Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn how to stop hitting the ground before the ball and how to start making clean, solid contact.

I mix up the training for you a bit...

You'll get some mental tricks, and you'll learn how to improve your technique for making better contact.

The video starts by focusing on the technique and what's causing you to hit the ground behind the ball.

Typically what's happening is that you're falling away from the target and casting the club.

To make matters worse, you'll correct for this on your next shots by coming up early and topping the ball.

That's really frustrating!

It seems like no matter what you do, you can't make good contact.

Another common cause of chunking is coming in way too steep with your club, often with an over-the-top swing path.

No matter what's causing you to chunk, it's natural for you to try to correct it by flipping the club.

To stop flipping and hit with more forward shaft lean, you'll be introduced to a great training aid called the Impact Snap.

It'll help you ingrain forward shaft lean and releasing out in front of the ball.

Here are some more technique tips to help you make better contact...

Rotate your hips and shoulders open in the downswing.

This will help you swing your arms through with forward shaft lean on the club.

Also, concentrate on coming in with more lag and shallowing your club in the downswing.

Mental Tips

Try this...

Grab a piece of paper (it can be a scorecard).

Place it about 3 to 5 inches behind the ball.

Take a few practice swings without the ball and concentrate on brushing the grass without hitting the piece of paper.

Once you're comfortable, hit some balls with the paper there.

You'll be surprised on how well you'll adjust to avoid hitting the paper without even thinking about your technique.

Next, you'll see a drill with a Flat Ball to stop hitting the ground before the ball.

It's a simple training aid that's the similar to a golf ball, but flat.

If you hit on top of the Flat Ball, it'll bounce up and if you hit too far behind it, your club will likely bounce right over it.

This is great instant feedback.

When you hit it correctly, you'll hear a nice swoosh sound and it'll take off.

The Flat Ball is a great training aid for the winter time.

You can use it indoors so that you're not just making practice swings in the air, which can cause you to top shots when you return to the course.

But try not to hit behind the Flat Ball while you're practicing indoors; I don't want you digging up your carpet! :)

In the end...

Practice all the technique and mental tips in this video to stop hitting the ground before the ball.

Watch now to make clean, solid contact!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:32

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, welcome back. Great to have you here today. In today’s video we’re going to talk about probably the most important piece of golf which is making good solid contact, especially when we’re talking about hitting any shot off the ground.

Getting that ground and ball contact happening at the same time, so we can really compress the golf ball. Now the neat part about this video is I’m going to mix it up. I’m going to talk about a couple of mental tricks where you don’t have to worry about changing your technique at all.

That’s going to help you with this. We’re also going to get into the technique side so that we can really focus on what’s causing me to hit the ball, or the ground behind the ball.

Let’s start with the technique, then we’ll go with a couple of those mental tricks here at the end.

Let’s imagine I’m setting up this golf ball. If I’m hitting behind the ball, or I have inconsistent contact, most of the time what’s happening is I’m kind of falling back to the right, I’m tending to cast the club, and I’m hitting the ground behind the ball.

I’m chunking the shot, and then the ball just kind of dribbles up a few feet, or I could even chunk and almost miss the ball. Then if I miss the ground, then I’m actually coming up and hitting the ball thin, because my club is actually moving up as it’s hitting the ball.

Both of those are going to be really tough to get consistent if we’re doing that kind of a motion. We’d have to time up that perfect flip of the golf club to get that ground and ball contact at the same time. Very difficult to do.

We could also be coming in pretty steep and chopping down into the ball, where this way I’m hitting behind the ball, I’m hitting on top of the ball, and I’m very inconsistent there too.

That’s very common with an over the top move, club starts coming in too steep. Right shoulder’s coming down over top of the ball. Those are all common things.

Now on today’s video we’re going to talk about kind of how to fix all of that, or the idea, the overall idea of how that’s going to work perfectly. Whenever we are coming over the top, or whenever we’re not getting the left side, we tend to not have enough forward shaft lean.

I’ve got a great training aid here. What’s happening with both of these scenarios, so if I’m coming over the top steep or I’m falling back to the right, in both cases I’m going to have to kind of flip the club.

If I’m coming in steep in my very over the top swing, I’m going to stand up and flip the club so that I kind of shallow out that swing, and don’t slam the club into the ground. If I’m falling back to the right, I’m going to have to flip the club just to be able to reach the ball.

So this training aid’s going to help with both of those. This is called the Impact Snap. You don’t have to have this training aid, but man, it makes it a lot easier to learn this type of motion.

We’re going to grab this with our hands, our thumbs kind of working down the top of the grip just like you would with a normal club. You’ll see that the pad, the meaty part of my hand here is at the bottom of this grip on top of it.

Just like I would a normal club, even though it’s a square grip, the same idea here. Now as I go to the top, I’m going to go ahead and let this club start to set, increasing that set as I’m coming down.

You’ll notice there’s a yellow ball on the other end of this. As I come through impact, or as I come into my right thigh, notice how my left hand still has a good angle in it.

Notice how my hand is starting to turn down this way. So if I have a cupped wrist, if I’m looking like this, I’m wide open with the face. I’m not going to be able to square that face up.

What we have to do is we have to turn that wrist down, and then as we release that club this ball on this Impact Snap trainer, is going to hit right into the back of my forearm. You see right there on the back of my forearm, that should smack into that.

Again, let’s go over this. I’m going to come down increasing my wrist set. As I’m coming in to contact and into the release, not until I get in front is that ball going to hit my hand. So if I do this back here, I’m rolling the club too early.

