Why You Need This: In today's video I'm going to give you the number 1 drill for hitting solid irons.

Have you ever wondered why it sounds different when you hit an iron compared to some others?

Have you ever thought, "Why can this guy get more distance out of his irons than me?"

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Why can't I get that explosive feeling from my irons all the time?"

If any of these thoughts have ever crossed your mind on the golf course before, then today's video is right up your alley.

In today's video you'll discover,

• a simple progression drill to help you start compressing the ball like the pros,
• why you've been losing distance with your irons, and
• how this drill fits into the Top Speed Golf System.

Let's get started....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:37

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, welcome back. We all want to hit those solid irons. We all really want to compress that golf ball.

Think in your mind that player that you know, that may not be very big, they may not be very strong, but when they hit a golf ball it sounds heavy on the face.

It has a loud boom to it, even though the swing doesn’t look very hard, that ball takes off, it penetrates through the air, they’re one of the longest hitters in your group, even though they may not have quite as much club head speed as some other players.

Well that’s what we wall want to be. We all want to be that guy that has that heavy hit, that really solid strike, and it feels like every single one of them is really, really solid. What is it that happens for the opposite players?

A lot of times what I see are players that are losing forward shaft lean, they’re kind of flipping the club through contact here, and instead of having that heavy, powerful hit, the ball just kind of floats up in the air.

Maybe we lose that shot to the right, it starts to leak off to the right, and it goes into the rough. Maybe it even slices a little bit when we really hit one bad, and it really just feels weak.

You swing hard, the harder you swing, the weaker it goes, the shorter it goes. That’s the first problem.

When pros are hitting the golf ball, when players that have that heavy hitter hitting the golf ball, what they’re doing is they’re taking loft off this club.

So my hands are in front of the golf club, in front of the head at impact, the shaft is leaning forward and they’re taking loft off of the natural loft of this golf club.

If I’m swinging an 8 iron here, pros are taking about 30 percent of the loft off the club. Every club’s a little bit different, but an 8 iron probably has let’s call it 37° of loft, something like that on it.

They’re taking that all the way down. Pros are taking that all the way down to 26°, 25° of loft when they’re actually hitting the ball by getting that shaft leaning forward.

When you do that, and it takes that loft off there, it’s like hitting a golf ball with a hammer. You’re taking that loft off, and it’s transferring all that weight into the golf ball.

Now if I took the opposite approach to that, imagine I’m hitting a flop shot and the face is wide open, I could swing 200 miles an hour, I could swing as hard as I want to, but that ball’s going to glance across.

That’s why sometimes you feel like you’re swinging really hard, the ball’s not going anywhere. That’s the first piece. Number one, we’ve got to deloft that club.

I’m going to show you guys a great trick to make that happen, to get that heavier hit. Number two, we’ve got to hit that club face when it’s closing down.

So a lot of times players will have that face opening up a bit, again, that weaker shot that kind of flies to the right, maybe even that slice that floats up in the air.

That’s opening the face, and what happens there when I open this face, even if I have forward shaft lean, if I open that face, I’m adding loft to it.

I need to take off loft by having forward shaft lean, and I need to take off even more loft by hitting a little bit of a draw for most players.

Now pros can hit a fade or a draw, that’s getting really, really precise with this. But for most players, I say let’s go ahead and hit that nice, low, powerful draw.

If you overdo it, maybe you get a couple hooks in there, but you’re going to be hitting it longer, you’re going to be hitting a lot of great quality shots.

So if we can deloft the club and get it to draw, we’re going to be way better off than most of the players that we’re going to be playing.

So now let’s talk about a little trick that we can get to actually make this happen. It’s all great in theory, we say OK, I understand the heavy hit, I understand how pros are doing that, but I can’t do it myself.

All right, let’s have a cheat where we can make this happen. The first thing we’re going to do, let’s go ahead and set up to this golf ball with our feet kind of together, only about five or six inches, four inches or so, a club-head-width apart directly in front of this golf ball.

So I’m going to imagine I’m going to hit it this way. Now what I want you to do from there, I want you to take your left foot and I want you to open it about 45°, so it looks like this.

Then I want you to pick up your right foot and I want you to match that to your left foot. So now both of my toes are even with each other, they’re facing about 45° in front. If you look at that ball position, it’s kind of on my right heel.

I may be a little bit too far forward there, maybe just toward the back-center of my stance would be perfect as far as this.

Now the reason I’m using this crazy forward stance is because now that’s going to force me to get some forward shaft lean, force me to get in front of this golf ball, and it’s really going to help me to compress that golf ball and hit it low.

I want you to about four or five shots, and just try to get that ball to fly as low as you can. You don’t want to go more than say 30 or 40 yards while you’re doing this, but I’m really going to try to deloft that club, really get that worm burner.

That’s exactly what that one did, it kind of took off. Probably went closer to 100, 120 yards even though I barely swung just because it had a lot of pop to it, it really transferred a lot of energy to it.

The next thing I’m going to do after I’ve done a few of those and I get used to hitting it low, that’s the delofting part that we talked about.

