Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "This Makes it EASY to Hit Irons Solid"

Tired of those embarrassing chunked and thin iron shots?

We’ve ALL been there at one time or another…

But what if you could repeatedly hit crisp, powerful irons with ball-then-turf contact?

In today's video, I’ll reveal my all-time favorite drill for accomplishing that.

You can even do this indoors, and it doesn’t require expensive training aids!

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 15:57

Video Transcription:

Clay: It is fantastic to have you here today. I'm going to give you one of the easiest step by step drills to consistently hit ball and then turf time after time after time. So you can hit it nice and solid. You can hit your iron straight. You can hit them far with low power. I mean, this is really just a must do drill, a must do video.

One of my favorites of all time, if not my favorite of all time video for getting ball then turf contact. So Let's break it down step by step. And what I want you to do here, I'm doing this so you can do it indoors on a, on a mat with some items you have around the household. I'm going to talk about how you can have tight margins for error.

So I'm actually going to miss this tiny piece of tape and hit this golf ball nice and solid and straight by doing this video the right way. And if you set up these parameters, here's what I found. If you set up parameters the right way, if you give yourself accurate feedback, anyone can do this. So they follow these drills.

So let's jump right into it. The step drill is by far one of the most effective and at the same time being one of them, one of the drills that people quit on the most because they never get it down the right way. If you're having trouble doing the step drill, don't skip, skip this video. You want to figure this out because it will give you effortless speed and clean contact.

So what I'm going to do with the step drill and simply all it says is I'm going to set up to imaginary golf ball here first. Let's imagine I'm setting up to a golf ball. I'm going to move it out of the way. Now I'm going to keep my club head here. I'm going to pull my lead foot back and I'm simply going to take a step, transfer my weight and then swing down and through.

Now what this does, it makes the backswing easier. Cause I transfer my weight to the right. Guaranteed because of my left leg is in the air. I'm stepping. Where's all my weight. It's all in my right foot. That's what you have to do in the golf swing. So early transition to the right. Number two. That's going to help me to make the backswing effortless, but then it's going to force me to get my weight to shift back to the left.

Now there's a big mistake I see here when players try to do this. As they do that drill, they tend to just step with the leg and never transfer the upper body. And in reality, if I'm going to transfer my weight to the left, I want to get my upper body starting to lean to the left. My upper torso, if you imagine my shirt buttons here are going to be working toward the target before I ever swing down with the club.

Once my torso gets over here to the left, my weight is on my left leg, then I can go ahead and swing down. So if you'll notice when I'm doing this, my upper body is going to move to the left a little bit before I start my downswing. And I'll go real slow here so you can see it. So normal setup. feet together, little small step, right?

And all my weight is transitioning through this shot. And there, even with an easy swing, 168 yards with an eight iron. Um, I felt like I was using about 50 percent effort on that one. Another mistake that I see all the time is when we're doing this, players will have their weight too far on the left, too early.

When in reality, you should have your weight going to the right before you really even start the clubhead moving. Now, a good key for this, again, if we go back in with the shoulders, is as I start back, I almost want to feel like my shirt buttons go a little bit over my right foot. And here's a crazy one.

They almost want to close a little bit. So my shoulders will close. I know it sounds nuts, but if we're looking from down the line, this would be shoulders opening. Uh, so backswing direction, opening in the backswing direction. I almost want to feel like they close a little bit and then I get my weight on my right foot, then I push in and open them up.

Now that seems a little counterintuitive, but think about it. Try this two different ways. I'm going to set up to imaginary golf ball, put my lead foot, pull it back to my feet or about a clubhead or two width apart. From here, I want you to go ahead and try to open your shoulders. So presetting them this way, And try to do this drill where I do my backswing and then come down.

It's like everything is out of sequence. I'm falling left, I feel really, like it's, it's like my backswing is over way too early. It's not really right. Do the same thing again to where you preset, you start with your weight a little more on the right foot. Your shoulder is a hair closed. or in the downswing direction, it would be open.

Basically my shoulders are pointing more this way, whichever way you want to call that. And from there, then start to do your backswing for this drill. So I'm going weight on my right foot, shoulders a little bit this direction. And as my club starts, I'm immediately starting to shift my weight to the left.

When I do that, that gets me in a position to where I can easily pull the club back, shift and swing just like that. The mistake I see as players start. with this upper body way too far over here. So if I do this same drill again, and I'm already going over here early. So my weight is already on my left.

