Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

With this tip, we're going to look at why is really important for women golfers to have a downward strike in action as they play their golf shots. And to do this we got to understand how the club head is designed to work because it’s very counter intuitive when you're trying to get a golf ball up into the air to make a golf ball go up, the club head needs to strike down.

So if you think about any other action you would make if we think about how to hit a tennis shot up into the air. We'd have the tennis ball maybe holding the tennis ball here and we get the tennis racket head lower than we got the tennis ball. That will allow us to make an upward movement and as we make that upward movement, the ball will go up into the air. If you think how you throw, if you're going to throw it doesn’t matter whether it’s over arm or under arm, we'll move into a position where our hand is lower then we're going to release, so we're making it upward movement, doesn’t matter which way we do. We're making an upward movement and then we let go with the ball.

So we've got to engrained if you like in, in our brain, but to make the ball go up, we need to make an up movement. But if we look at how the golf club is designed, the golf club cannot make that up movement. The only way it can is when you're hitting a golf ball off the tee with your driver that's the only shot that you want to have the upward movement with the golf swing. The reason for that is the golf ball is on the flow, so the club head cannot get down lower from where the golf ball is. If you're trying to get the club head down lower than where the golf ball is to then make an upward movement to it, you're going to hit the ground before the ball and that's going to cause you to lose a lot of club head speed and not move the ball very far.

If you don’t quite hit the ground and you just skim over the ground, you’re still going to make the upward movement towards the ball, but this time you're going to catch the top of the ball. So if you look at what's happening there the club head is coming in. It's low here because you're instinctly wanting to make an upward movement so you now move the club head up so the club head is going to catch the upper part of that golf ball. You're going to end up topping the shot and the ball is not going to fly high, so if want to get the ball into the air and get the ball flying high with a good trajectory, the club is designed for you to get the club to come down so the club head striking down it catches the back of the ball and then the turf, and that face angle compresses the ball and forces the ball up the angle of that face, so that's the movement.

The club comes down to the ball and the face angle makes the ball go up to get the ball up into the air. So once we've started to understand that, it’s a little bit easier for us to encourage ourselves to make these downward movement. So to make the downward movement, the lowest point for the club head needs to be where the ball is not before it. If we got the low point before the ball we're going to have to strike the ground or we're going to go low before the ball and catch the ball on the upswing and top the shot. So a great drill to encourage you to do that is take your wood cover and place it to the right of the ball so that the wood cover is just outside your right foot as you setup. Just so you need to hover the club up so you don’t move the head cover out of the way as you start your back swing so hover the club up and then we're going to swing back and we're going to work on striking down to the left of that head cover, but then into the ground.

So we're really getting accurate with where we need to get the club into the ground, which is where the ball is. So work on doing that drill without the ball to start with, striking the ground on the left of the head cover where the ball would be and get accurate would that be in the lowest part of your swing. If you got the lowest part of your swing on the right because you're trying to make this upward movement, you'll hit the head cover and it will give you the evidence that you need. So start to make that movement strike down on the left, and then once you're feeling confident enough start to execute that with the ball actually in.

So that's definitely ensured that there was a downward movement off the club head into the ball there, and that downward strike has then allowed the club to do the work that its designed to move. The club is come into the ball like this, and the clubface has made the ball elevate and fly really high up into the air. I haven’t hit the head cover so I know I wasn't little too early making in a good strike. So that's why it's important to make it down with strike with your golf clubs and also have to. If you start working on the driving range and you'll see a massive improvement and the height that you're hitting the ball, the accuracy you're achieving and the distance you're able to gain.