Why You Need This:

Get ready to learn the #1 difference between good and poor players…

And find out how to put yourself in the good player category!

Speaking of good players…

Do you know what worries Tiger Woods on the course?

Well it’s the dreaded hook.

But here’s the thing…

When a good player makes a mistake, it’s typically a hook.

Bad players on the other hand…

They tend to slice.

In this video, you’ll learn about the #1 difference between good players and poor players…

And your challenge will be to make mistakes…

Like the pros!

Don’t worry, you won’t ruin your swing…

But you’ll learn a ton!

What's Covered: How compressing the golf ball is a huge factor in the difference between good and poor players.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 5:12

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, and welcome back to Top Speed Golf. Over the past years I’ve seen thousands of players.

I’ve seen very good players, professional players, all the way down to beginning players who are struggling just to make contact at all, and I’ve really noticed two major themes when we’re talking about what’s the difference between really good players and players that struggle?

Really good players tend to compress the golf ball, they’re really compressing the ball, taking loft off the face – I’ll get in a second, I’ll talk a little bit more about compression -- and they’re really delivering a lot of power into that golf ball.

They tend to draw the ball, get the ball to curve kind of right to left, their miss hit is usually a hook.

For poorer players, players that are struggling that don’t hit the ball extremely accurate, or extremely solid, a lot of times what’s happening is they’re adding loft to the ball, they’re not compressing the ball.

They’re kind of wiping across the golf ball, and their miss tends to be kind of coming down steep into the ground or hitting a bit of a fade.

This is going to be a great video series. I’m going to go over giving you the good player’s miss. If we look at Ben Hogan, he talked about when he starts to miss his shots he starts to over-hook the ball. Tiger Woods talks about how he’s scared to hook the ball.

Well it would be pretty good to have the ball striking problems of Tiger Woods or Ben Hogan, we’d be in pretty good shape if we did that.

That’s exactly what I’m going to teach you guys in this series. We’re going to teach you good player problems as I like to call that.

We’re going to come in too shallow, we’re going to over-compress the ball, we’re going to get that ball turning over right to left.

For those of you out there that are maybe a mid to high handicapper, 80s plus shooters, which is almost everybody, and you’re not really compressing the ball, getting that solid, hard-hit powerful shot, this is the perfect series for you.

So we’re going to overdo it in the beginning, get you those good player problems, and then from there we’re going to tone it down.

 

First let’s talk about what is compressing the golf ball, and you can imagine if I had this golf ball on the ground, there’s two things that I really want to focus in on doing to really over-compress this golf ball.

Number one, I want to be coming in nice and shallow with the ball, shallow with the ground. I don’t want to be chopping down very steeply into the ball.

Number two, I want to be taking off tons and tons of loft so all of the energy is transferred directly into the golf shot.

If you can imagine, if I have this --what do I have here? -- 4 iron. If I took all the loft off of this club, so there’s 0 degrees of loft, it’s basically level with the ground, and I came in dead flat with the ball.

So here’s my golf ball, I’ve taken all the loft off this club, and now I’m coming in directly level with it, that’s kind of like hitting the golf ball with a piston, that’s 100 percent compression.

A good way to visualize that is this big sledgehammer. Imagine we’re going to take this sledgehammer and we’re going to crack into this golf ball.

Well this sledgehammer is flat, doesn’t have any loft, and if I move this sledgehammer directly into the golf ball, it’s got a ton of energy, it’s going to smash the heck out of that golf ball.

If I can swing this sledgehammer 50 miles an hour, it’s going to hit it hard for being swung 50 miles an hour.

If I take a sand wedge and swing 50 miles an hour, it’s a bit more of a glancing blow, it’s not going to hit it as hard as it would with that sledgehammer.

That’s the difference in players that are maybe struggling with your ball striking a bit, is that you have a bit more of a glancing blow and instead of having a sledgehammer type hit, you have more of a wiping or a sliding across the ball type motion.

So we’re adding loft, or coming across the ball in steeper, and we’re kind of glancing across the golf ball. So that’s the major problem that I see.

In this series, we’re going to work on coming in really shallow, taking off tons of loft, that’s typically you’re going to get the ball to turn over a bit more right left, and get those good player problems.

To start out, let’s do a little cheat here. I’m going to want you to feel right off the bat what 100 percent compression feels like.

All I want you to do, grab the lowest lofted iron in your bag, for me it’s a 4 iron, and I’m going to turn this 4 iron down until it’s closed. I’m going to actually keep my grip the same, I’m going to turn it down so it’s about 30° closed.

Now if I set that on the ground, if I look at the loft of the face, I’ve virtually eliminated all the loft. I’ve taken this loft that was there, and I’ve closed it down until now there’s no loft on this face.

If you look down at that, you can see OK, my club is pointed way over here, but there’s no loft on it. Go ahead and hit a couple little chip shots without any loft on the face like that.

Now the ball’s going to shoot off directly to the left, that’s completely fine, but I just want you to do almost like a putting motion here, and I want you to feel the compression feels like, when you’re taking all the loft off the club, and you’re coming in nice and shallow, like that putting motion.

It’s going to feel extremely solid, probably different than what you’re used to. Hit 10-15 shots like that, feel that compression, that’s what we’re going to start to incorporate in a different way when we’re hitting golf shots, but I want you to get that feel first.

Go ahead and try that out, we’ll get started in the next video with some good drills to really feel that, but know if I’m going to be a top-notch, elite-level ball striker, I need to be able to compress that golf ball and I’m going to teach you how to do that in this video series.