Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

If you’re struggling with low ball flight when you’re playing golf and you’re not seeing a lot of trajectory from your golf shots and a lot of high in them, one of the main reasons for this is you’re trying to help the ball go up into the air too much. So let’s just look at how the club would work to get the ball into the air and I think once you’ve got a better understanding of this you’ll be more willing to hit down because for golfers to get the ball up high the feeling of hitting down the golf ball can feel very counterintuitive. It’s not instinctively what you want to do. Instinctively you want to help the ball go up in the air but looking at how the ball is designed you’ll see how that actually causes the problem and makes it worse.

So if we take this range ball and look at the red line which is showing us where the half way point is on the range ball. The club’s been designed so that this angle, the loft on the club face will get the ball into the air. So in order to present the club back correctly to that golf ball you need to bring the club back in, so connect in this way. So it’s connecting at the bottom of that golf ball. Bringing the club back in like this the loft and the angle of that club face will now force the ball to spin upwards and it will give you an upward and a high trajectory. What’s happening with the low shot is that the club is getting to its low point before it gets to the ball. So rather than getting to the low point as it’s at the ball, the club head is low before it gets to the ball and then the club is moving upwards towards the ball, so you’re going to start to catch the ball with the underside of the club rather than the clubface and also you’re going to catch the top of the golf ball, and you can see this action isn’t going to help you to get any height. And it becomes a bit of a self fueling issue there that you hit a low shot and so you want to try and help the ball go up even higher and in your attempt to help it go up even higher, it makes the ball go low.

So start to strike down on the ball. The best drill to do that with and to help you learn about that would be if you take your head cover we set a really good nice wide feet well-balanced stance. I’m going to put the head cover on to the target line so it’d be in line with where the ball is going to be played from but it’s opposite my right foot or just the outside of my right foot there. I’m just going to hold the club up slightly at the start of the swing just to make sure I don’t knock the club head into the cover and knock it out of the way. So I’m just going to hold the club up and I’m going to slowly start to move the club head back away on my backswing and then I’m going to practice swinging the club back down and striking the ground after the club head. So I’m just working on striking the ground to the left of that wood cover. If I make an early release, so if I allow the club head to drop too low too early before I hit the golf ball, I’m going to hit this wood cover and that will give me the information that I need that I would have hit the ball on the upswing.

So just take some practice swings, start to work on swinging down hitting the ground after the wood cover, listen to yourself striking the ground where the ball would be, and once you’re feeling a bit more comfortable with that then start to place the ball in and hit shots with that wood covering opposite your right foot. That’s going to encourage you to hit down and as you hit down with the golf club the loft is going to do all the work and get the ball in the air much more increased height and trajectory.