Why You Need This: Can you do the high-low game?

What's that you ask?

Well, it's a really fun game.

You'll see how high you can hit the golf ball...

And how low you can hit the golf ball.

What's great about this game is that you'll learn how to control your trajectory like a pro!

In the video, you get a great demonstration of how to adjust your trajectory.

I'll show you the stats behind the hits...

And you'll get great tips so you can hit these shots.

Watch this video now to find the correct height that can give you the most distance...

...then be able to hit it low for those close green shots!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:05

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, welcome back to Top Speed Golf. I’ve got a great game for you, it’s really fun. We’re going to play the High-Low game.

So we’re going to see how high we can hit the golf ball, how low we can hit the golf ball. This is fantastic to really get that perfect trajectory for your shots.

A lot of you out there may be hitting a little too high or a little too low, and you haven’t really found that distance that gives you – or that height that gives you the most distance.

Playing this game hitting them as high and as low as you can, not only going to get control of your club face, you’re going to control the loft through impact, but you’re also going to be able to adapt whenever things get a little bit off.

You go out there, you make a few swings, the ball’s going too high, floating up into the wind, you’re losing some distance. You’re going to know exactly what to do to bring that ball flight back down. Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so the first thing we’re going to do here, I’m going to start out with my 6 iron, I’ve got my FlightScope behind me. It’s going to track a couple of shots to find just my normal height.

So here on the screen I’m going to track three things. The vertical launch, so that’s whenever I make contact with this ball, what is the angle that leaves the face? Is it leaving very low, is it leaving very high? It’s going to tell me that in degrees.

It’s going to tell me my maximum height, and it’s also going to tell me my dynamic loft. Now what that means is, dynamic loft is different than the static loft on the club. Whenever you take out an iron, let’s use the pitching wedge for example, 45° on a pitching wedge most sets out there.

That’s the loft that’s on the club when I’m setting it down on the ground. That’s the angle of the face as it sets up naturally. Well, when I make contact I want to get some forward shaft lean and I’m taking loft off of this.

Whatever the loft is when I actually compress the golf ball, when I hit the golf ball, that’s the dynamic loft or the loft that I’m actually using when I hit the golf ball.

For a pitching wedge and a PGA Tour player, most PGA Tour players just on average, kind of give you a ballpark, are going to deloft the club about 30 percent, 33 percent, of whatever the static loft or the normal loft is. So 45° pitching wedge is going to be down to about a 30° loft, dynamic loft, at contact.

If you swing a little slower, you may not want to deloft it quite that much, but I find that most people do not deloft the club enough to really compress it.

Let’s start out here, I’m going to make a normal 6 iron swing. Let’s just see what my normal numbers are, my height, my vertical launch, and my dynamic loft. Let’s give it a try.

There we go, nice solid shot. Fairly high, I’d say that’s maybe just a little bit higher than normal, but I hit it pretty clean. Let’s see what the FlightScope tells me my numbers are.

So a vertical launch of 15.1, so again, the club, loft that’s on the club at impact, is going to determine what’s the dynamic loft, is going to determine what this launch is at. The ball is going to launch about 75 percent of my dynamic loft.

My loft on this club naturally is probably around 6 iron, I think around 32°, I’d have to look it up. I’m probably hitting with around 21° or something like that of actually loft at contact. Excuse me, it says that there’s 17.4, not even looking at the screen here.

So I’m hitting with 17.4° of dynamic loft, 15.1 vertical launch, and my max height there was 106 feet. That’s as high as the ball went.

Now let’s try to see how high we can get one. I’m going to do a couple things different when I want to hit a high one.

Number one, if this is my normal set up, I’m going to play that ball just a little bit up in my stance. So if this is my normal ball position, I’m going to play that about a ball forward. So this front ball, instead of my normal back ball there. I’m just going to move it about an inch forward.

