Top 3 Ways to Improve your Ball Striking - Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Top 3 Ways to Improve your Ball Striking - Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

So if you've been working hard in improving your technique, and you feel like you've got all these key position, you're watching yourself in the mirror, you're videoing yourself, but you're still not getting better on the golf course. One of the biggest frustrations for people is their ball striking. They feel like they’ve got a really good swing and the ball just doesn’t come out correctly. Too far, really good swing, lift up a bit, too thin. And it's almost this mystical, dark art, this ball striking. You often see the best players on the tour, they say, "Oh yeah, he's a really good ball striker. You think well, you're all tall players, how can you be a better ball striker? But it's just the finite margins that we deal with in golf. You've got a tiny golf club heads, we've got tiny golf balls, we've got a variety of different lines, and different shots in the golf course. So ball striking is one of the most fundamental aspects of being a good golfer. There's three key areas that I think you could work on to help you become a really good ball striker.

First thing is, if you're gripping the golf club right at the very top, you could be making the game a little difficult for you so don’t be afraid of just gripping down a little bit lower on the shaft of the golf club there. So you just take the top inch, inch and a half off the club and then go ahead and hit the series of shots. And you might just feel the crispness comes back to the strike. It's easier to control, and most people would feel a lot better ball striking with their short irons anyway, so grip down on a short iron, get some really nice ball striking done, and that would feel better for you.

The next thing that you got to question is your spine angle movement. Often, people say that they're a bad ball striker because their head's moving. It's one of the oldest myths in golf is that I've lifted my head, and therefore I've hit a bad shot. Now that’s never really the case because when you think about it, there's no independent muscles in your head that go up and down. The muscle that makes you go up and down really is the chest. So when your chest, or your spine angle changes, that makes your head go up and down. So if from this angle looking from down the line, as I sat up to the ball, I sat up with good posture. I then want to maintain that posture and spine angle back and down for impact so I get a good ball strike. If I've come out to my posture dipped into the ball, that’s very difficult to change my spine angle to get down to the right level. And that’s what people see when they say, "Oh, you've lifted your head." They see the head go up, but actually the spine angle is the thing that you should be thinking about, to help you with that.

The third element of good ball striking, one thing you could practice is good balance and good rhythm. The balance issue is when you set up to the ball; you should be nice and balanced. That’s quite easy to do, not too much on the toes or the heels but centered on the middle of your feet. But then make sure in the follow through you've got good balance as well. And you should be able to hold your balance all the time the ball is in the air and at least until it lands. If you can't manage that, you're hitting and you're falling over, yes, you've come out of balance but you've got to question when did you come out of balance? You probably came out of balance sometime during your swing, not in your follow through, but in your swing. And then it shows up in the follow through when you actually fall over. So make sure you're able to pin that balance from set up to finish, and I can stay perfectly still. That would encourage me to be a better, crisper ball striker.

The last one we touched on there, in coincidence with the balance is the rhythm, making sure that you're smooth, so you're not going to snatch, you're not going to be too fashion, you're not going to be too jerky. So it's just nicely smooth back generate the power on the way down. Generation of power is slow and smooth and not rushed and quick. Work on those 3 elements and you'll be a better ball striker.

 2013-01-15

So if you've been working hard in improving your technique, and you feel like you've got all these key position, you're watching yourself in the mirror, you're videoing yourself, but you're still not getting better on the golf course. One of the biggest frustrations for people is their ball striking. They feel like they’ve got a really good swing and the ball just doesn’t come out correctly. Too far, really good swing, lift up a bit, too thin. And it's almost this mystical, dark art, this ball striking. You often see the best players on the tour, they say, “Oh yeah, he's a really good ball striker. You think well, you're all tall players, how can you be a better ball striker? But it's just the finite margins that we deal with in golf. You've got a tiny golf club heads, we've got tiny golf balls, we've got a variety of different lines, and different shots in the golf course. So ball striking is one of the most fundamental aspects of being a good golfer. There's three key areas that I think you could work on to help you become a really good ball striker.

First thing is, if you're gripping the golf club right at the very top, you could be making the game a little difficult for you so don’t be afraid of just gripping down a little bit lower on the shaft of the golf club there. So you just take the top inch, inch and a half off the club and then go ahead and hit the series of shots. And you might just feel the crispness comes back to the strike. It's easier to control, and most people would feel a lot better ball striking with their short irons anyway, so grip down on a short iron, get some really nice ball striking done, and that would feel better for you.

The next thing that you got to question is your spine angle movement. Often, people say that they're a bad ball striker because their head's moving. It's one of the oldest myths in golf is that I've lifted my head, and therefore I've hit a bad shot. Now that’s never really the case because when you think about it, there's no independent muscles in your head that go up and down. The muscle that makes you go up and down really is the chest. So when your chest, or your spine angle changes, that makes your head go up and down. So if from this angle looking from down the line, as I sat up to the ball, I sat up with good posture. I then want to maintain that posture and spine angle back and down for impact so I get a good ball strike. If I've come out to my posture dipped into the ball, that’s very difficult to change my spine angle to get down to the right level. And that’s what people see when they say, “Oh, you've lifted your head.” They see the head go up, but actually the spine angle is the thing that you should be thinking about, to help you with that.

The third element of good ball striking, one thing you could practice is good balance and good rhythm. The balance issue is when you set up to the ball; you should be nice and balanced. That’s quite easy to do, not too much on the toes or the heels but centered on the middle of your feet. But then make sure in the follow through you've got good balance as well. And you should be able to hold your balance all the time the ball is in the air and at least until it lands. If you can't manage that, you're hitting and you're falling over, yes, you've come out of balance but you've got to question when did you come out of balance? You probably came out of balance sometime during your swing, not in your follow through, but in your swing. And then it shows up in the follow through when you actually fall over. So make sure you're able to pin that balance from set up to finish, and I can stay perfectly still. That would encourage me to be a better, crisper ball striker.

The last one we touched on there, in coincidence with the balance is the rhythm, making sure that you're smooth, so you're not going to snatch, you're not going to be too fashion, you're not going to be too jerky. So it's just nicely smooth back generate the power on the way down. Generation of power is slow and smooth and not rushed and quick. Work on those 3 elements and you'll be a better ball striker.