Maintain Your Fundamental Golf Swing When Changing Ball Flight (Video) - by Pete Styles
Maintain Your Fundamental Golf Swing When Changing Ball Flight (Video) - by Pete Styles

Now if you’re a less than experienced golfer, let’s say an 18 handicap plus type of golfer, we want to try and make changing the way we swing the club and changing how we hit the golf ball and working the golf ball, we want to make these changes as simple as possible first. So we’re not going to try and change the golf swing in too many different fashions perhaps you’re just going to try and change a couple of simple fundamental basics at the setup to encourage you to work the ball in the right way. The first one is actually is going to be changing your stance. So rather than setting up pointing at the intended target we’re going to point the feet to the right, turn the club face a little bit to the left, then go ahead and make your normal swing. And you should start to see the ball curve from right to left as the right handed golfer, we’d expect to see the ball that could be useful if we were playing into a crosswind or if there was a tree in the way we wanted to curve around it. Likewise, we could do the opposite thing, pointing the feet to the left, pointing the club a bit to the right, make your normal swing and you should see the ball move the opposite direction. That works provided that you had a straight swing or a straight ball flight in the first instance.

Next considerations we might look at changing is going to be the grip. So again, we’re setting up to the ball normally, we’re making a normal swing, but this time we’re going to move both hands to the right on the grip that’s effectively what we class as a stronger grip position. In that stronger position, we make the swing, the club face is going to turn, it’s going to aim more left, the club face should effectively turn over in this fashion. If the club face is aiming more left at the point of impact the ball flight should be lower and should curve from right to left in the air, potentially go a bit further. Likewise, if you want to shape the ball the opposite direction we could twist the hands the other way around effectively making a marginally weaker grip, we then see the ball curving from left to right in a slightly higher and shortable flight that doesn’t roll as far. So just by changing the grip stronger and weaker, we can work the golf balls as we’ve talked about. One last change that might help you out a little bit is actually changing your ball position. So, by moving the ball position further in the back in the stance we could change the height of the shot. So my seven-iron should normally be positioned just slightly left of center, just ahead of center, but if move the ball back in my stance then make my normal swing, I should hit a much lower ball flight, that lower ball flight could land and roll further, could be really useful if I’m in the low hanging branches of trees and I want to get the ball to come out low, could also be useful if I’m playing into a very strong crosswind or even a headwind, hitting the ball lower has less effect by the wind. If I want to hit the ball higher up and over a set of trees or downwind on a hollow I just want to get the ball in the air, getting it hanging in the wind I could move the ball forward in my stance. Again, make my normal swing and simply by changing the ball position, changing the stance I’m going to change the height and the distance that I hit the golf ball. So, that’s the simple ways of trying to maintain your standard golf swing yet still working the golf ball. 2016-08-24

Now if you’re a less than experienced golfer, let’s say an 18 handicap plus type of golfer, we want to try and make changing the way we swing the club and changing how we hit the golf ball and working the golf ball, we want to make these changes as simple as possible first. So we’re not going to try and change the golf swing in too many different fashions perhaps you’re just going to try and change a couple of simple fundamental basics at the setup to encourage you to work the ball in the right way. The first one is actually is going to be changing your stance. So rather than setting up pointing at the intended target we’re going to point the feet to the right, turn the club face a little bit to the left, then go ahead and make your normal swing. And you should start to see the ball curve from right to left as the right handed golfer, we’d expect to see the ball that could be useful if we were playing into a crosswind or if there was a tree in the way we wanted to curve around it. Likewise, we could do the opposite thing, pointing the feet to the left, pointing the club a bit to the right, make your normal swing and you should see the ball move the opposite direction. That works provided that you had a straight swing or a straight ball flight in the first instance.

Next considerations we might look at changing is going to be the grip. So again, we’re setting up to the ball normally, we’re making a normal swing, but this time we’re going to move both hands to the right on the grip that’s effectively what we class as a stronger grip position. In that stronger position, we make the swing, the club face is going to turn, it’s going to aim more left, the club face should effectively turn over in this fashion. If the club face is aiming more left at the point of impact the ball flight should be lower and should curve from right to left in the air, potentially go a bit further. Likewise, if you want to shape the ball the opposite direction we could twist the hands the other way around effectively making a marginally weaker grip, we then see the ball curving from left to right in a slightly higher and shortable flight that doesn’t roll as far. So just by changing the grip stronger and weaker, we can work the golf balls as we’ve talked about.

One last change that might help you out a little bit is actually changing your ball position. So, by moving the ball position further in the back in the stance we could change the height of the shot. So my seven-iron should normally be positioned just slightly left of center, just ahead of center, but if move the ball back in my stance then make my normal swing, I should hit a much lower ball flight, that lower ball flight could land and roll further, could be really useful if I’m in the low hanging branches of trees and I want to get the ball to come out low, could also be useful if I’m playing into a very strong crosswind or even a headwind, hitting the ball lower has less effect by the wind. If I want to hit the ball higher up and over a set of trees or downwind on a hollow I just want to get the ball in the air, getting it hanging in the wind I could move the ball forward in my stance. Again, make my normal swing and simply by changing the ball position, changing the stance I’m going to change the height and the distance that I hit the golf ball. So, that’s the simple ways of trying to maintain your standard golf swing yet still working the golf ball.