Shaft Angle of your Irons and Hybrids, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Shaft Angle of your Irons and Hybrids, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

The crucial part of the impact conditions as you hit the golf ball is going to be the loft on the club face, now that can often be controlled as well by the angle of the shaft or the shaft lean. So when you take your address position, I would often encourage you to give yourself a little bit of shaft lean with your mid to short iron. So almost feel like the shaft points at your left hip for the right handed golfer and have the handle very slightly in front of the golf ball just to 1 or 2 degree shaft lean. If we can maintain that position down to impact and striking down on the golf ball as you hit it, you get a cleaner and crisper contact and a nice penetrating trajectory, but you have to acknowledge that by having the handle in front of the club head you are changing the loft, effectively every degree I move the club forward here is taking loft off the club face and a loft of the dynamic launch of the ball.

Now if I move this club 3 or 4 degrees forward effectively I have turn my 7 iron into a 6 iron, and it wouldn’t feel like a big adjustment to do that. I wouldn’t necessarily need to move the ball back in my stance to achieve that either I could just set my hands up here and then strike down with my hands well forwards and I have hit my 7 iron almost like a 3 iron, I have had it a good sort of 15 degrees forwards and just buried it into the floor, really useful shot when you are playing in the wind, but you don’t necessarily want to be impacting everything like that, it changes your normal swing and normal rhythm, your normal ball flight a bit too much.

So try and feel like if you do have your hands in front of the golf ball at impact it’s only by a couple of degrees otherwise you are manipulating the club angle too much. As you move through to your hybrids and up to your woods we don’t really want to see the hands too far in front of toe those clubs are designed to be hit more with the sweeping angle of attack and helping the ball into the air a little bit. For example when you take your driver, your ball position would come well to the front, now when the handle of the golf club points to my left hip it’s level maybe even slightly behind the golf ball at impact, if it’s on the Tee peg I can hit that nicely up into the air.

So when you are practicing we want to see some really good consistent shaft angles throughout the setup and the impact position because that will affect the height, flight and distance of your golf ball. And the one thing you really want to see with that height, flight and distance is consistency. Changing this too much will produce inconsistency out here. So work on good consistent shaft angles and your golf will improve.

 2012-07-12

The crucial part of the impact conditions as you hit the golf ball is going to be the loft on the club face, now that can often be controlled as well by the angle of the shaft or the shaft lean. So when you take your address position, I would often encourage you to give yourself a little bit of shaft lean with your mid to short iron. So almost feel like the shaft points at your left hip for the right handed golfer and have the handle very slightly in front of the golf ball just to 1 or 2 degree shaft lean. If we can maintain that position down to impact and striking down on the golf ball as you hit it, you get a cleaner and crisper contact and a nice penetrating trajectory, but you have to acknowledge that by having the handle in front of the club head you are changing the loft, effectively every degree I move the club forward here is taking loft off the club face and a loft of the dynamic launch of the ball.

Now if I move this club 3 or 4 degrees forward effectively I have turn my 7 iron into a 6 iron, and it wouldn’t feel like a big adjustment to do that. I wouldn’t necessarily need to move the ball back in my stance to achieve that either I could just set my hands up here and then strike down with my hands well forwards and I have hit my 7 iron almost like a 3 iron, I have had it a good sort of 15 degrees forwards and just buried it into the floor, really useful shot when you are playing in the wind, but you don’t necessarily want to be impacting everything like that, it changes your normal swing and normal rhythm, your normal ball flight a bit too much.

So try and feel like if you do have your hands in front of the golf ball at impact it’s only by a couple of degrees otherwise you are manipulating the club angle too much. As you move through to your hybrids and up to your woods we don’t really want to see the hands too far in front of toe those clubs are designed to be hit more with the sweeping angle of attack and helping the ball into the air a little bit. For example when you take your driver, your ball position would come well to the front, now when the handle of the golf club points to my left hip it’s level maybe even slightly behind the golf ball at impact, if it’s on the Tee peg I can hit that nicely up into the air.

So when you are practicing we want to see some really good consistent shaft angles throughout the setup and the impact position because that will affect the height, flight and distance of your golf ball. And the one thing you really want to see with that height, flight and distance is consistency. Changing this too much will produce inconsistency out here. So work on good consistent shaft angles and your golf will improve.