Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "How to Hit The Ball Then The Turf | Complete Guide"

Professor Q is here with an excellent video for anyone who suffers from chunks.

He’ll go over the root cause of your fat shots…

…and the best drills to not only start making ball-then-turf contact…

…he’ll also show you the “step drill,” which will improve multiple things in your golf swing, including increased distance and ball compression!

You’ll want to save this video to your favorites and revisit it whenever you start chunking shots!

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 13:13

Video Transcription:

Q: If you struggle with chunk shots, then you are in the right place. I'm going to go over all the things that I see golfers do to prevent them from making ball, then turf contact. I'm going to go through a drill for each one of them. So this can be one of the last videos you'll ever need to start helping you hit solid golf shots.

So first Let's talk about what you need to do in order to make ball first contact. What we have to understand is a concept of low point, and what that means is the club works down on an arc. It reaches a bottom of the arc and then works back up. The bottom of that arc is what's referred to as the low point.

That low point needs to be in front of the ball toward the target, a few inches, three to four inches, somewhere in that range. When they measured the pros, that's what they found. It's three to four inches of low point. Uh, and then it needs to be slightly below the ball. Right? And what that's going to allow us to do, is that's going to allow us to come down, hit ball and turf at the same time.

Or ball, then turf. Right? And then, we're going to start our divot there. The middle of that divot is going to be the low point of the swing. And then it's going to come up out of that ground. Right? So, What happens when I see golfer, golfer struggle with this? Well, first, and I know this may seem trivial, is ball position.

What I see golfers do is I see them put the ball position too far forward. Right? And this is especially true when they're hitting fairway woods, long irons, hybrids, that sort of thing. And you can imagine, if this is the middle of my stance, this alignment stick, If I'm putting my ball here, how difficult it would be to get the bottom of my swing over here.

I'd really have to kind of slide my hips way far forward. That makes it very, very difficult to make ball first contact. You're going to tend to hit the ground before the ball. Because your club is going to bottom out here. And if you're hitting up on the ball when it's on the ground, you're going to chunk it, you're going to thin it, you're going to top it because the ground is in the way.

So what we need to do is we need to have that ball position either in the middle or just forward of the middle of the stance. So if this alignment stick represents the middle of my stance, I want to have this go through the back of the ball. Right? If this is extending out. So this is a very easy thing you can train at the driving range.

Put the alignment stick down through the middle of your stance and you want to have that ball right just forward of that stick or kind of where the sticks going through it. If you're still struggling with chunk shots, then it might be beneficial for you to have it more in the middle of your stance. So that's really going to help that in and of itself is really going to help with the solid contact.

The next piece I want you to look at is your hips. All right, and you can look at this on video. What I want you to look at is if your hips are swaying too much, generally, when you look at the best golfers in the world, if you were to draw a line on the outside of their hip, what you would see is as they get up to the top of the swing, you would see a little bit of a space being created between their hip and that line.

What I see golfers do that struggle with chunk shots, oftentimes what I'll see is the hip will be on the other side of that line at the top of the swing. Now at the beginning of the swing, I actually like to see golfers go into that line. That's to shift pressure into that trail foot. But as soon as we get pressure in that trail foot, I want you to push that hip back and around to allow you to much more easily be able to get to your lead side.

If you're over here, it's going to make it very difficult for two reasons. One, it's just a long way to go. So if I'm way over here. It's a long way for me to go to get over here. The other reason is because of leverage. If my leg is like this, angled this way, it's hard for me to get leverage to go in that direction.

If my leg is angled in more, it's much more easy for me to create leverage to be able to get to my lead side. So I have a great drill for you. This is the chair drill. One of my favorite drills for chunk shots. This is just a folding chair that I have handy. You probably have some sort of chair at home that you can use for this.