I want to have forward shaft lean, then it’s going to hit the back of my forearm as I’m at my straight-line release. If you remember the Top Speed Golf System, you know that’s one of the five keys. We’ve got to get this club releasing out in front at about a 45° angle in front of that golf ball.

I’m going to really feel like that pairs up with when this yellow ball hits the back of my forearm. So here I have a lot of lag, this is well off my forearm. Big sharp angle of the wrist, as I’m coming through it’s hitting up there.

You’ll notice my hips have to keep on moving. If I stop my hips, if I’m falling back and I stop my hips I’m really going to have a hard time getting up there. I need to keep my hips rotating through the shot so that I can let that happen at the right time.

So my hips, my shoulders, my forearms, everything’s coming to that straight line release 45° out in front. So a great training aid with this.

Now if we take this exact same motion, and we take that over to an iron, now we’re going to have a lot of lag coming in from a good angle of lag, and then releasing that out in front.

That’s going to keep us from falling back, where naturally if we have a lot of this lag, we’re going to want to come forward, get our weight to the left and release out in front.

If we’re coming in steep, notice how this makes us shallow out the club. If I’m looking from this angle, I’m going to go ahead and have this club shallowing out, my left wrist is nice and flat.

Then I’m coming in from here and releasing it. That would look something like this if I grab my club and swing this way. I’m shallowing out that club the releasing it out in front.

So that’s the technique side of it. Really work on getting that club shallow, lots of forward shaft lean, and then keeping the hips moving to get everything coming down and through on the front of the ball.

When I get the result from this, I’m going to have my club coming down and I’m going to visualize like my club is hitting the ground pinching the turf at the same time that I’m hitting the ground. That’s what I’m going to feel.

If I hit a perfect shot, I’m going to have a nice thin, long divot just square with my target. That’s the technique side, but what are some mental tricks.

Let’s say that we’re doing the technique, we understand it, but our mind just isn’t being able to picture it correctly. Well I’ve got a couple of pretty cool devices.

You can use a score card, or just a piece of paper. All I want you to do is to place this piece of paper, depending on how long the grass is, if the grass is fairly short just about two or three inches behind your golf ball.

Now I should be able to come down, give myself a little bit more room there, that way I can clear that paper and still come down and make contact. I should be able to clear that piece of paper and still make contact with the ball.

It’s about a club head width, maybe a little bit more than that. Now I’m going to first move my golf ball out of the way, and I’m just going to brush the grass in front of this piece of paper.

With that feedback there, I get the feeling that if I start to flip, I’m going to hit that right away. Naturally, I’m going to keep my hips moving, I’m going to keep my wrist angled forward just so I won’t hit that piece of paper.

I’ll do this a good four or five times, and you can see I started my divot up here, but I didn’t hit the paper at all. Nice you’re comfortable with that, again you can use a score card, whatever you want to use. I’m going to put my golf ball there and again, around four inches, somewhere around in there.

If the grass is stall and that paper’s sitting up off the ground quite a bit, you’re going to have to scoot it back a little bit more. If the grass is really thin, like you’re hitting off a putting green, for example, you could have it a little closer to the ball.

You just find the zone to where you feel like gives you plenty of room to swing over the top of the paper, it’s more of a visual aid, a visual cue to naturally get you more to the left. I’m going to go ahead and hit this golf ball without clipping the paper.

There we go, so we saw the paper moved a little bit, just because my club, the wind from my club. But if I hit the paper, it’s going to look a lot different. This time I’m going to flip and I’m going to hit that paper first and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.

There we go. So the paper shoots up, immediate feedback, you’re not going to want that to happen. You end up with kind of a crumpled-up mess here. That’s the first drill. Very easy, you’d be surprised.

You put a piece of paper down there, put a score card down there, and automatically you’re going to start swinging farther in front without even really having to think about the technique too much.

Now next one is a great training device, really simple, and this is great for winter practice too. It’s called the flat ball, and all it is is a piece of plastic, it’s very durable. Same shape as a golf ball, it’s just flat.

What I can do is I can put this on my little practice mat at home. Even if you have one of those little two-foot by one-foot practice mats, one thing that I recommend doing if you’re going to practice indoors in the winter, is always have some kind of target, something on the ground that’s going to give you some feedback.

I don’t ever want to make dry swings into the air over and over and over again, because I can really do some weird things with my swing and I won’t get the feedback of making contact with the ball.

So here, I’m going to put that ball on the ground. If I swing over top of the ball, then it’s either going to pop up or kind of squirt off like that to the right.

So I don’t want that to happen, that means that I basically swung down and I hit on top, my club and my ball met at the same time in the front of it, and it just flips like that.

If I hit behind the ball, if I chunk it then my club is going to tend t bounce right over that, especially with a mat, because the mat tends to have the club bounce a little bit. Then I’m going to kind of hit that mat behind it and bounce right over this flat ball.

If I do this correctly, I’m gong to clip the ground and the ball at the same time. You can hear it had a nice like swooshing sound, it’s going to take off.

It’s not very dangerous, it doesn’t take off all that fast or hard, so you can put just anything to stop it right in front of you, and you’re going to be able to practice that ground contact time and time again, even if you’re in your living room.

That way when you go back out to the course, you’ve really ingrained the perfect time of hitting the ground.

So if we put these keys together, keep those hips moving, get that forward shaft lean, and then give those visual cues to help you improve faster, you’re going to make some great contact.

All right guys, best of luck. See you all soon.