Why You Need This:

How would you like to stop chunking and topping your shots?

Well, I’m sure your answer is a resounding “YES!”

Because I know how it’s so frustrating to hit about 3 inches behind the ball…

…and hit a divot that’ll make the groundskeeper angry!

And topping the ball can be just as frustrating…

You take a full, hard swing only to see the ball pop up and dribble about 20 yards.

So how do you make a smooth, flowing golf swing and avoid chunking and topping?

Well, if you’re looking to increase your consistency, then you’re in luck.

Because you’re about to see my “Stop Chunking and Topping” series.

In the series, you’ll discover the 5 most important keys of the Top Speed Golf System.

But in the first video of the series, you’ll discover what’s causing you to chunk and/or top the ball…

And you’ll also get a cool 2-step drill that’ll help you stop swaying so you can hit the ball with more consistency.

As an added bonus, you’ll see example swings throughout the video of Rory McIlroy, Earnie Els, and Dustin Johnson!

Take control of your swing…

And hit solid shots with tons of power!

What's Covered: Methods and drills to overcome topping and chunking the golf ball.

Golf Pros Featured: Dustin Johnson    Ernie Els    Rory McIlroy    

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:48

Video Transcription:

Oh, the top! So frustrating, it makes me so mad when I top one, if I chunk one. It’s as frustrating as it gets in golf.

Well in this video series we’re going to talk about how the chunk ball where we actually hit behind the ball, lay the sod over top of the ball and it dribbles just a couple feet, or the top where we hit the top of the ball, is actually caused by the same thing.

I’ve got a several video series that’s going to break you through how to move the body properly to fix this once and for all so we never have to deal with it again. How to use the arms and some great drills that are going to walk you through it.

So I’m really excited to share it with you guys, let’s go ahead and get started with the very first video, so that you’ll never chunk or top again.

All right, so first let me explain exactly what’s happening when we’re struggling chunking or topping the golf ball.

Ideally, if we’re going to hit this golf ball dead solid, we can imagine our left arm is kind of like a pendulum, and the club comes down, the bottom of our swing arc is at the underneath this left shoulder, that’s the bottom of the arc on the ground.

So you can see that this club is going to swing down and hit the turf kind of under my left shoulder, or just inside my left shoulder. So if I’m putting the ball at my normal address position, right around the logo or my ear, somewhere around there would be fine.

Then that ball, or that club is going to swing down, hit the golf ball first, and then I’m going to come down and through, and hit the turf after the golf ball. That’s a good, nice angle of attack where I’m going to come down hit the ball first.

It’s a little bit simplified that way, but that’s a good way to visualize that, is that the club’s coming down and contacting the ball and then the ground in front.

When we’re chunking or topping the ball, what’s happening here is our club is grounding out behind this. So the bottom of our arc or our circle, we can think is behind the golf ball.

So that first example, the arc is underneath the left shoulder, and the last example, second example, the bottom of that arc is behind the golf ball, and what’s happening here is we’re grounding out almost touching the ground here.

If we hit a top, the club is actually working back up, up in to the ball as we’re making contact, and then we dribble the ball down the fairway.

Now if we actually hit a little bit more ground when we’re doing that, so imagine that we do the same thing, the bottom of our arc is back here and we catch a little bit more ground, well now I’m going to chunk the ball.

Then hitting two or three inches behind the ball, and then my club comes up and hits the ball and it’s very frustrating.

So that’s really the same thing in both of those cases our arc, or the bottom of our arc, is behind the golf ball and then the club is moving up as it’s contacting the golf ball, which is the chunk and the top.

So where does that come from? That’s all great, good to know. We know we’re hitting behind it, but how do we stop that? What do we need to do differently to make sure that we hit in front of the golf ball?

In a good swing, just like we talk about in the Top Speed Golf System, we have the five fundamentals. One of the most important ones is what we call the stable fluid spine.

What should happen is if I set up, you look at my belt buckle and my sternum, that should be angled away from the target as I address the golf ball.

So my body is slightly tilted away, that means my hips are forward, my upper body is tilted a little bit back, and that gives me a nice spine angle away from the target.

Now as I go to the top of the swing, I’m really keeping that same spine angle. As I go to the top you can see my right leg is angled in, my spine angle is still tilted slightly away from the target as I go to the top.

So nice and consistent, and then as I come down to contact, I’ve shifted my weight to the inside of my left foot and again, I’m a little more tilted away, I’m keeping that same angle, and everything is coming down and through. I’m hitting that golf ball then the ground after the golf ball.

Now when we have trouble topping or chunking, what’s happening is our body movement is a little bit off. Instead of being tilted away, a lot of times what I’ll see is the body straight up and down at address.

If you drew a line from your belt buckle up to your sternum, you’re going to see it very vertical like this.

Then as we go to the top of the backswing, what usually happens is the hips slide this way instead of staying in place and rotating, they tend to slide and the upper body kind of leans back toward the target.

So now instead of being tilted away, I end up tilting this way to the left. Now your body knows from here that it’s got to get back to the right, it knows it has to be angled away.

What it does is it falls back to the right on the downswing, where you chunk behind the ball, then the hit, or we miss the ground and then top the golf ball, kind of dribbling it down the fairway.

