Why You Need This: Today's video is all about "Golf Hacks for Solid Contact."

There is a very common misconception when it comes to the best way to improve our golf game.

For years, I believed that what you wanted to do, was to attempt to hit the ball as close to perfect as you can, and to do this over and over.

I, along with most instructors, believed this to be the best way to ingrain that perfect swing so that it becomes repeatable on the course.

What if I were to tell you that I've done a ton of research and found that this is NOT the best, or fastest way to improve your game?

That I've discovered there's a different way of training that helps you become more aware of how you're hitting the ball?

That with this new training, when things aren't going well on the course, your body will better know what you need to do to start hitting it flush again?

In today's video, I'm going to give you a 5 step process to take to the range and begin striking the ball better in this one session.

These drills are also going to help teach your body how to quickly adjust on days that you don't have your "A" game to begin.

This type of training is more easily taken from the range to the course than your typical, more common training methods.

Let's get started.....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 13:41

Video Transcription:

It’s great to have you here today, I have some awesome drills that are going to help you in the same day to make better contact with the golf ball.

I’m telling you, I promise these are going to work. You follow these, go to the range, do each and every one of those. Doesn’t take very long, and by the end of the session, you’re going to be hitting it more solid.

So let’s jump right into it, go through these drills, I know you’re going to love them.

All right, so the first drill is spraying some foot spray powder on your club face, which is going to make that completely white and then when you hit the golf ball it’s going to show you where you hit it on the club face.

Now I like to use this Dr. Scholl’s Odor-X foot spray powder, comes in a yellow can. I get it on Amazon, it’s only a few bucks for a can like this, and it lasts quite a few sprays, quite a few golf balls.

What that’s going to do, what you’ll notice when you start to hit some shots doing this, is you’re going to see a pattern either toward the heel or the toe that most players tend to fall into.

Once you’re just aware of that pattern, simply try to hit on the other side of the face. So there I felt like I was a little thin and a little bit on the heel.

Not the best shot ever, but it is on the green, actually, about 15 feet short of the pin, but you’re going to see a little bit thin.

On there, I would just try to do the opposite of wherever I’m off. I’m going to go a little bit higher on the face, and try to get a little bit more of a divot on my next swing.

Doesn’t matter if you’re heel, toe, thin, heavy, whatever it is, just being aware of what’s happening, you hit three or four shots, you’re going to start to see a pattern and then you can adjust that pattern to get more toward the sweet spot.

It’s really that simple, it doesn’t have to be any more complicated. We don’t have to get into all these crazy swing ideas, and techniques, and swing planes, and arrows, and all this stuff.

Sometimes just being aware of what’s going on, and trying to adjust, just like that. Three, four, five swings, you’re way better.

So hit five shots, once you se a pattern, start to adjust. That’s the Foot Spray Powder Drill, that’s really going to help you a lot.

All right, drill number two for solid contact. This is going to work on your contact with the ground, which is probably the most important that I see for most intermediate, even slightly advanced golfers is they struggle hitting the ground at the exact same point every single time.

It results in heavy shots, and thin shots, and again, it’s about being aware of what’s going on. So here’s what I do, it’s called the Three Tee Drill.

I set up one tee just like the golf ball I’m going to hit would be in the middle. I’m going to set up one tee about six inches behind that golf ball, and just barely sticking out of the ground.

Just about a quarter inch or so out of the ground. Then the same thing, six inches in front. That tee’s going to be just slightly higher. All these are somewhere between a quarter inch and a half inch off the ground. So basically, how you would tee it up if you’re going to hit on a par 3.

Now from here, what I want to do is I want to swing and hit this golf ball, I want to miss that back tee, I want to come down and through and have my divot clip this front tee out of the ground.

In order to do that, what I like to feel, a little trick here, in my backswing I like to feel like I unweight my left heel just slightly. You don’t have to lift it up from the ground very much, but I just want to unweight it.

Then to start my downswing, while I’m still at the top of the swing, I want to press that heel into the ground, that’s going to help me to shift my weight to the left, hit this ball, and then this front tee.

So let’s go ahead and try it out, let’s see if I can clip these, hit my ball and clip the front tee also. There we go, nice shot. Just slightly left of the flag.

You can see that I came down, I hit my tee first, my divot starts right where that tee is, I clipped the second tee out of the ground. That’s going to give you some great feedback there.

Now if you hit a little farther behind, just work on driving that front heel, shifting that weight a little bit harder into the ground.

If you really struggle with that, what I recommend you doing is going ahead and lift that heel up a little bit higher, and then feel like you really drive that down, almost like a little stomp into the ground.

If you had a tee under your heel, you could imagine pushing that into the ground as you start your downswing. That’s going to get everything moving to the left.

