Why You Need This: In this video, "How to Hit Irons for Beginners"...

You’ll learn how to hit really solid iron shots.

TSG Instructor Robin Rosado joins me in this video to show you…

• The proper grip,
• How to take a clean divot, and
• How to hit a nice draw with your irons.

You’ll improve your consistency, and you’ll start having more fun on the course.

The Grip

Your grip is important for hitting pure iron shots.

A common mistake is to grip the club with your palms.

Don’t do that.

What you want is to grip the club with your fingers (shown in the video).

Also, avoid gripping with a long thumb.

Gripping with a shorter thumb will help you set your wrists in the backswing…

And will help you release it fully through impact.

Swinging on Plane

In the video, you’ll learn a cool trick to help you keep your club on plane.

Swinging on plane is vital to your consistency, so you don’t want to miss this part.

Eliminating the Slice

Finally, you’ll get some tips to eliminate your slice.

Many golfers struggle with coming over the top and slice the ball left to right.

In the video, you’ll see an effective training aid called the Speed Trap.

The visual feedback is great…

And it’ll help shallow out your swing and hit from the inside.

Watch this video now to get a better grip, swing on plane, and eliminate your slice.

You’ll start hitting your irons pure in no time!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Robin Rosado    

Video Duration: 5:26

Video Transcription:

G045. How to Hit Irons for Beginners

Clay: Hi guys, welcome back. I’m Clay Ballard.

Robin: I’m Robin Rosado.

Clay: Today we’re going to talk about how to hit those really nice, solid iron shots. If you’re a beginning or intermediate player we’re going to talk about the proper grip, how to get that nice, clean divot, and to even get that draw out there so you can be really consistent and have a lot of fun while you’re playing golf.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

Robin: OK you guys, so let’s talk about the grip and how important the grip is, especially to hitting those nice pure irons we’re trying to get at. First of all, let’s talk about what we see a lot, with a lot of people with the grip.

First of all, what I see a lot of people doing is putting that grip into the palm. Moe into that palm, that grip is extended here. You can see here that Clay’s got the grip going all the way through his palm here.

Secondly what I see a lot, is a long, we call it the long thumb. That left thumb’s getting, now you have, what you create is a bit of separation, those hands. You want those hands working relational together, we want one unit for the grip.

With that long thumb he’s already separated it all. Now we’re going to do, is we’re going to get that grip more into those fingers. Going from the palm and get it into the fingers there, perfect.

Clay: I feel like instead of being like up my hand, more down on the fingers like this.

Robin: Got it. Exactly. Now also what we’re going to do is shorten up that thumb a little bit as well. With getting it more into the fingers, what it’s also going to do is help you set those wrists on them.

When you take it back, nice and easy there, when you come on your downswing, help you to release the club through and getting the straight-line release.

Secondly with that short thumb, what I’m doing it’s fitting into that right hand there, right into the part of your palm, the right hand there.

Clay: I’ll go a little closer so they can see. When we shorten up that thumb, that’s going to fit right underneath the bad of my right hand. Now everything’s really nice and snug.

Robin: Again, so also creating that relation that we have with both hands, is creating that one unit. Again, it helps you set those wrists nicely at impact to helping you to release the club nice and pure, to hit those nice, pure, solid iron shots right there.

Clay: For the next thing, we want to make sure that we’re swinging relatively on plane. If I go ahead and grab a golf ball here, and I grip up all the way down on the shaft of the club, as I make my backswing, imagine a laser beam just kind of shooing out of the grip into this club.

Imagine my target line, so a line going all the way to my target in the distance, coming right through the middle of my golf ball.

As I go back, I want that club pointing down to that line, tracing that line as I come through. I’d be contacting the ball with the club head. As I come all the way around, now there’s a laser beam shooting out of that, going back down to that line again.

Here, I’m staying nice and consistent all the way through the shot. I’m not changing that angle and hitting all over the place. If you’re really struggling with consistency, imagine that laser beam, trace that line back and through, and you’re going to hit it a lot straighter.

The final thing I want to talk about is hitting that slice. I know a lot of beginner to intermediate golfers really struggle with that slice.

We’re coming over the top, the club is moving right to left across the ball and you get that big slice that kind of moves from left to right.

We’ve got a great training aid for us, that’s going to help us here in a second. We’ve already talked about strengthening that grip. We’ve talked about getting the club on plane to help get rid of that slice.

Now go ahead and demonstrate one of the over the top ones, let’s go ahead and do one really bad here, hit that big slice. We’re going to look at it on FlightScope, then we’re going to talk about the training aid that’s going to fix this.

There we go, so he definitely swung to the left there. That ball kind of cut off to the right a little bit. Let’s see what the path is.

I’ve got my FlightScope here that’s going to read what direction his club was swinging and the face was going. On that one he was 4.9 to the left, meaning his club was moving too far to the left through contact.

His face was 6° to the right compared to that, so that’s basically an over the top slice move. Now one of the best training aids I’ve seen with this, is what we call the speed trap.

This is a pretty cool training aid, because it’s going to help to shallow you out. We set this up on the ground, and I’m going to line this up to our target really quick. That’s lined up to my target.

I’m going to set this ball on this third black stripe, so when you get this out and you look down, there’s a third stripe, and we’re going to set that ball right on it.

Now in order to come more from the inside, we’ve got this gate here. We set up these two foam pieces. If we hit, they just fall right off. But he’s going to think about coming more from the inside there.

He’s going to miss this plastic piece. He’s going to hit a little bit more inside out, get that more draw-type pattern, and with this visual feedback, now it’s just a lot easier to do.

Let’s go ahead and try, give it a whirl, let’s see if w can get that going a little bit more out to the right, and hit that nice draw.

There we go, awesome. That one turned over from right to left, hit that one nice and solid. If we look at these FlightScope numbers here, remember the last one 4.9 to the left.

This one on the club path it will pop up here any second, 11.4 to the right. So really exaggerated, this big gate here got him feeling like he’s swinging more out to the right. Came in nice and shallow instead of chopping down on it, so he hit it a little bit farther there also.

What was the sensation you got, like when this gate is there? What’s it make you feel like you’re going to do?

Robin: It really made me feel like I had to really come from the end, and really just swinging out on it. I had no chance of trying to come over steep over the top on the ball, so I was going to hit this.

Clay: You feel like you’re going to wipe these things right out.

Robin: Yeah, it makes you go an out ball.

Clay: I found that too, working on something like this with students, giving the visual feedback they can pick it up right away, and it’s a lot easier to get those changes.

Best of luck to you guys, go over those changes, get that nice draw out there, and you’re going to be playing the most consistent golf you’ve played so far. Best of luck.