This probably isn't the best chair. I'd like to have a chair that makes contact around in this area. So those high back, dining room chairs that kind of lean back a little bit. Those are probably the best chairs for this, but didn't bring one with me today. This is just what we had around the office. So what you do is you set up with this chair and what you want to do, what you want to make sure of is that this chair is making contact with your hip at address, right?

You don't want it to be when I see a lot of people do this drill, they'll set up with it like this and that just enables you to kind of slide your hips a little bit. So you want to make sure that you're setting up with contact with it and make sure that you're setting up and then you're kind of pulling the chair up to you.

All right. And what we're going to do is we're going to start out with some swings where we just pause at the top. So nice and slow to the top. Then we're going to pause at the top to make sure that we're in a good spot. So again, I want to make sure, okay, is the chair touching me? I also, if you, when you set this up from the down the line, you don't want to have it like this, right?

If I have it like this, it may get in the way of my downswing and I may tend to come over the top to try to compensate for that. So, or try to avoid hitting the chair. So make sure it's kind of behind you a little bit. So you can see how I have it kind of behind me, but it's still able to make contact with, with my backside here.

So what we're going to do is we're going to start out and we're actually going to nudge the chair a little bit. Like I mentioned before, I want to go into that line a little bit. So nudging the chair just a little bit. Right in the beginning of the backswing puts pressure into your trail foot. Now you're going to be loading up nice and powerfully.

Alright, so I'm going to nudge that chair. I'm going to start my swing going back. As I get up to the top, I want to create a little bit of a space between my hip and my chair. In fact, I want to have about a hand thickness between my hip and that chair. So I'm going to go nice and slow. I'm going to make sure I'm in a good spot.

And then I'm going to start my downswing from there. and come around and do a full finish. Once I get comfortable with that, I'm going to start doing some really slow, fluid ones. Alright, so nice and slow and fluid. I'm getting my body forward. I'm making a nice smooth motion. I'm able to much more easily make contact with the ground where the ball is.

Alright, then you work up to with the ball. So that's a quick drill that you can do if you happen to have some hip sway in your swing. Alright. The next drill Let's say that your ball position is great. Let's say that your hips aren't swaying. But, when you get up to the top of the swing, you're at this position, and then you just start your downswing from your back foot, and you kind of end up like this.

Right? See it all the time. If you are in that kind of situation, then I recommend doing the step drill. So what we do for the step drill is we start out with our feet together. Right? And I'm going to point this club in front. This is no golf ball. I'm going to point this club in front. I'm going to throw it back as I throw it back.

I'm going to start stepping forward and I want to step to where my normal stance would be. Right? So this is my normal stance. I want to step to right here. I don't want you stepping way over here or stepping short step. Do your best to step where your normal stance would be. All right. So I'm pointing the club in front.

I'm going to push into the ground with my trail foot, I'm going to throw this club back, as I throw it back, I'm going to step forward, and then when I land, I'm going to start the downswing, and I'm going to have my momentum moving forward. Now, I want to do my best to kind of brush the turf very lightly here, right?

So, I'll just show you, it's going to go like this. Alright, didn't do a good job of brushing the turf there. There we go, got a nice brush of the turf there. And you can see how I'm coming all the way around to a full finish. Almost all of my weight is on my lead foot when I finish. I'm up on my tippy toes here.

And I, I almost want to feel like I can tap my toes when I'm in my finish on my, on my trail foot. That's telling you that you're getting your momentum, everything moving to the lead side. A good side note to this is that this is probably going to help you be more powerful as well. A lot of times when I have people do this drill, They gain club head speed and they hit the ball farther because they're getting their body more forward.

They're getting their hands more forward. They're compressing the ball a lot more. So this is a great all around drill for a lot of things in the golf swing. Once we get comfortable with that, now I want you to go to your normal stance, but I want you to replicate that same thing. Now, if you're having trouble replicating it, go back to the step drill.