That’s the motion that’s happening with basically everybody that I see that struggles with chunking or topping. So the real key here is to first learn how to use the body correctly.

Then second once we’ve done that, then we can go and tackle the hands and arms, and get the compression on the golf ball with those, once we’ve trained the proper body positions.

So I’ve got a great drill to get you started here, it’s a two-step drill that’s going to get you that tilt away, it’s going to feel like you’re in a much better position. You’re going to feel much more confident, and that way you can just shift to the left, hit that ball nice and clean as you make your swings.

All right, so now that the first step to this is making sure that we get set up properly, tilted away from the target. So what I’ve done here is I’ve taken a marker, a sharpie, a pen, and I’ve put a little dot on one of the dimples of the golf ball.

Just something to be able to look at when you’re looking down at the golf ball. Now what I’m going to do, is I’m going to put this dot kind of level with the ground.

If you imagine that this is a sphere kind of like the Earth, and here’s the equator right in the middle, I’m going to set that dot to be in the very back of that. So right in the equator, so the dot is on the very back side of this golf ball.

The reason I’m setting it up there, is that if I look down straight at the top of this golf ball, I can’t see that dot at all. So if I set up here, and I’m straight up and down, my spine is straight up, my belt buckle, my sternum are straight up, I can’t see that dot.

What I’m going to do from there, is I’m going to go ahead and bump my hips forward, and bump my upper body back just a little bit, and now I can barely see that dot on the back of the ball.

So what that’s allowing me to do is I feel like I maybe have a little bit more weight on my right side, again, my hips have gone forward, my upper body’s tilted back, and now I can see that dot so I know I’m tilted and I’m looking at the back of the golf ball instead of being here and looking at the top of the golf ball.

Now from there, once we’re in this good position, we’re way ahead of the eight ball now. Our spine is tilted, our body’s in a good position where we can go to the top with that swing.

Now we’ve got to concentrate on this right leg staying in like this, and I’m getting loaded up to the right side of the golf ball. I can still see that dot, and now I’m in a good position.

If I do this in the backswing, I’ve lost sight of the dot, my hips have slid to the right, my upper body’s leaning back to the left, and I’m going to struggle falling this way as I come into the downswing.

So do a couple setup positions there, look at that dot. We’ll go to the top of the swing, I can still see the dot. Then as I come through, I’m going to make a practice swing and I’m going to have my weight shift all the way to my left side, a good full finish facing the target.

Do a good 100 repetitions doing that. Really build that in there. You should be able to see the dot at address, at the top of the backswing, should be able to see it at impact, even though I’m shifting my weight to the left.

Then as I follow all the way on through, I’m looking down the fairway, good full finish. That’s the first piece of this.

Now let’s go a little bit more in depth with a great drill to use the body properly, and a great drill that you can really ingrain this.

All right, so I’ve got a really simple drill you can do anywhere. This is a great one to practice in the backyard, don’t have to go out to the course to actually do this.

So all we’re going to do is we’re going to set up an alignment stick, just like I use to line up on the fairway. When I’m hitting balls on the range I always put one of those sticks down so I can check my alignment.

I’m going to put that straight up and down. What I’m going to do, is I’m going to turn around and put that right in the back of my hips, in the center as I’m at address.

So there I am at address position, now as you go to the right, what you’re going to feel like is your right pant pocket here is going to turn back and kind of push this stick this direction.

If I have a sway with my hips that looks something like this, and you can see my hips are now sliding to the right side of the stick. If I do this correctly, that right pant pocket is going to push that out of the way.

So it’s going to bend that stick a little bit this way in my backswing, so it’s going to look something like this.

As we go to the backswing, as I go to the downswing, as I clear my hips out of the way, now my left pant pocket is going to push that stick this way as I’m coming through contact all the way into my full finish.

As I come all the way around it’s going to come off the stick completely. So all we’re going to work on here, we’re going to do 100 reps starting in the middle.

We’re going to push the stick this way, and then shift to the left, push the stick the other way by rotating the hips out. You can really get the good feeling for this, what your hips are doing, very easy drill to do.

Let me go ahead and show you one more time the incorrect way, then I want you to go ahead and do about 100 reps just practicing this drill.

So there I’m set up, I’ve put a little pressure against the stick. If I do this incorrectly, I’m going to look like this. So my hips shifted to the right, my upper body leaned to the left, and then on the downswing, I’m going to end up falling to the right to try to get back into position and I’m all out of whack.

I’m going to do 100 reps, right pant pocket pushing the stick this way on the backswing. Left pant pocket, pushing the stick that way as you rotate on through.

That’s going to get your hips working perfectly, it’s going to get you much better control, and you’re going to be able to feel like you’re really hitting some great shots.

Now after we’ve done those, both of these drills, we can put these together. So now as I’m setting up – I’m not goin to put the dot in the correct spot here – but as I set up, I’m going t have a little bit of tilt.

I can see the dot on the back of the ball, and I can work on both those drills at the same time as I’m coming through contact and then to the finish. I’m going to have complete control of my body.

So a good 100 reps each of those drills individually, you guys are really going to knock out that sway, that reverse pivot, you’re going to be feeling great. You’re going to hit some really clean shots.

Good luck, work hard, I’ll see you guys soon.