of attack, that will hit the ball higher. The word of caution there is that you do need a good light to play that shot.

You imagine that the club is coming in level to the ball and maybe even slightly from beneath, if that ball is sitting down in a bad light, that’s going to be a very grassy contact or even a muddy contact, before call, that’s going to be struggling contact. So if you ever got the ball sitting up in some good grass on the fairway or even in the semi row for a tee peg, I can manipulate that and hit that ball higher. That might be nice, if I am playing downwind holes, I have got to go over a tree, I could manipulate the ball flight, so it goes higher, play it back to make it go lower. It will also be interesting if I could curve the ball, now curving the ball encourages the spin on the ball to change. So a back spinning ball, with most golf shots you ever hit have back spin on them, some degree, that’s going to fly quite straight. If I can tilt that back spin, so it starts to be off axis, that’s going to make the ball curve.

So if I can curve it one way or draw, curve it another way, it will fade. Now the way we have the ball curving and we tilt the back spin, is that we have the swing path on the club face not pointing in the same direction. So looking from down the line here, if I was to make my swing path head from what we would class as out to in, across the ball and I have my club face aiming more to the right down that line, so the club is traveling in this direction, but the club aiming more to the right with the club face, then that ball will start to have tilted backspin. And that would curve like a fade and an aggressive exaggerated fade would then curve into a slice. So if I could practice swinging more left with a club face that’s more open to that line, I would start to see the ball fading a little bit. Likewise, if I was bringing the club from behind me to in front of me, what we would class as an in to out path, so in from behind me to out in front of me, with the club face aiming more left than that line.

So the face is closed to that path, that ball would start to tilt and spin the opposite way, effectively drawing or an aggressive draw would be a hook spin. So you could experiment on the driving range, by changing the path and changing the face relationships. The more difference there is between the face and the path, the more aggressively that spin would work, then that spin would tilt and more curve would be seen on the ball. If the path and the face are quite square to each other, quite neutral and the difference between the two isn’t very much, the ball would fly quite straight. So if you are curving the ball a lot, consider that the face and the path aren’t lined up at all.

And if you are hitting relatively straight golf shots that aren’t curving much, the back spin must be more neutral, therefore the path and the face must be more neutral as well. So if you can understand how to work the ball and how to be a bit more of a shot maker, that could help you out in the golf course, but practice it on the driving range first, get that technique nailed right down, before you take it out on the golf course.