DON'T HIT UP

Most of us treat the ground as our enemy, especially when we catch it before the ball.

As you can see from the picture opposite, by trying to lift the ball my body, hands and therefore swing arc are making the game supremely difficult. The club is striking the ground well before the ball.

With such a small margin for error, it takes a very skilled player and a lot of luck to manage to catch the ball first. When I do manage to avoid the ground, the club is already travelling upwards, and hitting the middle of the ball with the leading edge of the face. From here the only place the ball can go is low along the ground. The more we fail to get the ball airborne the greater the urge is to try and lift the ball even more.

Whilst we may occasionally manage to pull off this almost impossible feat, the resulting ball flight is weak, and only travels a short distance. You can see the reason for this in the lower right picture. By ‘scooping’ the shot, the angle of the shaft is leaning backwards, effectively turning the 6 iron I am using into the strength of an 8 iron.

Many golfers who play this way will have a grip similar to that in the lower left picture, where the right thumb is resting on the top of the grip, pointing straight down the shaft. Whilst it might feel comfortable at address, as you can see it is responsible for making things very uncomfortable at impact.

In this position the thumb is helping us in trying to lift the ball. On hitting a bad shot I often have golfers tell me ‘I didn’t get under that one’, or ‘I looked up too soon’. The fact is that by trying to ‘get under the ball’ their swing arc has come up before the ball, causing them to lift their head. Understanding and implementing the correct methods will help to eradicate all of these problems...