HOW TO HIT CLEANLY FROM THE STREET
When we are on the tee, nothing feels better than having your drive take the ball to the center of the fairway. However, when most golfers reach the fairway and find themselves in a compromised position, they are often discouraged, and most golfers would have preferred the semirough with grass under the ball.
So why is the average golfer intimidated by compromised positions when the pros love them? This article is going to explain it all, and give you some good tips on how to hit a good shot from the fairway.
Understanding what happens at impact
We hear advice all the time like “guide the hips”, “shift the weight to the front leg”, “hit low and make a chop”, etc., but few really understand what the club does when it hits the ball. Understanding this is the first key to hitting good shots.
First, the easy part. At impact we want the club to make contact with the ball in the center of the face and near the sole of the clubface.
More complex is how to do this without sinking the club too deep into the ground or hitting the ground before the ball. There are two things we have to control to achieve this: the position of the low point of the swing and the tilt of the club towards the target.
Low point
Think of your swing as a circle around your body drawn by the club head. The low point of your swing is simply the point where the club head is at its lowest point. This is the first key to hitting a great shot from the fairway: The low point of your swing must be behind the ball!
Not exactly on the ball and not exactly in front of the ball. The reason for this is that we want the club head to be slightly downward at impact, which allows the club to avoid imperfections, blades of grass, etc., behind the ball and not catch any dirt or grass between the ball and the club face.
The stroke should not be too low or too high. Too high and you will bump the ball or the flight will be too low. Too low and you will take huge divots, your swing will potentially be too steep and you will also run the risk of flying the ball too high.
Two exercises to control the low point:
Low point height exercise
Place three tees nailed at different depths. Place a ball on the one that sticks out the most. Practice hitting the ball off that tee, touching it, but leaving the other two tees untouched. Then do the same from the middle tee and work your way down to the lower tee. Practice this until you are able to consistently hit the ball and touch the tee it rested on without hitting the other tees.
Exercise of low point position
Stand with your feet shoulder width apart. Choose one spot on the ground in the middle of your stance and another in front of your forward foot (as in the ball position with the driver). Gently practice cutting the ground in those two places. One stroke hits the middle, another hits the spot opposite the forward foot. Alternate playing between these two points at impact. An important key to building the correct movement in this drill is to keep your head back. Do not allow yourself to move forward (toward the target) trying to reach the ball position first.
When you get it right in both exercises, you will have developed good control of the lowest point of your swing.
Pole inclination
Any hit from off the fairway requires the club to be angled a little towards the target, but the amount depends on the desired head speed and trajectory. Assuming you are hitting in the center of the clubface, the height of the ball will depend on the amount of loft of the clubface at impact. The shorter you hit the ball, the less forward loft you will need to achieve the desired ball flight.
A stick tilt control exercise:
Set a “height target” a few feet in front of you. Hit a sinewy strike at the height of the target by feeling your hands in front of the club at impact, thus reducing loft. Now, without changing your position or the position of the ball, hit a shot over the high target. This time you will feel that your hands are not as far forward, or reduce the loft of the club as much as in the previous stroke. Keep practicing until you can change the height of your stroke at will without changing your club or your placement.
What about the chops?
As with the shaft axis, the amount of chop you need is also related to your desired trajectory and club head speed. Assuming again a good stroke, the lower you want your ball to fly, the more you are going to have to hit low, which means the further behind the ball the low spot is the deeper the chop will be! The biggest mistake I see in the average golfer is that they watch the pros on TV and try to copy their often huge chops. Most of the time they fail to get the ball off the ground by doing that, and start making other mistakes to get it off the ground.
In short, if you are a high speed player who wants to keep the ball low, a deeper divot is fine. If you reach 90 yards with your 7-iron, you need to drill only slightly into the ground behind the ball.
In a nutshell
If you can control the low point of your swing, you can hit cleanly from the fairway. You also need to find a divot size to suit you, leaving the deeper ones to only the faster players. But no matter how big or small the divot may be, if the low point is in the right place and the club has the right amount of slope, then you can hit safely from the fairway.
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