Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

Learning to hit an effective punch shot when you're out on the golf course is a really valuable tool to have in your armory when you're out on the course. It's going to allow you in certain situations to play the best shot possible. So for example if it's really windy, a punch shot is a very low trajectory. So if its windy, if you punch the ball into the green, you can keep under the wind and keep hold of the direction improving your accuracy rather than throwing the ball up into the air and it been blown all over the place.

It's also a great recovery shot if you got into a position where you're under the trees and you need to get the ball out back onto the fairway with a low trajectory, so the punch shots are really handy shot to learn how to play. It has a lower flight than usual but it's because we're controlling the flight, we're controlling the trajectory. So let's look at how to setup to hit this punch shot. We want to work on having the ball in the center of the feet, and then we're going to pull the left foot directly back about 4 inches. Aiming the clubface at the target, we normally set with the left and the right toes, the same distance away from the target line. But here we want to pull the left foot back so that we get the left hit out of the way so that we can swing the club through into the finished position without the left hit blocking our ability to do that.

But if we pull the left hit directly back to open the stance, the left foot goes directly back. We still retain our shoulder alignment which will allow us to swing the club effectively down the target line. So now we've got the ball position centered and the left foot back. We're going to place slightly more right onto the left to get 75% of our weight. And we're going to play this shot without hands forward, so that means the hands are on the left side of the ball as we're looking at the ball. The club head is on the right hand side.

To achieve this work on having a straight line from the left shoulder down the left arm to the left hand, and then continue the straight line through into the shaft of the club and down to the club head. We keep the left shoulder, the left hand and the club head all in a straight line then we've got the hands forward. And we want to do that, and keep the weight forward so that we'll have quite a steep downward action so the club head approaches the ball. It clips into the back of the ball and then strikes the turf. We don’t want to be hit in the ground first or catching the ball on the upswing so striking down really important and that's why we're setting the right on the left and the hands forward.

We're going to get a very restricted back swing because we really want to maintain this straight line for as long as possible, and we don’t want to hinge the wrists. As soon as we start hinging the wrist in the golf swing its going to really start to make the club drop down onto the golf ball and really pop the ball up into the air. So if we wanted a high shot would use the wrist and hinge them a lot. Here we want a low shot, so we're not going to use the wrist which is going to keep that straight line, and we're going to drive the straight line with the left shoulder, the left hand and the club head back into the ball. So we got this forward lean in the club as we're hitting. Having that forward lean in the club is going to deloft the club and really control the trajectory that we hit out.

As we swing through, we're going to work on holding the club off which means again we're keeping the straight line left shoulder, left hand, and club head. And the club head is finishing below the hands. We're not allowing the club head to release up above the hands. So club head finishing below the hands and relatively low to the flow. So let's have a look, hitting that shot from that position and we really restrict the height that we can hit the ball out, really control the trajectory and it’s a great shot to be able to play when you face the windy conditions or you got over hanging branches where you need to control the height of the ball.