Why You Need This: How would you like to learn "How to Hit Your Irons like a Hammer"?

Do you want to start getting an extra 10-15 yards out of each of your irons?

Sound good?

There is a secret to getting more distance AND consistency out of your irons.

I used to watch golf on TV and see the pros hitting shots into greens with clubs that I wouldn't dream of hitting from those distances.

I just thought it was because they're bigger and stronger.....and just better.

There's no doubt that they are elite golfers, but today I'm going to show you the big reason that they get so much more distance out of their irons.

So let me start you on the path to longer irons and more consistent play.

Let's get started.....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 17:42

Video Transcription:

All right, we’d all love to hammer those irons, really compress those. Hit those nice shots out of the fairway, and hit the ball first every single time.

It makes the game a lot more fun and a lot easier when we’re putting on the green rather than constantly having to get up and down.

I’ve got some really good tricks to help you to really feel that compression of the golf ball, to really get that shaft leaning forward.

I’m going to walk you through a couple tricks that I’ve learned over the years that make it much more simple to get the shaft leaning forward and really compressing that golf ball, to get your body in the correct positions, and I’m going to step-by-step walk you through in exactly what to do.

Then we’re going to do an awesome drill that helps you to make that ball-first contact with the divot in front of the golf ball so you can really compress it.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so let’s jump right into this. What I don’t want you to do is just watch this video, think the idea sounds pretty cool, then go to the course and try it out right on the golf course.

Jump up right now, grab a golf club, anything you have laying around your house. If you’re at work right now, wherever you’re at, grab a golf club, follow right along with me.

Now if you’re out at the driving range or at the course, perfect. This is a perfect place to do it. You could do the first half of this video, though, right from the comfort of your living room.

Let’s talk about where the compression of this golf ball comes from, and how to really feel like it’s that shot where it’s just kind of smashed where the ball just sinks into the club face.

Feels like it’s trapped against the club face for four, or five, or six inches as your club faces releases, and then it just shoots off there 15-20 yards longer than what seems like normal. How do you get that feeling?

Now that comes from a couple of places. Number one, it comes from making sure that you have good swing speed.

I really want to make sure that I finish my backswing, and I always come to a good, full finish on my follow through, that way I can really keep the acceleration coming through that ball.

The second piece comes from let’s go ahead and compress that golf ball by delofting the club.

Now on the PGA Tour, the pros, the best players in the world, have realized it’s the easiest way to hit a golf ball. They’re taking about 30 percent of the natural loft of the club off the face at contact.

What means is, if I have let’s say a 6 iron has 31°, this is a 5 iron, this has probably got around 27°, 28°, somewhere around there, 26°, depending on the model. They’re all a little bit different.

If I have, let’s keep the math easy though, let’s say this club as 30° of loft on it. When I come into contact, I’m taking 10° of loft off that club face.

The way you’re going to do this is have the hands leading in front, and then also feeling like the toe of the club is kind of closing down.

If I’m playing a big cut, if I’m kind of opening the face up, flipping it, and that ball’s kind of floating off to the right, there’s no way to really compress it like the pros are doing.

So I have to have the hands leading forward, and I have to hit a pretty straight, square shot. I can’t be having that ball fade significantly to the right. We’re going to go over that, exactly what to do in this video for that.

But the easy cheat for that is take your iron, put the toe of the club right against the golf ball like this at address. Then take your normal grip.

Now what you’ll notice is, because the shaft is now set up way behind the golf ball, as you just take your normal grip and set up to this golf ball, look how it’s got your hands leaning slightly in front here at address.

Now as you come forward into the swing, what I want you to feel like you’re doing is let your hips open up, and let your shoulders open up a little bit, and let your left arm stay nice and tight to your chest.

You may even notice the right heel, your right foot, starts to come off the ground a little bit.

Now if my body’s in this position, almost like I was going to open up and toss a golf ball toward the target, I wouldn’t toss a golf ball this way, I would open up and toss it toward the target that way.

That’s in a great body position to let my hands lead the way and to take that loft off the club just like the pros are doing.

Now not only are they doing that for long irons, they’re doing that for shorter irons too. I have a 5 iron here today, we have an almost 200-yard shot.