Second key there, make sure when you come to your full finish, I want my right toe to be completely off the ground, swiveled all the way around, and my hips to be facing the target. Nice full finish like that.

If I can do that, it’s going to help me to hit through the golf ball instead of falling back. So those are two keys that really help.

If you start to notice that you’re hitting a little bit higher, don’t worry about that, just go ahead and hit down a little bit more to the ground.

Having the feedback is the key. You want to get it to look like this, where it’s hitting the ball, divot in front, the second tee is clipped out of the ground. Anything different than that, just adjust like we did on the first one.

You’re a great athlete. Most people forget how good of an athlete they are. You have the ability to adjust without getting super technical on everything.

We have a couple little tips there to get that divot in front, that doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

Go out to the range, hit five shots working on this, that’s also going to help to improve your contact, we’ll be ready to move right along to the next piece.

Drill number three is one of my favorite ones. This is what I call the Hammer Drill. What we’re going to do is take this club, put the toe of the club where it’s facing the golf ball.

I want to make some swings imagining that I’m just going to, that golf ball is a nail, my club head is a hammer, and I’m going to drive that hammer down into the ground, so I’m driving that golf ball down into the ground.

What that sensation is going to get me to do, is to naturally start to lean the hands forward. For whatever reason, it just feels really comfortable with this head turned this way to get those leading the way, to get everything happening in front.

We talk about in the Top Speed Golf System how we’d be releasing to the Straight-Line Release out ahead, and that’s going to really help you to get that solid contact.

Here’s what I want you to do, I want you to go ahead and take a swing. Set up to this golf ball with the toe forward. Pause at impact.

Feel like you’re going to hammer that golf ball to the ground, and then we’re going to go and hit a shot. We should get a nice, clean divot after doing this, and really compress the golf ball.

There we go, that one was nice and solid, just barely left of the flag and really, really clean there. I love that sensation.

I even do this myself, because I just feel like it really synchs everything up with where I want to be at contact, and get you some really, really solid shots.

So one practice swing pausing at contact. One full swing, going to do five total reps of the Hammer Drill.

All right, this is one of my favorite drills called The Gate drill. Now on this one, just like I was doing with the Dr. Scholl’s, I’m going to see if I can make that center contact on the club face.

Now if I start to swing through this gate, and what I’ve done is I’ve set a couple of tees here outside my club. I can adjust these closer or farther away, depending on my sill level.

I like to have these sitting about a half inch or so out of the ground. So if I come down and make flush contact with this golf ball, I’m going to swing through this gate and hit that golf ball on the center of the club face.

Now here’s the interesting thing. If we just set down and we tried to do the same thing over and over again, this is the way that I grew up thinking about golf.

I wanted to just do the same thing, hit it solid every single time. Like a robot, time and time again, don’t change anything. The more I can do things the same, the better I’m going to be.

Well, in reality, through all the research that’s been done through motor learning, what they found is the best way to train, the fastest way to learn to hit the center of the face, is something called random practice.

What you would do is you would purposely hit on the toe and hit on the heel, and go back and forth toe, heel, toe, heel. That way you can get an awareness of where you’re hitting on the club face. That’s the perfect drill to use for this tee drill.

So what I’m going to do, and another interesting fact here, is if I’m hitting a little bit too much on the toe side, and I want to hit a little bit more toward the heel, my natural inclination would be to line the club up on the heel and try to swing down and through more toward the heel side.

Now in reality, your brain’s smart. It sees that you’re lined up on the heel and it adjusts in your swing, and it will usually come back in and hit toward the toe.

So you start toward the heel, and it’ll adjust and hit toward the toe again. So no matter how much you line up with the heel, your body adjusts and goes toward the toe.

We’re actually going to switch that up a little bit. If I want to hit a little bit more toward the heel, I’m actually going to start on this inside tee.

So I’m going to set my club up just like I would normally hit the golf ball, and then I’m going to pull it in toward this inside tee. So my heel of my club’s kind of resting on that tee.

As I swing, I’m going to swing out and hit more on the heel side of my club and come down and still try to swing through these tees, almost hit that outside tee there.

So swing number one, start on the inside tee, and swing out to the golf ball. There we go, I was able to make that happen, just slightly on the heel side. Just barely left of the flag. Another shot on the green.

Now I want to vary that up. I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. If I want to learn fast, I have alternate.

So in this next swing, set the ball there again, I’m going to line up a little bit on the toe, or on the outside of this with my club on this outside tee. As I swing, I’m going to swing in and try to hit a little bit more on the toe.

So this time setting up on the outside tee swinging in, there we go, that one is dead straight at the flag. Probably the straightest one I’ve hit so far. And that one started a little bit out and moved in.

