Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn how to hit from a downhill lie.

Downhill lies can be incredibly frustrating...

Come in at a bad angle and top it 10 feet in front of you.

Another common mishit is not adjusting for the downhill angle and drilling the shot into the ground.

Don't let these tricky downhill lies ruin your round!

In this video, you'll learn how to make pure contact with the ball...

And get the direction and distance you need.

Here are some crucial tips for hitting from a downhill lie...

• Widen your stance for added stability,
• Match your shoulders to the slope of the hill,
• Line up with the ball more towards the middle of your stance,
• Club up a bit to increase your loft.

One more thing...

Be cautious hitting longer clubs like your 3 iron because the lower loft...

...combined with the down slope...

...may cause the ball to jam into the ground and ruin your distance.

Watch this video now to avoid costly mishits from a downhill lie...

And start crushing your shots from this tricky lie!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 3:48

Video Transcription:

Downhill shots, extremely frustrating. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people kind of just bury the ball into the ground, it kind of skids around, doesn’t go hardly anywhere.

This is a pretty easy shot once we get comfortable with it. I’m going to go over everything you need to know from the ground up to be able to make these with clean contact, and get them back in the middle of the fairway or on the green.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so the main thing we’re trying to combat here is we have this slope leaning forward like this. If we could imagine this is our normal amount of loft, let’s say that’s the loft that’s on the club.

As I start to tilt forward with the slope you can see how it’s taking loft off my swing. I’m also going to be swinging down into the ball a little bit more on a steeper angle, that’s going to make the ball launch a lot lower.

So we want to keep that in mind, that’s one of the main things we’re going combat here. Then we’re also trying to make sure that we keep our balance. Our tendency is going to be to get this weight going forward, we could swing over the top of the ball, and that’s where the top’s coming in.

Let me go ahead and get started from the ground up. The very first thing we want to do here, is I want to take a little bit of a wider stance. A lot of times when you’re leaning on this hill, I’m going to start to match this hill, and now I’m going to lose my balance if I have kind of a narrow stance.

So get a nice wide stance. Now normally, I would be swinging level with the ground, this would be my normal kind of shoulder tilt.

As I get on this downhill slope, I’m going to my match my shoulders to this slope, and what that’s going to do is that’s going to put a lot more weight toward my front foot.

That’s completely fine, your weight is probably going to be 75, I mean depending on the angle of the slope, probably 75 percent on the front foot and then it’s going to stay on the front foot pretty much the entire time.

We’re starting with our stance a little wider, weight a little bit more on the left. I’m going to get some nice knee bend, just to feel a little bit more athletic, so I’m a little bit more balanced, I’m not going to fall off our position. Then we’re matching our shoulders with the angle of the slope.

Now as I do this, that’s taking a lot of loft off this club. It’s going to make that ball come out really pretty dag-gone low as we’re doing that. If I would normally be a 7 iron out, I’m going to take an 8 iron and try to…it depends on how much green you have to work with.

If you can take a little bit of a less-lofted club, swing a little bit harder and get it to launch lower, that’s going to be a better idea. If you start getting down into those 3, 4, 5 irons, you may have to realize that you’re just not going to get to the green.

If I would normally hit a 3 iron off of this, and I’ve got this really low slope. If I hit a 3 iron, even if I contact it well, it’s going to come out shooting really low across the ground, and it’s going to be tough to do anything with it.

I may have to hit a 5 iron, a 6 iron, and just lay up 20 or 30 yards short of the green. That’s just how it’s going to play out. If we start trying to force it, that’s when we get those ones that dribble 10 or 15 feet, and then we’re really in trouble, or maybe we hit them into more trouble.

Don’t try to get too much with this. The last thing here, is I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to play the ball slightly, just slightly in the middle of my stance.

Normally I’d play the ball a little bit more up in my stance, the tendency with these ones below your feet is that you’re going to hit a little bit behind the ball, because this is so much higher than it normally would be.

I’m going to play this a little bit more in the middle of my stance, so that now I can come down and hit the ball first. If I put these things together, wider stance, weight on the left, match my shoulders to the slope, take a little bit higher-lofted club, or you can use the same club as long as it has enough loft to get up off the ground.

Then from there, I’m going to play it in the middle of my stance. I’m going to realize that this is going to come out low and hot, so I’m going to try to roll this ball on the green. I’m going to try and aim in an area that even if it keeps on rolling out, I’m not going to get into trouble.

Let’s go ahead and give it a whirl. All right guys, practice those tips. Turn over about 30 or 40 balls, and just work on this for 20 or 30 minutes. You’re going to get comfortable with it, these shots are going to be easy.