Do more of the step drill. Make that more second nature, but if you feel like you got it now, let's go to normal stance and I want you to replicate that same feeling, right? So I'm gonna shift into my trail side. As I'm getting up to the top, imagining I'm stepping forward, my momentum is going forward and now I'm getting, I'm feeling like I'm landing into my lead side to start the downswing and I'm coming all the way around to a full finish.

So that looks something like this. All right. And when I come through again, I want to feel like all my weight is right here and I can tap my toe right there. That's what I want to feel like all the way up on my toes. We don't want to finish on like this. This isn't on your toes. I want you like this. This is on your toes coming all the way around.

Once you get to where you can do that in a practice swing. Now let's add the golf ball and do it with the golf ball. All right. So those are three major things. Those three things are going to help. the overwhelming majority of you, but some of you may still be chunking the ball for other reasons. So one might be over shallowing out the club.

Yes, you heard that correctly. You might be shallowing out the club too much. We want you to shallow out the club. Shallow out the club is a great thing, but you can always overdo a great thing. So what happens is imagine, imagine I'm standing baseball field. I'm at home plate. I'm looking out here. I got first base over here.

Third base pitchers right in front of me, right? Imagine if I swung in the direction of first space, where is my club going to bottom out? It's going to bottom out more in front of my right foot behind the ball, right? So if I overshadow the club, right, that's going to get me bottoming out way too far before the ball.

So I want to neutralize that a little bit. So what we can do to neutralize it a little bit is we can set up a little obstacle. So I just found this in the office here. Not sure what this is from, but I'm sure you have a box. You got an impact bag, just something that you can put as a barrier that will not damage your club, such as this.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to put this ahead of my ball a little bit and to the right of my ball, right? And what that's going to do, you imagine if I swing too much from the inside, too shallow, I'm swinging way out to the right here, you can imagine how I'm going to hit, I'm going to hit this, right?

So this kind of forces me to kind of come over the top a little bit. Now, we don't want to end up coming over the top, but this is a great way to get you to stop shallowing it too much. We need to feel too much of a bad thing, right? So, I would actually try to pull the ball a little bit. it to the left. If you're a right handed golfer, try to pull it with this drill and that will help you to start making ground contact more in front.

Because again, if you imagine if I'm standing at home plate here, I'm looking out in front of me. If I swing toward third base, my club's going to bottom out more up here, right? So we're just kind of getting back to the other side. Now, once you start hitting some polls, now we can remove this out of the way.

All right, and we just try to ease off that a little bit to get the ball flight to be straighter. Because typically, if you're shallowing out the club too much, you're more than likely blocking it out to the right if you're not chunking it, right? You're more than likely blocking it out to the right. Or hitting a hook if the face is too close, right?

So this is going to help kind of neutralize your ball flight as well, as help you to make ball first contact. Now there's one more piece that can prevent you from making ball first contact, and that is the release. So if you imagine, if I'm coming down, and I just stop my hands and release the club, you can see I just dump the club right into the ground behind the ball.

But I can also come in, keep my hands moving, and not release it, right? You can imagine how I could actually hit the ground way up here. I can really change my low point with my release. Now, I will say, all the other things, I'd make sure that you're doing those correctly first. The release is one of the, kind of, the last things that I look at if you're struggling with making ball first contact.

Because it's really only a major issue if you have absolutely no shaft lean at contact or backward shaft lean. If you're in this kind of position coming into contact, your club's definitely botting him out before the ball, and that's something you're going to want to address. Now, a quick drill that you can do is the stick drill.

So you can take the stick, Put it down the shaft, half of it down the shaft, half of it down, um, at the end. And what you can do is you can just start out with some slow swings. where you're coming through. I would do it with no ball at first, right? And you can see how I have to get my hands in front.

Otherwise, this is going to smack me in the side. So that's a quick drill that you can do. Now, if you're struggling with anything, chunking the ball, struggling with your release, you're struggling with shallowing out the club, you're struggling with your wedges, dialing in those wedges. I work on a lot of different stuff with a lot of different students.

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Right? So play well and I'll talk to you next time.