Why You Need This: Today you'll learn "How to Hit Irons Very High and Long"

If you're wanting to hit your irons with a higher ball flight...

...there's a good chance that you try to do it by trying to lift the ball at impact.

And while adding loft to the club at impact will get you a higher ball flight...

...it's also going to give you inconsistent contact with the ball...

...and you're going to hit the ball a lot shorter.

But, if you increase your ball's trajectory the right way...

...not only will your ball go farther...

...but you're contact will become more consistent.

In today's video, you'll discover the right way to increase your trajectory...

...and the 2 things you must avoid if you want to launch the ball high AND long with your irons!

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 9:50

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Now the pros hit their irons, and they just boom, way up in the air, float, and float, and float, and float. We all want to hit those high, long iron shots.

But there’s a problem with that. When you try to do that, a lot of times what I see is players begin to flip the club when it comes to impact.

The reason you flip is because it adds some loft on the face, and it makes those shots go higher. Now it looks the same, it kind of looks the same trajectory that you see with the pros, but you lose tons of distance.

You start to thin and chunk the ball, all kinds of problems are happening from this flip and adding loft. The real way to hit it high and long is club head speed.

The pros are actually taking loft off the club, they’re launching it pretty low, but they have so much speed the ball climbs up and up, and up, and it gives the appearance of it being high.

Let me go step by step exactly how you can hit those high, long ones with a little bit of technique change.

Q, let me hit a couple shots here, I’m going to do one right, one wrong, and we’re going to talk about what we should be focusing on.

Now, the main thing is what we talked about there first. A lot of times when players are hitting it, they’re not getting enough club head speed. I bet you’d like some more club head speed right now.

So to give that appearance of a high shot, what ends up happening is we flip a little bit.

So we’re trying to hit this ball hard, we’re trying to hit it high, we’re trying to hit it long, but we end up not making a very good turn, not having the club head speed, and we end up just adding loft by flipping.

That ends up looking something like this. So there, I feel like I lose control of the club. I’m pushing to try to help the speed, and it was very thin.

The next one may have been a dead chunk. The next one may have been solid. It’s not like you’re going to hit all of them bad when you do this, but it’s going to be inconsistent.

So club head speed, distance, what was it looking like on that one?

Quentin Patterson: Club head speed was 83 miles per hour, distance was 149.5.

Clay: So 150 yards with the 6 iron, not very good for what I can normally do. 90 miles an hour, 80-what was it?

Quentin: 83 miles an hour.

Clay: 83 miles an hour club head speed, that’s way low from what I’d normally have.

So that shot didn’t go the highest, but if I wouldn’t have hit it thin, it probably would have launched and kind of looked about like what the pros are doing, even though I added way too much loft to it.

What’s the real key here? How do we really do this? We’ve got to swing faster. The easiest way to do that is to get a bigger turn.

So if I can let my hips rotate a little bit more, you might notice in that last swing I didn’t rotate my hips very much, I kind of slid the hips like this.

But if I can get my hips to rotate more, I can get my shoulders to rotate more, now I’m going to be able to load up more even if I’m not very flexible, and I’m going to be able to come down and through, and get a lot more swing speed.

That’s the key. If you’re tight, if you feel like, “You know Clay, I try to get more shoulder turn, but I just can’t do it. I’m too tight, I can’t get the flexibility.” That’s where the hips come in.

I want you to rotate those hips, let them turn, and that loosens up the shoulders and allows you to get that bigger turn to the top.

Now the mistake that I see a lot is players swaying or sliding. We’re going to get that in a second, but let me do one the right way here.

I’m really going to load up, I’m going to make a big, more powerful swing, and let’s see what happens.

There we go, that one looked high, but it didn’t take off very high. The reason it looked high is that it had so much swing speed. That went a pretty long way. What was the numbers on that one?

Quentin: So club head speed went up to 98.4.

Clay: So almost 15 miles an hour on club head speed.

Quentin: Yeah, then total distance was 198.1 yards.

Clay: OK, so way farther. Way farther, way faster with that change. Now if we’re doing that, you say, “OK, Clay, I understand that the height comes from swing speed and not by flipping the club.”

So if I want to solve that, I’ve got to get the swing speed first. The way you solve the swing speed, get a bigger turn. Here’s the big problem that I see. Number one, we’re too tight. That’s where I talked about getting the hips to go.

Number two, when we try to get the hips to move more, a lot of times I’ll see players confuse the sway with a turn. So if I sway, what that looks like is my hips slide this way, they’re not rotating.

If I put this club across my hips, they’re not rotating like this, so not doing this in the backswing, they’re swaying. It’s kind of just shifting laterally.

When I do that, now my hips bump over here, I get in this kind of reverse pivot look, slight reverse pivot, and I’m set up in a not very powerful position.

So what I want you to feel like is instead of getting that hip to move this way, to sway, I want you to feel like the hip moves back. Imagine you’re pushing straight back on that right hip, that’s getting that to turn this way.