You can do that with a pitching wedge. You can do that with a sand wedge. On full-swing sand wedge shots where the loft is about 56° on a sand wedge.

They’re taking a lot of loft off that thing. They’re taking it down and having high 30s, low 40s degrees of loft at contact.

So all the way through the bag, taking about 30 percent of the natural loft of the club off at contact.

Now the second reason that’s going to help, is that when my hands lead the way, I’m much more consistent.

If I feel like my hands are in front of the golf ball, the club head is going to trail back behind and it’s going to be very easy to contact that ground in a much more consistent manner which we’re going to get to later on in this video.

That’s in a nutshell why we need to be doing this, let’s go ahead and jump into it now.

I want you to take five practice swings and we’re going to do these without the golf ball. Five practice swings, and I want to focus on the hips being open.

So again, I’m putting the toe of my club forward to what would feel like I’m going to hit it with the toe, or I can imagine this is where the term of the title came from, this is a hammer.

I’m going to hammer a nail straight into the back of my golf ball like this.

So I’m going to make five practice swings feeling like my hips get open at contact and my body leads the way.

So go ahead and do five and really feel like you brush the carpet, or the turf, the ground, whenever you’re doing this on your practice swings.

So I’m really letting my body lead the way, again my left arm is nice and tight against your chest. Really connected there, and my hands are in front of the golf ball as I come into contact.

If you look at this slow motion drill here, the slow motion video, you can really see those hands leading the way as you’re coming into contact.

You’re just going to feel like, what I love about this drill, is if you imagine the tip of this club being the hammer, it’s a very powerful feeling driving that nail down and through the golf ball.

Do about 5 reps, 10 reps, however many it takes you to get comfortable with that, focusing on the hips.

Now as we go a little bit more advanced with this, let’s work on the tip of the club or the toe of the club and think about what that should be feeling like.

Again, if this is a hammer, if I lean this club forward, let’s imagine we’re looking at it from this way. If I lean that club forward, you see how the toe of the club is kind of down into the ground.

So if this is the hammer and I was driving that nail, I would want that nail to kind of be angled this way, kind of down through the golf ball.

A lot of times what I’ll see players do when they flip and add loft, which makes it really difficult to compress the golf ball, they’re kind of flipping here and they’re kind of coming level through the ground, or almost hitting up into the golf ball.

I want to visualize in my mind’s eye that nail is going down into the golf ball, driving through the turf, deep down into the ground.

That way as I’m coming through here, I really feel like I’m compressing or smooshing the ball down into the ground, even though that’s not what’s happening.

The loft of my club is getting the ball up in the air, I want to feel like I’m trapping this golf ball between the club face and the turf, and I’m really pinching it, almost like the ball’s made out of rubber and I’m just kind of smooshing it down into the ground to really compress it.

Again, not what’s really happening, but that’s the sensation or the feeling that you’re going to have.

So five more reps, getting that same type of feeling, really compressing the golf ball. Hands are leaning forward, turn that toe in, drive that hammer down, or that nail down into the ground.

Now last piece here, and where I see a lot of players get this idea, they say yeah, I thought about getting that forward shaft lean before. I thought about really trying to compress the golf ball.

But the problem is, when I do that, the ball shoots way off to the right. So whenever I make this swing, and I feel like my hands get forward, now all of a sudden the face is way open like that. You see how my club face is way up there.

Well the reason is, as I get my hands forward, that’s automatically going to open up this face. Most likely, if you’re flipping the club that’s to square up the face.

If I get my hands forward, now what I have to do is roll my hands to square that face back up. It looks just like this.

If I put my hands forward, face turns wide open. Now without changing anything, I’m going to leave the shaft exactly where it is, my hands exactly where they are.

I’m going to rotate my hands this way to square up that club face there. Same thing if I have the tip of the hammer here.

If I go ahead and just lean the hands forward, now all of a sudden that hammer is going way out there somewhere. I have to roll my hands so the tip of that club is facing squarely to the target and I’m driving that nail toward the target, down into the ground.

