Why You Need This: In this video, you get a golf lesson to hit pure iron shots.

Now, 3 things need to happen to hit your irons solidly...

1. Good weight shift,
2. Good rhythm, and
3. Consistent contact with the ball first, then the ground.

You'll learn several drills to help you get there.

For your weight shift, you'll go through a set of progression drills working through two zones.

Focus on staying in posture as you work through the weight shift drill.

Once you nail your weight shift, move on to your rhythm.

Grab a rope and swing it around in a big circle with your right hand.

Concentrate on snapping it through at the bottom of the arc.

This motion is similar to that of a jump rope.

You want that same snapping motion with your club as you make contact with the ball.

Later in the video, you'll see a drill to improve your contact.

Place a tee in the ground with about a quarter inch showing.

Concentrate on hitting the tee first, then grazing the ground after.

This simple tee drill will help you develop consistent and compressed contact with the ball.

Lastly, you'll put all these drills together and start hitting solid irons.

Watch now to hit pure iron shots!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 10:25

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, great to have you back. In this video we’re going to go into a lot of detail. I’ve some great follow along drills to make crisp, clean contact with your irons.

Now three things need to happen if we’re going to hit those irons solid. Number one, we need to have a good weight shift. Number two, we need to have good rhythm in the swing.

So even if I’m making good positions, and I don’t have good rhythm, good timing, then I’m going to struggle hitting solid golf shots.

Number three, our contact with the ground needs to be really solid. I need to be able to hit the ball first, and then hit the ground just after that time and time again. That’s really going to help our consistency.

I’ve got a lot of drills, we’re going to work through several drills that are going to help you to do that.

Let’s start out by talking about how we’re going to move our body to get a weight shift, and where the positions our body should be in.

What I’ve done is I’ve set a ball up here where I would be hitting with an iron shot. Then directly in front of this, about two feet in front of that would be the middle of this first towel, and it’s in front of the golf ball.

Then about four feet to the center of the second towel. So from my ball to the center of this towel is about four feet. From my ball to the center of this towel is about two feet on this side of my golf ball.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to put a club across our shoulders, and I’m going to break it down and make sure that you get a great weight shift, a great turn, and really load up those shoulders in the backswing.

So that’s going to be crucial to getting a fluid swing, to getting a lot of power. We’ve got to make that good turn, we call in the Top Speed System, a Power Turn going back, and a Power Turn as we’re finishing our swing.

So I’m going to put this club across my shoulders, and first I’m going to stand just level with the ground. So if I was going to turn my club this way, it would just be like a helicopter blade turning parallel with the ground.

Now from there, I want to go ahead and rotate, shift my weight a little bit to the right, where this club would now be pointing directly to the camera.

So my weight is now shifted a little bit to the right, inside of my right foot, but I’m still just turning level with the ground.

So that would be kind of pointing out to the front edge of that towel. Now from here, I’m going to tilt my shoulders down until my club is pointing toward the center of that towel.

That’s keeping me in posture. Now I’ve forced myself to shift my weight to the right. If I was to drop this club, it would land kind of right here on the inside of my foot.

Then I’m also going to tilt down so that I stay in my posture. So I’ve got my weight shift, and I’ve tilted downward. That’s got me in a good weight shift to the right, I’m in a position where I can now shift my weight on through to the front foot.

Now if you’re a very flexible person, if you’re PGA Tour player quality, we can go ahead, turn that instead of to the camera, all the way to the middle of that towel and then tilt down.

Now I’ve gotten this really big turn with my shoulders, I’ve really loaded up and going to be able to get a lot of speed that way.

Regardless of whether you can get to the front of the towel or the back of the towel, we’re still focusing on having those shoulders pointing down to the towel at the top, and getting that weight shift to the right.

Whenever I do drills, a lot of times I’ll show incorrect movements. Maybe I’ll show a reverse weight shift, so that weight’s going back here in my backswing, and then falling away in the downswing.

It’s almost impossible to get good, solid contact when I’m doing that. I’ll hit some behind the ball. When I hit in front of the ball it’s all over the place.

So making sure that we get those shoulders loaded up correctly as we’re going back, that’s going to really be important to making consistent contact on the way down.

That’s the first part of the weight shift. Now as we come on through the ball, here’s the top of the backswing. Now I’m going to come on through and my shoulders will slightly steepen up a bit.

At this point my right foot’s off the ground, my right ankle, my hips, and my shoulders are all in alignment if we’re looking from this angle.

Now my club I’ll go ahead and stick it out this way so we can see it a little bit easier, is going to be pointing down towards this front towel. So anywhere in there is good.

This would be kind of me standing up facing the target. Now I’m tilting down, and this towel is going to be a little bit closer because our shoulder angle will steepen up slightly.

So if I took away, let’s actually take away the club now. Do a good 10, 15 reps. Pause this video right now, do a good 10 or 15 reps and hit those two zones, going back and going through.

Once we come back, now what we’re going to do is make that same shoulder turn with a golf swing. So my backswing, there’s my shoulder turn pointing to the towel.

And my downswing, follow through, now I’m going to be about right here on my shoulder turn, is pointing to the front towel.

Go ahead and do another just about 10 reps or so, so you get comfortable with that. Now once we’re comfortable with that, I have a feeling for how to get my weight to shift and for how to stay in my posture.

From there, let’s go ahead and move the ball, and I’m going to do about 10 swings coming back and through, and let’s make this nice and fluid and rhythmic.