Another key I like to think of, same idea just different visual, imagine you have a rope tied to your right belt loop somewhere here, and there’s somebody behind you in the backswing pulling on your right hip.

I want you to feel like that hip goes back this way as you make your backswing. That frees up the lower body, that gets you looser, and now as you try to rotate the upper body, you get a much better turn, a lot more power, and a lot more distance.

So here, the key I’m going to have is I’m going to focus on that guy behind me rotating my hips, and let’s go ahead and hit another one.

I’m going to see if I can hit it a few yards father and higher than I did on that last one. Let’s try it out.

There we go, really high on that one. That was pretty far. That’s probably a little longer than the one before, or at least pretty close to the same distance. What was the distance on that one?

Quentin: Club head speed was 100 even, and then total distance went up to 193.4.

Clay: OK, so again, maybe a little bit thin is the reason it wasn’t perfect, but the club head speed was up. I started at 83, I had one at 98, one at 100, way faster.

Even if I miss-hit that last one slightly, it’s still going to be tons of distance.

All right Q, so I know you have a lot of great information on this. What do you recommend for the guy that’s really struggling, kind of in addition to what we talked about?

Quentin: Another issue arises whenever you get that sliding in the backswing, you’re going to get that sliding in the downswing, too.

You get that momentum going forward and when you do that, you’re going to end up kind of chopping down into the ball and that ball’s going to come out really, really low. If you go, you do that slide in the backswing.

Clay: So in the backswing I’m going here, my hips are sliding over to the right. They’re kind of getting almost outside my right ankle a little bit there.

Quentin: Right. Now I we slide in the downswing here.

Clay: That almost gets my…even when I feel that, what you’re saying, my upper body’s kind of angled this way, and it almost feels like I just want to come over to the left like you’re saying.

Quentin: Right. When you trap down into the ball that really delofts the face and takes a lot of loft. We want to deloft the face, but we don’t want to do it this way where we’re chopping down into the ball.

We still want to come into the ball a little bit shallow, because when you do that, it’s going to make you really inconsistent.

What we want to do, is we want to be nice and angled away, have our head a little bit behind the ball as we’re coming in. So if you want to scoot back a little bit, there we go.

You want to feel like your lead ankle, your lead hip, your lead shoulder are all in a straight line there, just slightly angled away from the target.

It’s almost like if I’m standing here, Clay can’t hit me at all with his hip as he’s coming through, because if he does, he’s going to end up really sliding forward and chopping down into the ball.

Clay: Yeah, I don’t want to do that.

Quentin: You want to feel like somebody’s in front of you like that, and stopping you from doing that.

So you want to feel like you’re really opening up, staying behind the ball with your head there a little bit, and that’s going to allow you to get that nice, high ball flight that you’re looking for.

Clay: Yeah, so I’m kind of behind it a little bit more. I’ve still got the forward shaft lean, but it’s still going to get some compression on there.

I agree with you 100 percent there, if I get that sway, I feel like I’m immediately going to shift in front of it. My weight’s going to get thrown up here.

Then I’m just kind of chopping down into the golf ball. It’s going to be too low, contact’s going to be inconsistent, it’s going to be kind of a mess.

Let me try one again. I want to do it the way that Q was talking about there, where I’m going to add those drills together.

Number one, I want to again imagine that rope is on my right hip. It’s being pulled back behind me.

Then when I come into my downswing, instead of letting me slide in front, I’m going to feel like I stay behind my lead ankle, and I rotate all the way on through the shot. Let’s go ahead and give that a whirl.

So in the backswing, maybe I’ll do 10 reps here, or if you’re practicing this do 10 reps focusing on the right hip rotating in the backswing. I’m going to go ahead and do that.

Then once I’ve done those 10 reps, I’m going to do the next 10 reps focusing on not sliding in front. The backswing reps are to help me to get more speed, that gets the ball higher.

The downswing reps are to make sure that I’m not sliding in front and chopping and getting inconsistent. I’m staying behind the golf ball, and I’m really rotating. That’s going to help to get it higher even more.

Let’s try that way out.

All right, so there, instead of chopping down and I really feel like I rotated through it. Nice high ball flight on that one.

Now this all starts with the first part of this video, from the backswing. I have to load up my body.

If I don’t get that good turn, or what I call the Power Turn in the Top Speed Golf System, where I load my hips and I load my shoulders, I’m never going to have the power that I really want to have.

What I recommend you do after this video, go to the Top Speed Golf website, go to the Instruction tab. Click on the Top Speed Golf System. Go to the Power Turn section.

Really work through level one, level two, level three. As you do that, your speed’s going to go up and up.

You’re going to have way more power. You’re going to feel like you’re a better golfer. You’re going to out-drive your buddies without even having to think about it when you’re done with this.

So that’s what’s going to really ingrain that hip motion and that shoulder motion that I talked about in this video. That’s what’s going to ingrain it for good.

One video does a great job of getting your started. That series, the Power Turn series, ingrains it for a lifetime. So best of luck and I’ll see you in the Power Turn.