Why You Need This: Today you'll discover "3 Ways to Pure Golf Irons!"

If you've ever heard someone hit a crisp iron...

...you know that it just has a different sound to it.

You see, there are 3 keys to making consistent contact with your irons...

...and if you know how to practice them properly...

...you can be the one making that crisp sound (and will have your buddies saying "nice shot" on a regular basis).

After watching today's video, you'll be equipped with everything you need to know to make consistently solid contact with the ball...

...including what I believe to be the #1 fundamental to work on in golf (at 4:09)...

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 10:27

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: All right, we’re going to talk about in this video, the real keys to hitting the ball nice and solid.

Many players go their entire life without realizing how to read the divot properly, or having a mat like this, this is called an Acu-Strike mat that allows you to read your divot after you hit every shot and see if you’re doing the real fundamentals of clean, crisp, well-compressed golf shots.

If you feel like very rarely, even when you hit one in the middle of the face, it just doesn’t feel and sound like it is when you hear a really great player, a PGA Tour player hitting it, we’re going to talk about what you need to be looking at at contact to get that perfectly compressed golf ball.

I can’t wait to show you some of the secrets in this. Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so I’ve got Q here with me, he’s manning the FlightScope radar and he’s going to read some of the numbers when we’re hitting these shots so we can verify what we’re seeing on this mat with what the radar’s telling us.

So Q, let me hit a couple shots here and I may ask you time and time about a few of the numbers that are on the radar.

The number one thing here is where you’re starting your divots, and when you’re looking at this mat, if I come down – let me remove the golf ball from there real quick.

If I come down and I hit this mat, you’re going to see that it leaves a mark, it leaves essentially what your divot would be when you’re making a golf swing.

Now if I started on this white dot and it goes in front of my ball like that, that would be a perfectly hit shot.

So I’m coming down, I’m hitting the mat and the golf ball roughly at the same time and then my divot is in front. That’s going to be that ball-first contact.

What most players may not realize is that your club can come down and actually barely brush a little bit of the turf before you hit the golf ball.

So if that divot on this mat starts somewhere like that, that’s going to be a pretty clean shot. Then all the way up to just barely in front of that white dot is going to be a pretty clean shot, too.

If you can have your club enter this mat and that zone, you’re going to be pretty dag-gone consistent. You’re going to have those clean-hit golf shots.

Let me go ahead and show you what that would look like, hopefully show you what that would look like, and then I’m also going to talk about what I would do if I miss-hit some of these.

Let me go ahead and make a normal swing here, we’ll see what this looks like and I’ll kind of analyze it for you so it’s really easy to tell what’s going on.

So a little bit thin on that one, not quite as much ground contact as I like to have. You can see how it started to leave the divot up here, but this is not kind of roughing it up.

My divot almost started on the front end of that line that I talked about. That would be that little bit of a thin shot.

If you’re doing that, you might have a tendency to stand up a little bit out of your posture. For your hips to go toward the golf ball and you stand up.

If you feel like you start to hit too many thin shots, really feel like you stay in your posture, clear out of the way, and make sure you make that ground-first contact and you hit down into the mat a little bit more.

That’s completely fine. This mat won’t tear up or anything like that if you go ahead and hit down into it.

Now if I hit too far behind it, so if I hit this mat and my divot is back here somewhere behind my golf ball, then I know that I’m falling to the right most likely.

So I could be falling back here like this, my right shoulder gets lower, I’m really getting my right side of my body too close to the ground.

Well, what I would do to have the perfect contact and what the drill I would work on, is I would get a mat like this or I would at least mark – if you don’t have a mat like this, just grab a leaf or anything like that.

Put a leaf where your golf ball is, make a swing, and then see where your divot starts. It should be starting right around where that leaf is.

I want to feel like I get to the top of my swing, my weight is shifting left, my weight gets on my left side, and then I go ahead and hit down and through this golf ball.

Let’s try to hit a nice clean one now and see what that looks like. All right, so I hit that one pretty good. Nice straight ball flight, I’m looking at my divot.

It’s barely starting – let’s clean that up – it’s just barely behind that white dot. That’s pretty dag-gone good. So Q, what were my numbers on this 5 iron?

Quentin Patterson: So 97 miles per hour, 219 total distance.

Clay: OK, pretty solid there, so I hit that nice and clean. That’s the first thing I’d work on.

I’d say that’s the number one fundamental that you can work on in golf in general, is being able to consistently hit the ground at the same spot every single time.

If you also, if you don’t have a mat there, you can grab a tee – I’ll grab a tee out of my bag here – and I could work on just putting that tee in the ground and being able to clip that tee first every single time.

That’s another drill you could do if you don’t have this mat. Acu-Strike sent me this mat. I got a special link down below this video if you use the code Clay Ballard Indoor or Clay Ballard Outdoor, whether you’re getting the indoor or outdoor mat.

You save a few bucks and I actually make a few bucks on that, too. If you don’t want to buy the mat, I’m not doing a big sales pitch here. It gives me a few dollars, it’s not game changing, don’t have to buy the mat.