So that’s the last key there. I want you to do five reps where you do this for me. Toe of the club toward what would be the golf ball.

I come kind of halfway down in my swing, and then I’m going to rotate that toe down to the ground, roll my wrist to square it up, and then I’m going to come back to impact and see that that’s square.

Then I’m going to come back to address and I’m going to swing one, again, hammering that nail.

That’s going to help me to drive that ball inside out, hit a nice draw when I really compress this rather than just kind of opening up and having it fade out to the right.

So let’s go ahead and hit one now, and if you’re out on the range, you would hit a few shots with this.

You’re doing five practice swings, five practice swings, five practice swings, to get the feeling on all three of the areas we talked about. Then we’re going to hit five shots.

Let’s go ahead and try that out, see if we can hit a nice, compressed little draw here. There we go, and that was perfectly hit. That’s dead straight, just a few feet right of the flag.

I actually flew over the green there, hit it a little bit too solid. Have to club down a little bit, but that’s a good problem to have.

I can hit it too solid and carry the green from 190, hey, that’s a good problem to have.

All right, so I took a look at my FlightScope, I saw I carried that one 205, a little bit more solid than I was expecting, about 195 yards from the flag, so I’m going to club down to a 6 here, and again, you start compressing those balls, those golf shots, you’ll easily pick up a club more distance.

Now in the first half of these drills, what we just covered there, getting the body open, getting the hands leading the way, squaring up the face, all those were in effort to really compress the golf ball and to get the characteristics of how my club is coming through contact to be correct.

Now from here, I want to control where is my low point. The real key now to make sure that I’m hitting it crisp every single time, is I have to come down, I have to contact this golf ball first and then I’ve got to hit the ground second.

Now if you’re not used to hitting the ground, or you’re used to flipping a little bit, this can be a little bit scary.

Because if you start to try to hit the ground, sometimes you may hit a few chunks and automatically say I don’t want to do that anymore, let me go back to flipping, what I know how to do, and start hitting it fairly consistent.

Well, this is a great drill that’s going to help you to eliminate those chunks, still compress the golf ball like we talked about, and it just makes it a lot easier to do.

So the first drill here, is going to be a tee drill. Now this one you’ll want to do outside, and you want to do it on some fairly short grass.

I’m going to set this tee up somewhere between a quarter inch and a half inch off the ground. I’m just going to tee it up like I would a golf ball, take the golf ball off, and now you can see this tee is barely sticking out of the turf.

Now my goal here, is to still come down and clip this tee and I want to brush a little bit of turf after this tee, but I don’t want to hit it down into the ground so hard that I see some dirt fly up.

I’m just looking at brushing the turf. So now I’ve given myself this small margin for error to make sure that I’m hitting in the right spot. Now what you’ll be surprised on, most players don’t have a consistency problem.

I’ve said this time and time again when I have players come in for in-person lessons. They don’t have a consistency problem, they have the wrong idea or the wrong habit when they’re doing this.

So I’ll see a player come in that’s not playing very well, that will hit ball after ball after ball, thin, thin, thin. He’ll hit it thin every single shot for weeks at a time and it’s not a consistency problem, it’s just too thin. They’re not getting down to the turf enough.

I want you to go ahead and try to work on this which is going to be finding that little sweet spot between hitting too heavy and hitting too thin. This is a great way to do this.

So let’s go ahead and do 10 reps, where again, I want you to feel like that same idea. That hammering that tee down into the ground, we’re just not going to hammer it quite as hard this time so that we’re just brushing the turf.

Same idea, just not quite to the extreme. So 10 reps, there we go, and that time was perfect. I clipped that tee, I saw a little bit of grass pop up, but I didn’t really have a lot of dirt or a big divot.

Let me go ahead and repeat that again. Again, I’ve got that tee really sitting just about a quarter inch off the ground. I’ll try to do the same thing. Hands leading, there we go.

I clipped that one right off the turf, the tee just took off, but I didn’t take a big divot there.

Now the next piece I like to use, the next tool, is this Dr. Scholl’s Odor X foot spray powder. This is the one that comes in a yellow can, make sure it says Odor X on there.