Now that sounds pretty crazy, I have to admit. You’re lining up toward the heel, you’re lining up toward the toe, it doesn’t sound consistent. So why is this so much better?

Well two things are going on here. Your body’s ability to adapt and adjust is being improved. So sometimes I’m going to start hitting on the heel all the time, and I’m not going to feel like I can change.

By doing this drill, starting on the inside and swinging out to the heel, starting on the outside swinging in to the toe, now I know how to adjust. I know the feeling of how to adjust and I can do that on the fly.

If I ever have a day where I just keep on hitting the driver in the heel, this works with the same with a driver, then I can adjust and hit it more toward the toe, or more forward of the sweet spot.

I can do that in one or two swings, and my day’s saved. My round isn’t a disaster. Now that’s the first thing that’s going on, you have the ability to adjust.

Number two, by being able to control this like that, now you’re betting having awareness of where the club face is.

If I do the same thing over, and over, and over again, I may get into a habit of hitting off the heel or the toe, and not even realize it. It may feel more comfortable.

I may have better practice when I try to line up and do the same thing every time. But when I get out to the course, that doesn’t transfer over. I don’t have as much control of that golf club.

If I practice this way, it’s tougher when you practice. You always want to make your practice the hardest, and that way the on the course seems easier.

It’s tougher when you practice here, when you get to the course it’s easier and you know how to have an awareness of this club face.

So do those drills. I promise you, those sound crazy, but if you do them, you will have better contact.

Follow this up, the final five reps I’m just going to lay down golf balls and I’m going to try to hit five shots as clean and solid as I can. Nice and straight toward the middle of the green.

If you do these drills, it’s going to work wonders for your golf game.

All right, so I was actually sitting here struggling a little bit after shooting this video, that last clip there, and I’ll tell you why.

You know what most people would like to hear, and what feels good is to say OK, let’s put both these tees down here, let’s put the ball in the middle, and let’s swing along and if you can go through those tees, you’re going to become a much better golfer and the game is going to get a lot easier.

That’s what we all want to hear, and that’s probably what you hear a lot of other coaches saying. You’re just having to do these drills, do the same thing over.

Things that you like to hear, things that feel good, so why is that I’m promoting to do something that isn’t as fun, that is a little bit more of a struggle, and is a little of a weirder drill.

Well here’s the thing, here’s what the research has shown, and that really the reason this is going to make you so much better of a player.

If I set down at the driving range, and I did these last five reps, and I put the ball between the tees, and I just hit that ball every single time, and I said, OK, I’m going to miss those tees, and I’m going to hit this ball solid.

I’m not going to worry about changing it up and adapting, do all that frustrating stuff that’s a struggle. What’s going to happen is my performance on the driving range is going to be much better.

You’re going to hit the ball better right now. But the problem is, I didn’t really learn anything about how to adjust and adapt when things get off.

So when I take it to the course, and maybe I have a downhill lie, I side hill lie, I’m hitting it off the heel, I’m hitting it off the toe, all these different things are happening to me.

When things get off track, I have no ability to adjust. So even though my performance was high on the range, it’s going to be low on the course. It’s going to plummet.

We’ve all had those times where you take out your 7 iron or your 8 iron, and you hit 30 or 40 range shots in a row, you’re hitting it great.

Then you go to the course where you have to switch up the shots, you only get one 7 iron and then you’ve got to hit a driver, and then you’ve got to mix up all these clubs. The performance tanks again.

So the research has shown that if we really want to improve our performance, if we want to go to the course where it matters, and be able to hit the real good shots when it matters the most, we have to make practice a struggle.

We have to do these drills that force us to get out of our comfort zone, to learn how to control the club even better, it’s going to be harder.

You’re not going to have as much fun on the driving range, but it’s just five swings. Anybody can struggle through anything for five swings and get a little bit out of that, and get a step higher and improve a little bit more.

Not going to be as fun on the range, but it’s a lot more fun when your scores go down. That’s why I’m recommending this stuff.

So how do I make this even easier? There is a little bit of technique. We didn’t touch much on technique in this video.

One of the things that really helps with all these contact drills, and what I see players struggling with, is coming over the top and getting steep, and we’re kind of chopping down into the ball, even if you’re just doing that a little bit, that really makes it tough to have these nice, solid, compressed golf shots.

One of the things that’s going to help us more than anything is what I call The Move. That’s shallowing out this club in the transition, getting that club into the slot, so now I can deliver the club very consistently into the ball.

That piece of technique is really going to help these drills to happen. When you pair up The Move with what we did on these drills, your game and your ball striking is going to get better.

It’s going to be a little bit of work, it’s going to be five or six swings, a little bit of a struggle, but we’re going to get better, we’re going to hit more solid shots. I’ll see you in The Move.