Put the little leaf down there, hit the tee out of the ground, you don’t have to have this mat to do the stuff we’re talking about today. I just think it makes it a little bit easier.

Now let’s go ahead and talk about the second thing there. If I can get my ground contact really consistent, and you’ll find most of that is to do with your weight shift. If I can get that consistent, I’m well on my way to flushing some irons.

The second thing is, am I hitting it off the heel or the toe? Most of the time I see players, again, get a little hips moving toward the golf ball, standing up out of it.

What does that do? That pushes the heel out toward the golf ball. If I do that on a swing, let’s go ahead and see what that would look like.

Yeah, so that one was a little bit off the heel, kind of blocked it out. Look it on this mat, where my divot was. You can see that the outside of my divot is touching this line.

The inside of my divot is away from that line. So if I put my club down there like that, that’s going to be a heel shot.

If I put a golf ball on and show you the same thing, there’s the golf ball, there’s where my club contacted it, you see that would be on the heel.

If I’m on the toe, my divot would be more on this side. The cool thing about this mat is it will show you that. You can see if you’re hitting a little off the heel and toe.

The interesting thing is, you know I see players all the time that don’t realize they’re hitting it slightly on the heel or slightly on the toe.

You can use a foot spray powder, you can use something like that, but nothing is as easy as just putting this golf ball on the mat and hitting it and seeing what happens.

This time, I’m going to get rid of that heel shot and I’m going to bring it more toward the center of the face. I want to feel like my hips going this way toward the golf ball.

I’m going to feel like I let my hips clear back, almost like there’s a chair behind me and I’m going to sit in that chair as I start to turn.

The cool thing about this or an interesting way to do this drill, feel like the chair is almost at an angle. So I want to have my hips opening up as I sit in that chair. I want my hips to be opening.

I don’t want my hips to stay square, I’m not going to be able to get the swing speed I want. So you’re sitting back in that chair and opening your hips at the same time.

If I do that, I should be a lot more centered contact. There we go, and that was a nice solid one. That one was right on the golf ball where my divot started.

You’ll see that the outside and the inside of that divot are pretty equal. That would be a nice solid strike on this mat, again.

Finally, and the coolest thing about this, is that it shows you so much you can even do the path that you’re swinging.

So if I’m swinging a little bit to the right, that’s going to look like that. If I’m swinging a little bit to the left, it’s going to obviously show me and the divot’s going to be that way.

I can even work on my fades and draws when I’m working with this. You can do the same thing if you don’t have this mat, if I just go ahead and put a club down where my target is.

If I put a club down going toward my target, I step back and I look at my divots and I read those. Are they going to the left, are they going to the right?

Ideally, we’d want those divots pretty straight. Doesn’t have to be perfect, but fairly straight in there.

Lastly, let me go over the most common thing with that. I see a lot of times players are struggling to hit a draw.

If I want to hit a draw, I’m going to focus on a few things. Number one, I’m going to set up a little bit to the right. So my stance is a little to the right.

Number two, I’m going to get a little more tilt to my upper body, and number three, I’m going to feel like I really let this face roll on over.

If I had this club face, I’m going to let it roll over this way, I don’t want to hold it open or I’m going to fade it. I want to really let that go.

So if I do this correctly, I should have a nice center strike mat, or divot on the mat, and it should be going slightly to the right showing that draw.

Let’s go ahead and make a swing on it here, again, playing a little bit of a draw. All right, so there we go. Nice draw, and that one was really well hit there.

So when I’m looking on this mat, I can see the angle of my club is slightly inside out. Doesn’t have to be a ton, just a little bit inside out like that is completely fine.

So Q, what are you seeing on the path for this one here where I played a little bit more of a draw swing?

Quentin: Yeah, so your path was 7.7 to the right which would be in to out.

Clay: Yes, a little bit in to out. If I see this slightly tilted to the right, it’s going to be more of a draw type swing. You can see that from the mat.

If I was going to fade one, when I swung it would be going a little bit more to the left like that.

So with your ground contact, with your centeredness of strike on the face, or your path, you can test all those with a mat, or just really pay attention to your divots.

As long as you’re hitting a divot you’re going to be able to read these same things. This just makes it a little clearer, a little bit more easy to read.

Now one of the things that’s really going to help you to make that consistent contact, right on the ball each time, is the Stable Fluid Spine.

Having my spine angle be set and me rotating around kind of a stable upper body, allows my eyes to be more still, allows me to hit the ground in the same spot over and over again, much more easily than if I’m moving around on the golf ball.

No matter how good your athleticism is, if you’re moving around it gets tough to hit the ground in the same spot every time.

What I recommend doing is going to the Top Speed Golf System, go to the Instruction tab, the TSG System, and work through that Stable Fluid Spine from beginning to end. Level one, level two, level three.

As you go through those levels, you’re going to see your swing go from moving around a bit too much to being very, very consistent and look like it’s almost impossible for you to miss.

But that only happens if you follow those three steps and you work through that. So if you want that consistent swing, that’s the best way to do it. I can’t wait to see you in the Stable Fluid Spine.