My shirt button's already kind of leaking, trying to sneak forward. My shoulders are more this way. Well, now all of a sudden it's like, I'm almost like falling into that lead side immediately. And it's like, there's no time to do the drill, doing it properly. I feel like my weight gets on my inside of my right foot.

So I'm feeling pressure in my feet about right here. inside of my right foot before the club head avian moves. Shoulders a little bit that direction, just a hair. And then when I step, it's easy because I'm already balanced on this leg. That makes a world of difference when you're doing this. Once I'm balanced on this leg, I make my back swing.

And as soon as the club starts to go back, I get a little shift forward. Again, when I'm doing that, I'm getting my upper body to go a little farther forward too. I'm getting my lead leg to bend. And then from there, I'm just going to push into the ground and rotate and it's pretty effortless. So if I do this correctly, watch me do a couple of practice swings here.

I'm going to set up this drill, pull my lead foot back here, right? If anything, I'm hitting this front tape a little too much and missing the back tape. Now I've set up some frames of reference here, so I'm just talking about key talking points here first, then we'll lead you through the drill. Put a piece of tape on the ground that would be just behind your golf ball.

So if I'm hitting shots doing this, I want about a half inch between the back of my golf ball and this tape. So a little tiny bit of green grass right here between my ball and the tape that ensures that I come down, I hit ball first, I'm not chunking or thinning, and then I'm gonna hit the turf in front.

Then I'm gonna take a second piece of tape. I'm gonna put it a grip length in front. of that back piece of tape. And I put it here. Now, as crazy as it sounds, when I do this on a mat, I should almost be clipping that front piece of tape. What I don't want to do is try to pick the ball off the ground. So a lot of times players are trying to do this drill where they miss this piece of tape and they're almost like raising up, trying to barely clip the ball.

Or I don't want to be slamming this club into the ground way up here where I'd be just whacking that tape completely off the ground. So I should be able to hit this shot. And hit the ball, make my divot what would be in front of the golf ball, and then barely nick this tape or miss the tape. And that tells me my divot is in the right spot.

If I got rid of this piece of tape, the only reason that this is here is I can go ahead and just like slam my club in the ground. And yeah, I'd be taking that entire piece of tape out. That's not really what you want either. That's going to be divots that are too deep. It's going to be a little bit inconsistent.

If I do this, where I raise up and try to pick the ball clean, I won't be hitting the ground. But if I do it correctly, I'm just going to be coming here, making contact with the turf, and then almost brushing this little piece of tape here. You may have to replace it a few times. All right. So those are the two main things that I see that give people problems with this drill.

Number one, You put your feet together before I start my swing, weight goes on the right, shoulders almost a little bit open or closed, however you want to do it, they're facing this way a little bit. Then from there, as soon as I start my backswing, I begin my step. I want to get my upper and lower body to get to the left to get my weight over this lead foot and then from there I just rotate on through.

If I put that together, it just looks like this. I'm going to set up to imaginary ball, pull my foot back, weight goes on the right. Little closed shoulders like that. I'm going to feel like all my momentum. It's like my entire body's momentum is just flying through this golf ball, flying toward the target.

That's why your weight has to go on the right early. My weight gets back here. As I shift all my momentum is moving through the golf shot. If I stay here in the backswing, not like I want weights on the front. So that would be the wrong way is like never getting this upper body back. Staying to the left.

Now, as soon as I step, it's going to feel really rushed. It's going to look like this, right? Or if I keep my weight on the back the whole time and never shift my upper body to the front in the, before I start the downswing, I'll see a lot of people do this, right? The downswing happens as the step happens, not what I'm doing.

Weight starts on the right shoulders, a little closed. The step happens as I'm going back, my upper body shifts over there. Then I swing down. It's almost like I'm feeling like this. And I'm just going through it like a Gary player, all the momentum moving through the golf ball. Now that's one thing to say this works, but watch the consistency you can have when I'm doing this drill.

I'm going to hit a few shots, let's say four or five here where I'm doing the same motion with a golf ball now. So do about 20 reps just to get the overall motion down. And then you're going to be able to move in and hit golf balls with this if you want to, or if you're not quite comfortable with that.

Do the reps without a golf ball, have the same feeling as you move into a normal swing. So basically just take out the step. I'm going to have the same feelings there and hit shots without just taking the step at all. But if you get this move down, it's so consistent. I can even do it one arm, right? So if I'm here, set up to this golf ball, I'm going to do left arm only.

