Playing Long Golf Iron Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles
Playing Long Golf Iron Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles

We often see golfers are quite comfortable striking their mid to short irons quite well, they are happy hitting down, taking a nice divot and flying the ball well, but then that confidence very quickly disappears as they move in towards their longer irons, their five iron, four iron, three iron areas, a lot of golfers now don’t even carry those clubs, replaced them with hybrid clubs which isn’t a bad decision. But let’s make sure you are giving your long iron the best opportunity, the best chance, by hitting them in the correct way.

So for a lot of golfers they lose the concept that there is a slight difference in the angle of attack with a long iron and a short iron, and they still try and hit the long irons with the very a descending blow. So we often see golfers setting up to maybe a four iron and the ball is in the center of their feet, their hands are ahead, their body weight is ahead, and they are hitting down creating big divots after the golf ball. The problem with that is a four iron simply does not have enough loft to get itself back into the air efficiently, if you de-loft it that much. So the four iron has a degree of loft, but then you put your hands this far in front of it, you take that loft away from the golf club, you often find shots that if they do go they don’t get very far, and then they fall out of the sky maybe as far as you would hit a seven iron, thinking, but why hit a four iron, when I hit my seven iron the same distance. So we need to make sure that the four iron and five iron area are hit with a much more sweeping blow, much more sweeping angle of attack. So we are initially going to position the ball a little bit more forwards in the stance, we are not going to have the ball back in the stance and hitting down on it. The ball is going to be a little more forwards, the hands are going to be more level rather than the way ahead, and then from this more level position as we sweep through the ball, we want to hit the golf ball and we probably want to bruise the turf, I like that feeling of bruising the turf after the golf ball, rather than cutting into the turf, particularly if you are playing this shot from a very good, grassy lie, you probably want to take the leaves of the grass, but not the roots and the soil at the same time. So it’s a bit different to a wedge, wedge you want to cut down and get some soil out of it as well, but with a longer iron, five iron, four iron, three iron, bruise the turf, show it where you’ve been but don’t take the turf out with it. And I think if you can stay nice and low, good ball position, take a more sweeping angle of attack, that will give more success with good ball striking with your longer irons. 2015-11-04

We often see golfers are quite comfortable striking their mid to short irons quite well, they are happy hitting down, taking a nice divot and flying the ball well, but then that confidence very quickly disappears as they move in towards their longer irons, their five iron, four iron, three iron areas, a lot of golfers now don’t even carry those clubs, replaced them with hybrid clubs which isn’t a bad decision. But let’s make sure you are giving your long iron the best opportunity, the best chance, by hitting them in the correct way.

So for a lot of golfers they lose the concept that there is a slight difference in the angle of attack with a long iron and a short iron, and they still try and hit the long irons with the very a descending blow. So we often see golfers setting up to maybe a four iron and the ball is in the center of their feet, their hands are ahead, their body weight is ahead, and they are hitting down creating big divots after the golf ball. The problem with that is a four iron simply does not have enough loft to get itself back into the air efficiently, if you de-loft it that much.

So the four iron has a degree of loft, but then you put your hands this far in front of it, you take that loft away from the golf club, you often find shots that if they do go they don’t get very far, and then they fall out of the sky maybe as far as you would hit a seven iron, thinking, but why hit a four iron, when I hit my seven iron the same distance. So we need to make sure that the four iron and five iron area are hit with a much more sweeping blow, much more sweeping angle of attack. So we are initially going to position the ball a little bit more forwards in the stance, we are not going to have the ball back in the stance and hitting down on it.

The ball is going to be a little more forwards, the hands are going to be more level rather than the way ahead, and then from this more level position as we sweep through the ball, we want to hit the golf ball and we probably want to bruise the turf, I like that feeling of bruising the turf after the golf ball, rather than cutting into the turf, particularly if you are playing this shot from a very good, grassy lie, you probably want to take the leaves of the grass, but not the roots and the soil at the same time. So it’s a bit different to a wedge, wedge you want to cut down and get some soil out of it as well, but with a longer iron, five iron, four iron, three iron, bruise the turf, show it where you’ve been but don’t take the turf out with it. And I think if you can stay nice and low, good ball position, take a more sweeping angle of attack, that will give more success with good ball striking with your longer irons.