Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Simple Drill to Hit the Ball Then the Turf"

If you wanna be a great ball striker…

...then you’ve gotta be able to make consistent ball-then-turf contact.

To do this, you’re gonna have to be able to control the low point of your golf swing…

...if you don’t know what that means, or how to do it (incl. which of the 5 fundamentals it impacts)...

...don’t worry! I’ve got all of this covered in today’s video…

...so, check it out, and start working towards becoming a great ball striker!

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 9:55

Video Transcription:

Quentin Patterson: If you’re going to be a good ball striker you have to hit the ball then the turf. The key to this, is controlling your low point.

I have this Hula Hoop here, and you can see I have this piece of tape here on the bottom to demonstrate where the low point is. This is where the club comes down, reaches its lowest point, and then works back up.

Your average Tour player is going to have that low point occurring somewhere in front of the golf ball there several inches.

Now that doesn’t mean that the low point is occurring and they’re hitting the turf where the low point is, they’re actually hitting the turf where the ball is, and then that low point is occurring somewhere in the middle of that divot, and then it comes out after that.

When you look at players that are struggling with chunks, tops, thins, things like that, that low point where this tape is on this Hula Hoop is occurring at or before the golf ball.

So if I come in and I chunk it, that low point’s occurring before the golf ball and I’m getting too much of the ground.

If I thin it, I might be timing right when that low point is right at the ball, and I’m just grazing the grass there and that results in that thin shot.

Then the top shot’s where I get too much above the ground, the club actually works above the ball as it’s coming through and I get that top shot.

If we want to hit really solid shots, we have to get that low point more forward. The key to controlling that is something that we call on the website the Compression Line. This is one of the pieces of the Top Speed Golf System.

What this is, is a line that goes from our lead ankle, lead hip, and lead shoulder, and we want that to be on a nice straight line here. We want that to be vertical or slightly angled away from the target.

Now for a driver, we can be angled away from the target. I have seen Tour players that are as much as 8° angled away from the target with this Compression Line at impact.

They can do that with the driver because the ball is on a tee, it’s elevated. The ground isn’t in the way as much.

We can actually have the low point, ideally we would have the low point before the ball and then hit up into the ball. That’s going to allow you to hit it further, higher launch, lower spin, things like that.

But with shots off the turf with our irons, we have to hit down and through the ball because the ground is in the way. We need to have that compression line more vertical or slightly angled away.

I have a great drill here that’s very easy to do, and allows you to get the feeling of having that Compression Line more forward.

First we need to set up a feedback mechanism. As you can see here, I’ve got some things on the ground. This tee here would be ideal if you’re hitting off of real turf.

What you would do is you would place this tee even with your ball, and then after you hit the ball, you’re going to have an indication of where your divot started in relationship to the golf ball. We want that divot starting at or slightly after the golf ball for this drill.

Now if you’re hitting off of a mat like I am here, you want to use something on the ground to give you some feedback as well.

I have the Speed Trap here from EyeLine Golf. You don’t have to use one of these, I just think this is the best thing to use when working on this drill, because it’s plastic, it’s going to give you some good feedback.

If I come in and I hit it, I’m going to feel it, I’m going to hear it, and it may even move on me. It’s going to give me some good feedback.

You don’t have to use this. If you want to pick one of these up you can go to EyeLineGolf.com and search Speed Trap on there and you pick yourself up one of these to use.

Now, another thing you can use is a towel. You can just place a towel and the way that you position the ball for this drill, is you just place it a little less than a club head width in front.

On the Speed Trap here, that’s going to be somewhere between – there’s some marks on here where you go full swing, pitching, and chipping – it’s going to be a little bit less than a club head width, but it’s between the pitching and the chipping marks on here for this drill.

Let me get my dot set up here. What we’re going to do to set up for this drill is we’re going to pre-set that Compression Line for us.

I just want you to do some practice swings at first, I’ll actually take the ball out of here. Do some practice swings at first, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to pre-set this up.

Get in your normal setup as if there was a golf ball about a club head width in front of this. I’m getting my normal set-up here, then I’m going to pre-set my hip forward.

I’m going to get my hip a little bit in front of my ankle here. I’m actually going to open up my body just a little bit.

I’m going to get my shoulder, I’m going to feel like it’s a little bit in front of my hips, and I’m going to have my nose right down on top of where the golf ball would be.

Now I’m just going to take some half swings here, where I’m really focusing on hitting down and through and really trying to take a divot. You’re going to find that it’s very, very easy to do this when your body’s in this position.