The reason I use this one is because it has a real white film, and when you spray it on the ground you can see it really, really easily.

So let me go ahead and draw a line on the ground on the turf here. I want to try to get it lined up fairly well with the target. Maybe a little bit off there, but close enough. I think you’ll be able to see that really easily on the ground.

Now I’m going to go ahead and do the exact same thing that I did there, but now we’re going to hit a little bit more of a divot.

We’ve gotten control of the height of our divot, so now we need to make sure that every time we come down we hit this golf ball, the divot is in front.

We’re going to go ahead and hit a little bit more of a divot now that we’re used to being consistent with the turf, and kind of coming in level with the ground.

Let’s go ahead and go back to that feeling again of hammering the golf ball. Now we’re going to do it just like the pros do.

We’re going to take a little bit more turf, we’re going to swing a little bit harder, and we’re going to try to make sure every single divot is in front of this white line.

Let’s go ahead and try it out. Again, same keys I did with my full swings from the beginning. Hips opening and leading the way. Hands in front, and I’m squaring up that club face to make sure that I hit that nice draw.

Not sure if I can get my 6 iron there, but we’ll give it a whirl. All right. So hit it a little bit high on the face, I was just barely short.

So not quite as good as my last one, but I did pretty well there where I took that divot in front. Let’s try one more, exact same thing again. I’d like for you to repeat this 5 or 10 times.

So again, getting that compression on the golf ball, making sure my divot is in front and I should be able to go all the way down this line and one after another, never see any dirt or any divot behind that white line.

Little bit more solid on that one, not sure if I’m going to have quite enough stick to get all the way back there, maybe I should stick with that 5.

Yep, that’s on the front-center of the green there. Again, came down and hit that golf ball. Divot was in front.

Let’s try one now where I take away the tee all together, this is going to be the hardest or most advanced way of doing this drill.

So the easiest way to get started, clip the tee. Get a little bit more advanced, draw the line, have the divot in front.

Most advanced would be no tee, ball right on the turf, we’re still going to try to have that divot in front of this line every single time.

There we go, hit that one pretty good. See if I can get it all the way back there. All right, that one almost got to the flag that time, and we’ll see again, my divot is in front of the turf.

One thing you may notice is I’m not worried about when I’m hitting these divots, if this divot is barely in front of this white line, or if I’m coming in and it’s three or four inches in front of this white line.

If I’m coming in fairly shallow, that’s completely fine. Your divot doesn’t have to start right where this line is. It’s going to be really tough to get that consistent.

You can, if you want to, make it start at the same spot every time, that’s fine, but I just want it to be on this side. That’s all I’m really worried about.

Some of my most flush golf shots, because I’m coming in fairly shallow here with the turf, I may not really start to get down to the dirt until a couple inches in front of this line. Those are in my best shots.

I don’t want to necessarily be focused just on getting that right here on the line, I don’t think that’s going to give you the best results.

Follow those drills, you’re going to be compressing your irons and hitting them just like a hammer.

Now if you’re a member of the website, let’s make things even easier than this.

We got started here today talking about how to get those hips open, get the body leading the way, and that’s going to help to get the forward shaft lean and release that club out in front.

You probably recognize that from the same instruction we’re doing with the Straight Line Release. We’ve got to get that body open, we’ve got to get our club leaning forward, and as we release the club, or when it first splits the forearms, it’s 45° here in front.

Now if I can make that happen, and let that club release out there every time, the golf ball just gets in the way, it becomes way easier to make contact.

These line drills, these tee drills, these divots in front, all those get way easier when we’re doing the Straight-Line Release.

Now the only way to really engrain the Straight-Line Release is not from one video. These videos are great to get you started. They’re great to get you hitting the ball better immediately.

But if I really want to engrain it to where I don’t have to think about it at all, I need to work through the system.

Work through Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, as those drills build on each other, you’re going to do the Straight-Line Release every time.

Even if you try not to, you won’t hardly be able to cast, or flip, or do anything that you don’t want to do. But that only happens through working through the system, and engraining that making a habit.

So best of luck, go to Straight-Line Release, start from Level 1, work through those drills, and I’ll see you there.

Let’s go ahead and get started.