Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

We are going to look here at what the cause is of you topping your golf shots. When you are topping your golf shots, all that means is that the club head is connecting too high up with the golf ball. It’s hitting the top of that golf ball, rather than the club head striking down, hitting the back of the ball and getting to the bottom of the ball. So a top shot, you are just capturing the top of the ball. So, there is really two reasons, two main causes of that, the first is you are pulling the club head up away from the golf ball. And if you are pulling the club head up away from the golf ball, obviously, you are going to capture the upper part of the ball, rather than the bottom.

One of the reasons for that can be a grip pressure, if you are squeezing the club too tight rather than just holding it, you effectively as you squeeze, you are working the muscles in your arms. As your muscles work, they contract and as they are contracting and shortening, effectively you are pulling the club head up away from the ground. So check your grip pressure, if you squeeze this tightly as you can and we call that a ten, you should be on a five grip pressure. So halve it, ultimately four is absolutely ideal, so that will stop you pulling the club head up because of your grip pressure. Another reason though, that you could be pulling the club head up is that your bending your left arm as you are going through impact. The correct way to hit the ball is you set up, you have got a fully extended left arm.

And that means, the fully extended left arm with the shaft position, produces the club head that touches the ground. If you swing back and you come back in with the left elbow bent, the club head is going to come up from the ground, because you are shortening the distance from the left shoulder to the club head. So you want to work on maintaining a really straight left arm position, from setup during the backswing and then working on pulling down with that straight left arm position. And then releasing the club head into the back of the ball, so you create an impact that’s very straight look in the left side, the left arm very extended and straight. Again, that will stop you from pulling the club head up away from the ball. So if you are aware that your grip pressure is, a good pressure is for a 10, and you feel you are keeping your left arm straight, but you are still hitting thin shots, we need to look at what else would be causing that.

And the main reason is going to be that during your swing, you are swinging the club head too steeply. What that means, if we look at the alignment pole to represent the target line, is as you are swinging the club back, the club head is moving back and it’s moving upwards and in front of you to vertically. So it’s giving you this upright position in the club, rather than moving around you into a flatter position, with the shaft. So the effect of this will be as a club head moves up steeply, you are really going to swing that club head down vertically and that vertical action back down to the ball, you are going to present the club downwards onto the top of the ball, that’s going to cause you to hit the top of the ball.

So to check if you are, if you have that kind of swing, take your range basket, just place it to the right of the ball, about by a foot and just on the outside of the target line. So as you address the ball, you can take the club head away without hitting that range basket, just maybe an inch gap between where the club head is moving in the range basket. You are swinging over into a very vertical position, as you swing back down, you are going to capture that range basket, because your shoulders will, your body will be rotating towards the target. So that would show you that you are swinging too vertically. The other thing that you could do as well to make sure that you are not thinning the top shots for this reason, is to place a head cover in to the right of the ball.

The final reason that you could be hitting those thin shots, those top shots is, that as you are swinging the club back down, you are releasing the club too early. That means you are creating that straight line, way before the ball, a straight line between the left arm and the golf club should happen at impact, not before it. So if you swing into this position, releasing, just means you are releasing this angle out, into that straight line. If you are doing that, you will capture this head cover here, and if we look at the effect of that on the golf ball, basically you are getting the low point for the club head too early before the ball.

So you are then making an upward movement towards the ball, which will mean that the club head is going to capture the top of the golf ball. So identify what it is that’s causing you to top those golf shots and then work on the drill of hitting from it, either inside the range basket or if you know it, because you are clicking the head cover, keep the head cover in and work on striking the ground after the head cover, not striking the head cover first. And that will get you hitting much crisper shots in no time.