Right? And I'm coming down, because my low point is mostly going to be dictated where my weight shift is, and where my shirt buttons go, it's not that hard to make contact with the ground in front of the golf ball, even with one arm. We can do it left arm only. Some people don't like using their left arm.

So, you do the same thing with the right arm. A little bit thin on there, but these are one arm swings, right? It's not going to be perfect. It's just showing that we can go ahead and make contact in front of the golf ball every single time if we get the weight shift right. If the weight shift is wrong, it's going to be really difficult to do this.

Now let's go ahead and hit a couple shots. Like I said, I was going to do here where we hit good ones and I do this drill. So here I'm gonna set up to it, pull my front foot back. Weight goes on the right to preset it. My shoulders are almost. over my right foot already. And then as soon as the club comes back, my shirt buttons shift in front of the golf ball.

Now my divot is guaranteed to be in front and I simply just rotate on through it. So here, if I hit a golf ball doing this, I'll make the margins really tight here by scooting that back golf ball almost on the tape. There we go. And that was the full four swing 182 with an eight iron. I can do much better than that.

I need to keep on doing this drill. I love the feeling of it. But you see, it's not difficult to hit ball then turf. All right. Just killing that one. Another one, one 88 with an eight iron. And you notice if anything, I'm barely touching this front turf and you'll see all my momentum is moving through the shot.

Now, one last question I'll get is clay. You say to get your upper body over here, but in the top speed golf system, we know the stable fluid spine. It means that my upper body is tilted back behind the golf ball. Well, the reason that this works is, as I shift my upper body to the left, as I rotate through, my hips are naturally, because of all this momentum moving through, clearing out of the way, and now my head will stay behind the golf ball.

So even though my shirt buttons are shifting forward, as I rotate through, my head's going to stay behind the golf ball, and you really will get that stable fluid spine. You can pause any of these videos. And even though my weight is going forward, my chest is going forward to start the transition, I'll still be tilted away just naturally without even having to think about it.

It's the same thing here. There we go. Do the step drill. 15 20 reps. Get the feeling down. Put a couple pieces of tape on there to give yourself some feedback. You'll be surprised once you get this shift over here and rotate through how easy it is to get all the divots in front of this back piece of tape and almost feeling like they're going to hit.

this front piece of tape. Now, one thing I'll mention, if you're a member of Top Speed Golf, a big key to making this work is getting in what I call the straight line release. So having some lag, letting that lag happen, hit the divot and release the club out in front, meaning that I have lag. My club is leading my forearms and it's not really catching up to my forearms or splitting my forearms until about 45 degrees in front.

Now, the cool thing is watch this weight shift, start to the right, goes left. Then I swing on through. What does that naturally do to the club? It makes it want to lag and release in front. If I have my weight shift in the opposite direction, so say I start left and then fall back, what does that naturally make my, my release want to do?

It wants to go out here, it wants to start to cast out and hit behind it. So I feel like if I do this, right, I'm going to lose all my lag, I'm going to cast, I'm going to chunk the ball. I feel like if I do it the right way, it's going to lag and then release it out in front. So if you nail the straight line release, or if you want to nail the straight line release, if you're a member of top speed golf, and you want to be able to gather that golf ball on the face and then release the club out in front, this weight shift idea is imperative to that, but we need to pair it up with the right feeling.

So I want to feel like if I had a golf ball out here in front, when I'm swinging, I'm going to hit this golf ball. And my club is releasing to that golf ball out in front. I'm going to challenge you. If you remember top speed golf, go to the straight line release and do a single video from level one. And what's going to happen is it's going to pair up perfectly with what we just worked on.

Now your body's moving the right way and your club is releasing in the right way. The golf ball is just getting in the way as you complete level one. It's going to become more natural as you get through level two, you might start to think about it a little bit. And as you get through level three, you're not going to think about it at all.

That's really where the, the real benefits of golf come. When you can make a good swing and it's completely unconscious. Well, it's going to become unconscious as you do those drills, because they're going to feel better. And as you get enough reps in on them, and I'll walk you through the steps to ingrain that for a lifetime, you're never going to want to do this type of emotion.

It won't make sense anymore. And when you go out, you can get out of your car, walk straight to the driving range, very first swing, you're going to have the straight line release down, but it only happens if you follow that system. So if you want to change your game forever, Head over there right now, do one video paired up with what we just talked about today.

And I can't wait to hear about your results. Let's go and get started.