You can notice here pretty much all my weight is on my left foot here. I’m just on my toes of my trail foot. I’m going to take a little half swing here, you can see how easy that is to hit down and through.

What I want you to do is hit some practice swings where you’re taking that divot, you’re feeling that divot starting in front of the plastic or the towel, where that divot you’re getting that nice and deep divot in front of where the tee is if you’re hitting off of turf.

Once I’m comfortable with that, now I’m going to put that ball in here and what I’m using here is just like an 8 iron. You can use really any club for this.

The ball is going to come out really low, so I suggest something like a mid to low iron when you’re doing this. I think you’re going to be surprised with just a half swing initially here, of how solid you’re going to hit the shot and how low and booming it is.

This is what’s really cool about this, is you can use this shot if you get under trees or something like that. You’re going to find how low this is going.

Again, I’m going to take my normal set up. I’m going to shift my body forward a little bit and open up and just a little bit, hip in front, shoulder in front, nose right down the ball.

Then we’re just going to take a little half swing here, and really focus on hitting down and through in front of the ball.

Here we go. So I thinned that one just a little bit, and you’ll find that. What I would do, is I would try this again and you can see how low that came out.

This is an 8 iron, and it launched at 12.3°. That’s pretty dang low for an 8 iron. I want to try another one here. I’m going to try to get one really, really solid.

I felt the plastic here and I just kind of cringed up a little bit and I got that thin shot. I think I got my low point more forward, I just didn’t come down and hit enough of the turf.

On this one I may actually do some practice reps here, where I’m really focusing on hitting down into it and really imagining that really deep divot that I would get when I’m doing this.

Let’s see if we can get a much more solid strike with this. Again, I’m going to take my normal set up. I’m going to get my body more forward, open up all my weight on my lead side.

Just a half swing, trying to keep it there, I’m really going to focus on hitting down and through the ball this time.

That one, much better. You see that’s a little low laser. That’s a half swing with an 8 iron. An 8 iron is my 160 club. Half swing went 124 yards, launched really, really low, and had a club head speed of only 67 miles per hour.

Can’t remember exactly how fast I swing my 8 iron normally, but very, very easy for me to get that kind of distance when I’m making really, really good contact doing this.

So get a few good ones doing this, where you’re hitting down and through. Again, I think you’re going to be really surprised at how penetrating and how solid this feels.

Now once I’ve done a few of these, what I want to do now is kind of replicate that same feeling in a normal swing.

I’m going to take some practice swings here, where I really try to replicate that same feeling of coming into impact where my body is more on top of my lead side and I have my nose right down on top of the golf ball.

So I’m going to take some practice swings where I’m really focusing on hitting down and through, and getting that nice, good divot there.

Let’s step into this one, let’s see if I can hit a good one here, make some good ball-first contact and see what kind of distance I can get on this one.

I hit that one pretty solid. That’s about as far as I can hit. I almost think that’s a mis-read, I don’t think I’ve ever hit an 8 iron 178 yards, but really good launch.

I got a really good launch on that one, got my body forward really, really nicely on that one. I was able to get my path to be pretty close to zero.

I was .3° in to out. That’s ideally what we want. We want to be as close to zero as we can to get those nice, compressed shots.

Now what I see a lot of times people doing when they’re working on getting this Compression Line to be more vertical, is they’ll actually come down steep and be over the top and that path will get too much out to in.

The reason for that is because it helps you to get the low point more forward, so if you imagine this. If I swing 45° over the top, where’s my club bottoming out? It’s way up here.

On the other end of the spectrum, if I swing 45° from the inside, in to out, my club’s going to bottom out back here.

If you’ve been trying to get the club to shallow out, and you’re already struggling with your Compression Line, if it’s going to very, very difficult to do that, because you’re just going to end up chunking it and thinning it, and topping it even more if you were doing those things.

Now that we’ve got this Compression Line to be in a good spot, now we can work on getting the club to shallow out nicely, getting that face squared up sooner, so that way we don’t have to make compensations later in the swing.

We can rotate into impact, get the body nice and open, get those hands in front, get those really good compressed shots.

So this is what we call The Move on the Top Speed Golf website. Specifically, a great drill to do for this is the Tennis Racket Drill.

If you want to go check this out, go to the Instruction tab at the top of the screen, then click the Top Speed Golf System, and then click The Move and work through those drills.

The Tennis Racket Drill is a great drill in there, but there’s tons of other great drills in there. We’re going to get you to where you’re really shallowing out the club a lot, and then we get you to tone it down at the end to hit those nice, crisp shots.

Best of luck out there, and I’ll talk to you soon.