As I go back and through, I was only going to here before, I’m going to go ahead and let it come all the way around to where I’m facing the target.

Let’s do another 10 practice swings, nice and easy, nice and slow, trying to rotate our shoulders, make a weight shift to the right, make a weight shift to the left.

So if my club stays in those ones, now all of a sudden I’m very consistent on how I’m coming through the swing. I’m going to be able to hit the ball really clean.

So that’s the first piece of it. If my weight shift is good, then everything else can work on top of that.

Now this is great for building just the positions of the swing, but you’re not going to have a ton of rhythm if you’re doing that.

Rhythm is a big piece of this, and really what rhythm boils down to is I need this club to accelerate right at the bottom of the swing.

If I’m accelerating quickly from the top, what’s going to happen is I’m casting a little bit, now I’ve spent up all my energy back here.

As my club reaches the ball, it’s going to feel very light in my hands. It felt very heavy when I was accelerating halfway in the downswing, but as I came to impact, I really don’t have anything to get that woosh or that speed coming through contact.

The club’s going to feel light, and I’m going to feel I just can’t tell if the club face is open or closed.

So I’ve got a great drill for you. I’m going to grab – if you have a jump rope at your house, you can go ahead and grab a jump rope – imagine this is a full-sized jump rope.

If you’re jumping rope, the only place the rope is really accelerating, is right when it’s going under your feet.

You have kind of a snapping that you do with your hands to get that to whip on through, and then it just kind of coasts the rest of the way around, and then you snap it again.

It’s all happening at one point. Same thing in the golf swing. I want that all to be happening, boom, right at the bottom.

I don’t want to be snapping the club back here, or too late, dragging it through. Some people will do that. I want to get that snap from the ball right on out in front.

So a good way to feel this, is if you have a jump rope or a piece of rope that’s got some weight to it at your house, spin that around and see if you can get that to kind of snap right at contact.

This isn’t golf swing, I’m just spinning around, almost like a Ferris wheel, straight up and down. I want to get that to snap right at the bottom.

So I’m trying to get a lot of speed with that. You can even do it with your left hand. It’s a little counterintuitive, but as I start getting hat to whip on through, I’m getting the acceleration in the right spot.

This isn’t going to directly translate over to the golf swing, but this is going to get you to feel for when am I trying to get the speed in my swing.

Once we’ve done that, let’s get that same feeling, that same snapping action happening coming through the ball with my golf swing.

Now if I’m rushing hard from the top, and I’m really trying to hit it hard from back here, I’m not going o be able to snap down at the bottom.

I want to be nice and soft, I want to be able to gain some lag. Get into that maximum power position when you’re halfway down, and then from there, as you go to the straight-line release, that’s when you want to snap that club on through there.

As we’re working from contact to the straight-line release, that’s where that snapping action is happening.

So if you’re following the Top Speed Golf System, you know that we’re getting a lot of lag here, and then I’m releasing that on out in front.

So I want you to go ahead make a couple more practice swings, just beside the golf ball, and do the exact same thing.

Nice and smooth, but we’re actually get that acceleration feeling just in front of the golf ball.

The same thing I’m doing with my shoulders that I was working on earlier, I’m just going to tie that into a nice fluid-feeling swing through the ball.

Now our last piece here, we’re going to work on clipping a tee out of the ground, and making sure that I get that divot either at the tee or in front, and we’re going to tie it all in together.

The first part, I’ve got to get my shoulders loading up, back and through. Second part I’m getting that kind of acceleration at the bottom. That’s a big piece to it.

Then lastly here, I’m going to clip this tee out of the ground. So you’ll find just by paying attention, let me go ahead and do this incorrectly one time.

I’m going to go ahead and hit behind the ball. When I look down there, I could even put several tees in a row – let me grab that other tee again here. Grab a bonus tee.

That tee was about right there, or here in the middle of my divot. So you can line up two, or three, or four tees in a row, and practice getting that divot happening in front of those tees.

I’m only teeing those up about a quarter inch off the ground, you can see I’m clipping that tee first, then hitting the ground.

So it seems a little bit basic, but you’d be surprised just by having feedback there, having six or eight tees in a row and making those practice swings, just how good your control gets of where you’re hitting the ground.

You do that every day for a few weeks, and you’re going to get really good at clipping that tee out of the ground, and getting that good contact.

Let’s tie it all together now. At this point in the swing, you should be a good 60 or 80 swings in. So if you haven’t done your practice swings, be sure to do those first.

Go through all these drills that I talked about, and then we’ll be able to build on that.

So once we get the ball here, we’ll go ahead and put the tee in the ground there so we know where our divot is. Let’s actually do this. Let me put a tee right there, and I’ll put my ball just inside.

If my divot happens in front of that golf ball, I’m going to know I had pretty good contact. So good shoulder turn, I’m getting that acceleration to happen at the ball, and that divot’s going to be in front. Let’s try it out.

There you go, guys. Divot started right at the tee, came out in front. I know I’ve got good contact. This video is not just a watch it once and you should be able to perfect all the drills.

Work through those drills, do them several days in a row, and you’re going to get a better feel for it. You’re struggling with that iron play, a lot of these drills are going to help with that.

Getting that shoulder turn, so crucial. Getting the snap at the bottom is crucial, and then we’ve got to hit the ground at the same time.

So work through this several times in a row, and you’re going to be hitting the ball a lot more solid.

Good luck to you guys.