Why You Need This: In this video I'm going to teach you how to be able to predict perfect contact with your irons.

Let me guess, some days, when your swing feels good, you can go out and hit solid iron shots so easily.

Then the next day rolls around and you feel like you've never played golf before.

I know it can be frustrating.

Fortunately, I have the perfect drill to help you ingrain the proper feel when you hit irons.

You'll learn;

• the two keys to a consistent swing,
• what "not" to do during your swing, and
• where this all fits into the Top Speed Golf System.

Let's get started...

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 7:16

Video Transcription:

We all want that perfect contact where that ball comes down it smashes against the face, it feels like it just melts into the face, and then it explodes off the face.

It almost feels like the ball and the club head are stuck together for four or five inches, it’s so solid, and the compression is just off the charts.

We all love when that happens. Let’s talk about the enemy of that. Now if you’re really struggling to make that great contact, one thing is happening for sure.

Number one, you’re using a lot of hands and arms to try to hit at the ball. So instead of having the momentum of the body leading the way, a lot of times the body slows down, the hands and arms try to push this club head toward the target, and we get a lot of inconsistent stuff happening.

Typically we’ll flip the golf club, one time we’ll hit it nice, the next time we’ll chunk it, the next time we’ll thin it, and it’s really, really frustrating.

So if that sounds like you, if it seems like you have the same problem, there’s two things that we need to have happen.

Number one, we need to get those hands in front. All the pros are delofting this club head. Typically the pros are taking about 30 percent of the natural loft off this club when they’re coming through contact.

With those hands in front leading the way, now the ball is going to be much more likely to hit the center of the face.

The hands in front is really going to make it much more consistent. I’ve got a drill I’m going to show you on that in just one second.

Then number two, we need to have momentum of the body. If my body stops moving, the only thing to keep this club going, is to throw my hands and arms. Again, that’s where a lot of the inconsistency comes from.

All right, so let’s grab this impact bag here. I’ve got a couple drills I’m going to work through with this. Now if you don’t have an impact bag, that’s perfectly fine.

Although I do recommend you get one. These are really, really good. I don’t have a particular one that I like, any of them will work fine, just anything you can hit.

You could grab an old pillow case and hit into that, but you’re probably going to tear it up after 5 to 10 swings. Go ahead and make the investment in one of these vinyl impact bags.

They’re really tough and durable, you’ve got to hit them thousands of times before they really fall apart.

What we’re going to do to really get the hands in front, is we’re going to what I call the Axe Drill.

You may have seen this drill before, maybe not, but I think I’s really one of the most important ones, the easiest most intuitive ones to get the hands in front.

If normally we would grip the club this way, I want you to turn the handle sideways, have this club head, the tip of the club head pointing toward this bag, almost like it’s an axe head.

I’m just going to take that axe head and really jam it into this bag. Now the cool thing about this, is naturally when you do this, for whatever reason it is, because the mass of the head is in front of the handle now, we sense that that doesn’t feel very good and we start to lead the way with the hands.

You’ll notice how my hands are in front. So if you do this same drill, turn that club head sideways and pretend like you’re really going to hammer this, hit that axe head into this bag, you’ll notice that your hands naturally want to start getting farther and farther in front.

Go ahead and feel like what I feel like when I’m doing this drill, I’m going to take the tip of this, and I’m going to hit this bag so hard it just punctured right through it. I don’t want to go easy on this, I’m going to go ahead and let this bag really have it.

There we go, so I smashed the heck out of it. Let’s see if I poked a hole in it, unfortunately I’m too weak. That’s my baby swing today, I’ve got to really muscle up on this one.

This time I’m going to try to go a little bit harder. Now one thing you don’t want to do, you don’t ever want to do this with a graphite-shafted club.

If your irons have graphite shafts, or you have in your driver, don’t hit the bag with that. If you do, maybe barely tap it, but it’s really just not strong enough to take that kind of force.

But if we have a steel-shafted club, go ahead and le it rip. Really try to poke a hole in that thing, and you’ll see I really hit that pretty hard, and I actually did bust it open a little bit there. So I did good on this drill.

You don’t have to hit it that hard, that’s probably a 100 mile an hour swing speed, I’ve had this bag for years, it’s about beat to heck anyways, so I don’t mind if I beat it up a little bit. I really want you to be somewhat aggressive with this.

Number two, we’ve got to get the momentum of the body. The number one axe drill got my hands in front, number two I’ve got to get the momentum of that body going.

So what I want you to do is go ahead and take that club above the bag, and I want you to feel like you swing back and through. So here, when I say momentum of the body, what does that mean?

I can say momentum of the body, it could mean anything. I want those legs to be bent like you’re playing short stop.

I want a little bit of knee bend there, and as you’re coming through, I’m really letting those legs turn my body back and through.

So I’m building up some momentum, and then as I swing back, I want to feel like I just did with that axe head. I want to feel like my hands are leading the way.

So I’m taking that hands in front, and I’m building some momentum doing this. Now I’m really getting some power into that.

Not only do I feel powerful from my hands and arms, because they’re leading, I feel like I’m powerful from my body because for my toes all the way to my shoulders, I feel like I have some mass going with my swing rather than my body turning off and me just using hands and arms to flip at it.

So we’re going to do 10 reps. Again, if you don’t have an impact bag it’s completely fine. I recommend you get one though. Don’t have to hit it as hard as I did here, but definitely make an aggressive swing with it.

10 reps with the toe into the bag, 10 reps getting that momentum. So we’re coming back and through, and then I’m really going to smack that thing, hands in front, and then 10 reps going out the driving range, actually hitting some shots with this.

Now when I take it to the ball, this is where I’m talking about predicting perfect contact. I want to get what I call feed forward, or a visualization of how this is going to feel before I ever swing.

I want to make some swings doing the impact bag drills, and once that’s really in my mind, and I can feel what that’s going to be like, I can feel that solid compression of the golf ball. I want to have that same feeling before I ever swing.

If I ever set up over top a golf ball, and I can’t feel that solid contact, if I feel like it’s going to be a not very good shot, I want to back up, get myself into the feeling of that solid contact again, and really visualize me knocking down that flag before I swing.

So on this one, I’m going to feel my hands forward, I’m going to feel the momentum of my body, and let’s see if we can hit one nice and solid.

There we go, killed that one. Just a little right of the flag. I’m definitely happy with that.

All right guys, for those of you that are members of the website, I want you to still work on this drill. \

Work on the Axe Drill, work on those hands getting in front, and get that sensation of the hands leading the way as you’re coming through contact.

It makes you so much ore powerful. What we don’t want to do is just stop with this drill, and then bounce around to another drill, another drill, whatever catches our eye.

We want to stay a little bit more in control. What I want you to do is go to the Straight-Line Release section. That’s really what we’re talking about here.

Once I hit this golf ball, if my hands are in front, that club isn’t going to release until somewhere out here at 45° in front.

If I can go through those Straight-Line Release drills and build that until I have some muscle memory, and it becomes natural, I’m going to do what we worked on here today, and I’m going to do the straight-line release every single time without really thinking about it.

That’s where I want you guys to be in the long run. So start on level one, start working through those drills.

Go on to level two, level three, make sure you go through every single one, don’t skip the drills. You’re going to build that muscle memory, it’s going to last a lifetime.

You’re really going to enjoy that, hitting that really nice, solid contact. Good luck, and I’ll see you in the Straight-Line Release.