Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

Here we are going to look at thinning golf shots and what this means and how to cure it for you. So a thin golf shot just basically means you are hitting the top of the golf ball, the club head is connecting too high up on the golf ball and this creates a thin shot, whereas the club head should be striking lower down on that golf ball, hitting the back of the golf ball into the bottom of it rather than capturing the top. Okay, the first thing we are going to do is check your grip pressure, because this is one of the main reasons that you can thin the shot. If you are holding the club too tight, as you squeeze rather than hold, the muscles in your arms, actually shorten. And because your arms are getting shorter, effectively you are pulling the club head up away from the ground, so you will capture the top of the ball as you swing. So if you squeeze as tightly on the club as you can, and we call it a ten, just halve down to a five, it’s just a tiny little bit, less ideally you want to be on a four. But four or five is going to be great, the issue is going to occur, when you are up a eight or nine on your grip pressure.

So learn to hold the club rather than squeeze it tight. The next thing we have got to check is your ball position, if the ball is positioning correctly in the swing, then you are not going to get the lowest part of the swing up, where the ball is. If you catching the ball on the downwards part of the arc too early, then you are going to hit the top of the ball because the club hasn’t yet go to its lowest point and if the ball is too far forward in the stance, you are going to capture on the upswing and again catch the top of the ball because the swing up, the lowest point for the club head is in the wrong place. So for your driver, you want to set up with the ball opposite your left big toe and then we want to move the ball back into the stance until we get to the middle of the stance for the 9 and the pitching wedge.

So if you think 9 and pitching wedge is played from the middle, just move half a ball to the left of each subsequent club, you will have the correct ball position. So now we are holding at the correct pressure, we have got the ball position correct. If you are still hitting thin shots, we need to address your swing. One of the main reasons for hitting the thin shot is that the club head is moving down too steeply. So you may consider it as a chopping action, too much of a vertical movement, downwards and striking the top of the ball. This would be caused, if you have got an over the top action on your backswing.

So you are swinging the club, all that’s happening is as you swing down, the club head is moving over your hands and is coming over the top of your hands and then you are making a very downward movement onto the golf ball. So to correct this, just take a range basket, we will place it into position, about a foot to the right of the ball and to the far side of the line you are wanting to hit that ball down. You should just find that you can easily move the club head back, not capturing the basket. But there is only about an inch gap between where the club head is moving in that basket. If you are moving over the top, you will find that on your downswing, you clip the basket before you hit the ball.

And that’s the information you need, you are now going to know, that, that’s what causing the problem. So you can work on swinging your golf club and making sure you are keeping the club head on the inside of that basket to hit the shot. If you notice, when you try that drill, you are not clipping the basket, you must be releasing the club early. To release the club early, on your downswing, simply means that the angle you have set with your left arm and the shaft of the club, as you are pulling down, you are losing that angle. You are releasing the angle out and you are creating a straight line between the left arm and the shaft of the club, which then means you will ground the club, before you get to the ball.

That straight line shouldn’t happen until you strike the ball. So if you are releasing the club a little bit early, the drill tip that I would give you for that would be take your head cover off your driver, place it in line with the ball on the target, about a foot to two foot to the right of the ball, take your stance up, just remove the ball out, so the head cover is on the right of that right foot, hover the club up, swing back and then work on swinging down, to strike the floor, where the ball would be, rather than the head cover. If you are releasing early, you will find that you strike the head cover, because you have got into this fully extended position with the club head at a low point too early. So if you try those tips, you will work out what's causing your thin shot, then you can set about correcting it.