The best way to improve is to understand your faults. The sooner you can address the problem the faster you will be on the road to improvement. Many players know that they hit bad shots but have no idea why it happened.
Let’s look at the shot shown here to the right. Many players hit fat shots. They strike the ground well before the ball. Most players think that this is caused by taking their eye off the ball or by lifting their head during the swing. This is a misconception and there are many other reasons that truly cause a fat shot. The biggest key is that the hands are delivering the club to impact without involving the workhorse or core. This can change the angle of attack to become steeper. Players also throw their hands at the ball and release the club to early dumping out lag on the downswing. In order to keep the divot in front of the ball rather than behind it there are some different thoughts and point we can be aware of. One is taking our hard focus off of the ball. Let’s just forget about that old saying keep your eye on the ball. This works great in other sports where the ball is in motion. But in golf the ball is still and waiting to be sent to the target. We don’t need to keep our eye on the ball. When we do we tend to release our hands or throw them at the ball. This will not only cause fat shots but also thin shots. Let’s have a different mind set and keep a soft focus on the ball and be aware of an area ahead of the ball.
Here we see they eye line looking a few inches ahead of the ball and at impact the head begins to rotate towards the target along with the rotation of the workhorse. This shows that the head can move and the player can still stay down through impact. I like to see my players have a feeling of releasing their hands ahead of the ball rather that at it. With that said we want to have a soft focus rather than a hard focus on any one spot like the ball or ahead of the ball. Have that feeling of being aware and getting the hands to release after impact. Deliver it with the rotation of the workhorse ie, the torso hips legs. This will get the release to happen when it should, after the ball. There are several drills we can do to help make this happen. One is the Tic, Tac, Toe drill in the sand. Another is the line drill. Here is a video of the line drill along with the Tic,Tac,Toe drill. These will help you with dynamic number two. The four inch forward swing bottom. Dynamic number two is a must to improve ball striking and lower your handicap. For more information about lowing your scores contact us at Impact Zone Golf.
Bernard Sheridan is the founding host of Breaking Par with Bernard Sheridan the weekly golf instruction podcast of iTunes and Stitcher radio. Please leave any comments below and if you feel you know someone who would benefit from this blog please share it on social media.
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