Why You Need This: "This Is the Easiest Way to Stop Topping Your Woods"

I know how frustrating it can be to stand over a ball with a fairway wood...

...and have zero confidence you're going to hit it solid.

But there's good news...

...for one, you're almost assuredly doing two things that are causing you to top or chunk these shots (and knowing is half the battle, right?)...

...and secondly, there are a couple of simple changes you can make to start smashing these shots consistently.

Including tips on your setup, weight shift, and the key focus that makes it all come together (you'll SEE the difference immediately).

So rather than dreading these shots...

...you'll start looking forward to showing off how well you can hit them!

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 6:31

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: All right, so let’s talk about once and for all, and I’ll get to this stick here in a second, how to stop topping the woods.

Now, I already know what you’re doing if you’re topping your woods. I bet you already know what you’re doing. I bet all of your playing partners know what you’re doing. I bet you’ve been told this a thousand times.

If you’re topping, what’s happening is you’re standing up out of the shot, we’re kind of losing our posture, and then we’re falling back.

The club’s grounding out behind the golf ball and that causes it to kind of kick up into the golf ball. You end up topping one or start chunking them and it’s just frustration after frustration.

A really sure-fire tell to know if you’re doing this and know if you’re able to hit good wood shots is you should be able to put the ball on a really, really tight lie and feel completely comfortable.

Now, the part that hasn’t been gone over is everybody knows we need to get our weight to the left, but the part that’s missing there is when you get your weight to the left.

If you don’t do that properly you’re going to end up getting steep in the downswing, shifting your upper body too far forward and yeah, now you’re hitting down in to it, but it ends up in a really weak shot.

It goes 30 or 40 yards shorter than it should. So it’s not that you can’t get your weight left, it’s not that you can’t stay down and hit down through it, it’s just that when you do that it ends up in a bad result.

So now let’s jump into exactly what to do properly. So this stick here is set up as a reference. What should happen is if I set up properly, I’m going to get into my posture and because my spine is slightly tilted away.

I want to have that little small spine angle at address, when I look down at this golf ball, this stick, even though it’s directly over top of the golf ball, looks like it’s in front of the golf ball. So basically, my eyes are slightly behind the golf ball.

Now as I make my backswing, I want to start out the very first thing I want to do in my backswing is even before I start moving the club, I want to put some pressure on the inside of this right foot.

Now that’s really important. If you’ve been trying to hit down into to more, you’ve been trying to hit a divot with your woods, a lot of times what I’ll see players do is immediately start to get that weight left, almost preset it to the left so they can hit down more.

When I do that, that stick now looks like it’s directly over top of the golf ball. That’s a sure tell sign that if I set this up here, I’m not in a good position.

Now all you’re going to do, again, is set this stick up directly over the golf ball. Set it on the angle of your club about 10 to 12 inches outside your golf ball’s fine, just so it’s out of the way, you’re not going to hit it or anything.

Now that’s a perfect reference point. If my stick alignment looks like it’s over the golf ball, or you really don’t want it to be behind the golf ball, now my eyes are in front, I’m going to be falling back every single time this way in the downswing.

I want to set up stick slightly in front of the ball in perspective to my eyes. As soon as I start making my backswing, my eyes are staying behind this golf ball.

Now here’s the second part. Everybody knows that we need to shift to the left, get our pressure going into our left leg, but what I don’t want to have happen is I don’t want my eyes to go forward.

Again, if I do that, now all of a sudden this stick to my perspective looks like it’s over top of the golf ball.

Heck, if I get over here and this stick looks like my eyes are in front of it, the stick is behind the golf ball, I’m big-time trouble, because I know this is going to be kind of that steeper swing, I’m going to be chopping down into it.

So what I want to do is get that weight shift early, the eyes are behind the golf ball. Then as I do shift to the left to start my downswing, I still want to keep my upper body tilted back so that my eyes are behind this golf ball the entire time.

Now that’s a key, big-time key, because that allows me to get this club from the inside in the slot and swing from the inside.

So even though my weight is left, I’m swinging from the inside and I’m able to hit that nice Power Draw. Now pros are doing that.

Every single pro, I’ve measured over 50 Major winners, every single one of them had their eyes tilted slightly back, their spine tilted slightly back. On average they had about 20° of tilt at impact.

That’s really the only way that you can get your weight left and still come from the inside, come from the slot. So when I do this properly, I’m going to set up, my eyes are slightly behind the golf ball.

My weight shift very early, and then even when I shift my weight to the left and make my downswing, this stick always stays in front of the golf ball in relationship to my eyes.

Or in other words, my eyes always stay behind the golf ball. Now when I do that, I can hit down as hard as I want to, and it’s still going to be a nice, powerful draw.

There we go. That one was hit as good as I can possibly hit a shot. I brushed the turf there. To be honest with you, I could have even hit the turf harder. That one was a nice, tight draw, really good flight.

Can’t do any better than that. Now there’s one more piece to this that makes things a whole lot easier. Really what we talked about, is the Stable Fluid Spine in this video.

So we talked about setting up at address, slight tilt away. We talked about how your weight is going to shift to the left. But again, your spine is going to stay tilted away from the target.

That’s what I call the number one fundamental. If my spine angle stays tilted away and I just kind of rotate back and through around that spine angle.

Again, that’s how you get in the slot. That’s how you get shallow. That’s how you get consistent contact with the ground over and over again.

We don’t want to stop here with this one video and hope that that sinks it in forever. We want to build this so it’s completely natural. You don’t even have to think about it, you just grab a club and your spine angle is perfect every single time.

Well, I’m going to walk you through step-by-step exactly how to do that. So once you’re a member of the Top Speed Golf website, you’re going to go ahead and click on the Instruction tab, click on the Top Speed Golf System.

Go to the Stable Fluid Spine section. As you work through level one, level two, level three, it ingrains this to where you never even have to think about it again.

I call it the number one fundamental for a reason. It’s the easiest way to start making solid contact with all your clubs. Doesn’t matter if it’s a driver all the way down to a pitching wedge, or a lob wedge even.

I’ve got to get that spine angle right so I can deliver this club from the slot, hitting the ground nice and solid and in the same spot every single time.

The Stable Fluid Spine is the easiest way to get that contact to happen in the same spot, which is what we talked about for this topping your woods video.

It’s also what we talk about with every other club in the bag. So start with the Stable Fluid Spine, start working through those drills, and man, golf’s going to get a whole lot easier.

I can’t wait to see you in the Stable Fluid Spine section of the Top Speed Golf System.