Now we’ve got to make sure that we’re going to hit that draw. Now again, does every player have to hit a draw? No, I like to play a fade. There’s a lot of pros that play a fade.

I’m not saying the draw is the only way to go. But I’m saying for those of you who aren’t getting as heavy a hit as you like, hitting that draw is going to transfer a lot more energy into it.

It’s going to get you hitting it farther, and you’re really going to have a lot more fun playing this game if we can do that.

So this time what I want you to do, still have that forward shaft lean, but really feel like you turn those hands down.

If I had my left wrist, I’m going to turn my logo of the glove to the ground, and I’m going to feel like my hand releases by doing this. Keeping that logo of the glove to the ground.

So if I was exaggerating that with the golf club, it would be this motion. I’m letting that club deloft and rotate around. Now I’m really exaggerating here.

This would be taking that club face and bringing it to outside of the club. That would be a big-time snap hook if I really did this. Just a little bit goes a long way.

But I’ll know if I’m doing it right if I hit that really low shot and that ball starts to curve from right to left. I’d love to see you guys just go ahead and overdo this at first.

I’d rather see a guy play a 20-yard hook and really compress the heck out of it at first, we can always tone down, do a little bit less, and straighten that shot out.

But until we’ve really felt that heavy hit, it’s a hard thing to describe until you’ve experienced it yourself. So really, really exaggerate on this.

This one, I’m really going to hit that low draw, that ball really started to cut, or really started to draw even over drew, but it still got some pretty good distance for a little half shot.

Now these are just drills to help you get the sensation of that heavy hit. It’s basically just a giant chip shot, punch shot that we’re hitting here.

As you get more comfortable with that, now let’s try to keep that feeling of a heavy hit, but let’s gradually get our stance more back to normal.

So if this is the drill that we just did, feet facing in front, really got a lot of forward shaft lean, hooking that ball, I want you to gradually start to get your stance closer to normal.

So start to get your toes pointing a little more back toward this golf ball, and try to recreate that same heavy hit that you had when you were really exaggerating.

There we go, so that one was nice draw, really low, those are almost getting to the green from 150 yards with a little punch 8 iron. That’s just how much energy’s getting transferred in this ball.

Then now once I get comfortable with that, I’m going to go from here, and I’m going to go a little bit more towards a normal stance. I’m going to hit a few more, see if I can get that nice, heavy, low, penetrating ball flight.

Then I’m going to go back to my normal stance, and I’m going to try to recreate this same feel.

It should be lower than your normal ball flight, it should turn over a little bit more right to left probably than your normal ball flight, but again, we can always tone that down a little bit.

I just want to get you guy s really over compressing the golf ball here at first. So after I’ve done these drills, I’m gradually going to go back to my normal stance, making sure that I try to get that forward shaft lean with each one. Really compress the golf ball, you guys are going to hit some great shots.

All right, so for those of you that are members of the Top Speed Golf website, there’s a couple things we can take away from this.

Number one, we really talked about getting these feet forward in an effort to get more forward shaft lean.

Now when we have a lot of forward shaft lean, basically that’s another way of saying that we’re doing a really good Straight-Line Release.

If I lose forward shaft lean too early, I’ve added loft to the club, I’m getting that weaker shot, and now I’ve had my Straight-Line Release right here at the golf ball. My club is already splitting my forearms.

If I do the Straight-Line Release perfectly, I’ll have that forward shaft lean, I’ll release that club on out in front, and I’ll really compress that golf ball. So that’s one of the pieces that we talked about here.

Now if we want to build this muscle memory for a lifetime, we can’t really just watch one video, go do a few drills and all of a sudden we have it forever.

What it’s really about is getting comfortable with those motions, and doing those day in and day out, start from level one of the Straight-Line Release section. Work through those drills.

In the beginning, you’re going to be building a little bit of muscle memory, but you’re still going to feel like you struggle with it at times.

As you go through level one and start getting into level two, you’re going to feel a lot more confident, a lot more comfortable with it, to where now you start compressing the golf ball, you don’t even have to think about it, just happens naturally.

Now the second thing that we talked about was The Move. We talked about how to square up that club face, really get that club face coming to the outside of the golf ball.

In The Move we talk about how to shallow out that club, get it from the inside to hep doing that, to help do that a little bit easier.

So if you go to The Move section of the Top Speed Golf System, in the same area there, work through those drills.

There’s about seven or eight drills in the move section, you start to do those, you’re going to get that draw, even start to overdraw it a little bit, but you’re going to hit it heavy. You’re going to really compress it.

Then once you start to over compress it, it starts to go out too low, too hot, then you can back off of it a little bit, straighten that ball flight out, not play quite as much of a draw.

But that’s the same thing we’re talking about the in The Move section. So this video is a great one to get you started, get you really feeling that compression of the golf ball.

But once we finish this video, go to the Straight-Line Release section. Start working through those levels. Go to The Move section, start working through those videos.

You’re going to build that muscle memory that lasts a lifetime so you don’t even have to think about it, you just set up to the golf ball, you hit it, and it’s really nice and compressed.

Let’s go ahead and get started in the Straight-Line Release and The Move. I’ll see you guys there.