Strike Your Irons Pure

Striking your irons pure and consistently is the key to good distance control and more greens in regulation. In this post, i am going to highlight several areas that will assist you produce a centered strike more regularly and help lower your scores.

I see the same faults on a regular basis in all my coaching sessions that equate to fat and thinned iron shots rather than a pure centered strike.

Scooping the ball. Many players try to help the ball into the air by scooping it and adding a lot of dynamic loft to the face and shallowing their angle of attack making them hit up on the ball at times. This lends itself to striking the ground before the ball or hitting the equator of the ball. With our irons, especially the shorter irons, we want to be hitting down dramatically; this gets the centre of the club face looking at the ball at impact and will also equate to catch the ball first, then turf after. I have a few drills that i like to use to help players feel this motion.

1. Duplicate your impact position, then go into your swing. As you can see below, this means getting the shaft leaning towards the target and ahead of the club head and ball. Additionally to this, our weight is shifting towards our front foot and our hips are starting to open. Try to duplicate this position when you hit your shot.

2. Place a ball under your trail foot. Many players i see tend to hang back onto their back foot and avoid any weight shift or transfer of pressure. Having the ball under your trail foot will encourage your centre of mass to move forward and stop you hanging back to scoop the ball into the air.

3. Place a towel a few inches behind the ball. If you try to stay behind the ball and scoop it, you will make contact with the towel. The towel will make you steepen your angle of attack and get you hitting down on the ball getting that desired divot after the ball.

Apply these drills to your practise sessions to help you feel the desired impact position and your ball striking with your irons should improve dramatically.

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