Number two, if this is my normal stance width I’m going to go ahead and go a little bit wider with my back foot. Now what this is going to do is it’s going to drop me back. We talk about this a lot in our Top Speed Golf System, what is our compression line. How is this angled away?

As I drop my right foot back, that’s going to give me a compression line that’s tilted farther away, and now it’s easier to come in level to this ball, to hit it a little bit higher.

Now as I come in a normal shot, we go over this a lot and we talk about The Move in our Top Speed Golf System, we’re flattening out, we’re bowing the left wrist, and we’re actually delofting this club. We saw that I only use 17° loft, so I really compressed the heck out of that golf ball.

Then when we’re trying to hit it high I want to add some more loft to that, I like to have my dynamic loft a little higher. So instead of having this logo forward, I’m going to have the logo a little bit more up to the sky. So now my logo is coming up.

Probably not the best thing for you guys that already tend to hit it high, don’t get as good compression, but we’re going to see just how high we can go with this drill.

Number one, ball a little forward. Number two, I’m going to drop that right foot back a little bit, and number three, I’m going to feel like the logo of that glove gets going up toward the sky. Let’s go ahead and try to hit another one, and see just how high we can go.

There we go, that one was a mile in the air, way up there. Pretty straight. So our dynamic loft was 18°, our max height was 137, so I picked up a lot more height there.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it got my dynamic loft a little bit off there, I bet it’s a little bit higher than that, because I really got that ball to go a lot higher, another – let’s see from the first one, 106 – I got another 31 feet in total height there.

Our vertical launch went from 15.1 to 15.7, so a lot of that too is I’m getting a little bit extra spin on the ball, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just a couple degrees off on that reading. Sometimes it can get a little bit of ground interaction, not get the perfect reading.

But the overall, the idea there, we can definitely see that worked, picked up another 30 feet of height. Wider stance, logo of the glove coming more up toward the sky and putting that ball a little bit farther forward.

Now if we’re going to go low, we’re going to do the opposite. I’m going to take this ball, and if this is my normal stance, again off the logo of my shirt or my left ear, I’m going to put that ball back about an inch.

I’m going to take my stance and put it a little bit more narrow, and I’m going to keep my weight on my left side here a little bit. So I’m not going to get way behind the ball, I’m going to come in left side. Now my compression line is very vertical.

Not the best for getting overall compression and maximum distance, but for hitting that low stinger shot this is really going to help you.

Then lastly, as I’m coming down I want my logo of my glove to really be down to the ground. Look how I’ve taken all the loft off that face when I do that.

Another key here, I want my hips to go ahead and open up. If I keep my hips closed, that club I have no way to get to the ball and I end up having to flip the club to reach the ball. I want those hips to rotate on open so that I can get this forward shaft lean, and get this left wrist really bowing.

So number one, ball a little bit back. Number two, stance a little bit narrower. Number three, I’m going to favor my left side here. A little bit more weight on my left, and then finally, I’m going to keep my hips moving and get this left wrist really bowing forward so I can get that nice, low penetrating shot.

Let’s go ahead and try that one out. You may want to open up your stance just a slight bit since we’re hitting down more, that’s going to help you to hit a little bit straighter. Let’s give it a whirl.

There we go, much lower. Again, right down the middle. That one really knuckled through the wind. Let’s see what the FlightScope tells me on that one. 12° vertical launch, so we brought that down a few degrees. Dynamic loft was only 15° on that one, so we really brought that down.

Then the height was 90 feet. On my low one, 90 feet. On my middle one, my normal stock shot, 106 feet. Then on my high one, 136 feet. So we really brought the spread and I want you guys to try that out.

Go back and forth, take an entire bucket of range balls and see how low you can get. There I went kind of normal shots, normal distance.

See if you can get one to go 10 feet off the ground. See if you can get one to go so high that it goes half the distance, because it’s just going straight up in the air. See what you can really do.

As you learn to control these heights, you’re learning to control the club. If you can control the club, you can play fantastic golf.