- 4 months ago
In this video, Neil Tappin is joined by Top 50 Golf Coach Ged Walters to provide his 5 best ball striking drills. He'll help you with your angle of attack and weight transfer to improve the quality of your striking. If you are heading to the range to work on your game, this video is a must watch!
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00If you're looking to shoot lower scores this year then one thing you'll undoubtedly need to do is
00:04strike the ball consistently well and that's exactly what this video is all about. We've got
00:09five of the best ball striking drills for you. Now the advice in this video comes courtesy of
00:14Jed Walters. Jed is one of Golf Monthly's top 50 coaches. He's got some really simple and
00:19effective advice on ensuring that you'd strike the ball before the ground. Now it's also important
00:24to say this video is coming to you in partnership with KBS Shafts. They have a whole shaft range
00:29from driver all the way through the bag. All designed to help you get the most from your
00:34equipment. Right we're here at the London Club. Let's get started.
00:48This drill is all about ensuring that you catch the ball before the ground. It doesn't matter whether
00:53you're hitting a wedge or hitting a long iron. That's the same principle all the way through.
00:57So it's something we all need to work on. Jed what's the drill and how does it work?
01:02Okay instant feedback is what it really is all about. So if I take a tee and I just scratch
01:06a line in the ground here. So from that point of view there I've now got a focal point from
01:15which I can work around. So here with a long iron that ball position is going to be a little
01:21bit further towards my lead side. And from there it's about making swings and trying to get
01:28the club to hit the ball and the turf. So I want to be really brushing the line and left
01:34of it for me away.
01:36Yes and crucially you're not hitting the ground behind the line. That's the number one thing
01:40that you're trying to avoid. And the great thing about this drill Jed is you're taking practice
01:44swing after practice swing after practice swing and you get that instant feedback. Is your
01:48body working in the right way to deliver the club at the right angle of attack?
01:51Definitely. Now obviously that will change. So if I took wedge in there, ball position then
01:56is going to go more central. So that can be even more, can be deeper this side here. But
02:01the one thing I'm going to find is if I was to make a practice swing here and hit the wrong
02:04side of this line then I know that our body's back here. Right okay well I've hit the ground
02:09there. Well there's the line. Hit the ground back there. So what I'm looking for is to keep
02:13the pressure moving forwards so that I can hit the ground more to the left. You can see
02:16there I've hit the ground sort of way in front of the line there by just keeping the body
02:20moving in the right direction. Okay so then you make a series of practice swings and then
02:24eventually you get to a point you put the ball on the line, hit a shot and then you get the
02:28feedback of what you're doing actually in the swing itself. Exactly. Go on then. Okay.
02:33So in the setup I've got a 50 degree wedge here so centered ball position and then just
02:42making sure that I get my body working in the right order.
02:47Perfect. Hopefully you could hear through the mics the quality of the strike there. Absolutely
02:52perfect. And you can see this divot is starting I'd say not quite almost an inch after the line.
02:59Yeah after the line which is exactly what you're looking for. So use this really simple drill
03:03it will really help your ball striking.
03:10Okay so this drill is all about controlling the low point in the arc of your swing. Something
03:14that's so important for good quality ball striking. Jen you've got a ball on the tee here. Yes. What
03:19are we doing? We're getting used to with this one just the difference in the line that we can get.
03:24We practice most of our golf on a mat. On driving range it's flat it's the same level as your feet.
03:29You get on a golf course and it's above your feet below your feet it's different slopes. So the first
03:33thing we need to do is just make sure that we're adaptable and we can adjust. So we've got this
03:36one teed up here and I'm literally just going to clip it off the tee. Yeah it's plain as simple as that.
03:43Yeah so my ball position and everything's going to be the same but now you can see now this is what
03:47you know good three three and a half inches above my feet so I just want to get used to being able to
03:52be slightly more adaptable. So if this was a ball above my feet situation where I've got my normal ball
03:58position but I'm now just adapting to the lie and just want to clip it away.
04:06Beautiful. Good strike. So what's next? So what's next now is we now need to look at it from a point
04:12of view of improving the ball striking itself. So the ball goes back on the same tee and now what you're
04:20going to do is about four inches behind it and so you know it's not a million miles away from the length
04:25of your club head is I'm going to put another tee. Okay. Same height. Same height. Now the key with
04:33this is anybody who struggles sort of so fat shots, thin shots, top shots, all those kind of things
04:40generally it happens because the weight of the body is too far back so we start to scoot, we start to
04:46flip. Well first thing you're going to do then is you're going to hit that tee. Hit that tee. So we've just
04:49got to miss it. So the simple drill here is hit the ball, don't hit the tee. Yeah. So that's going to now
04:55encourage a little bit more of a downward angle and to have that I've got to make sure that I'm
04:59moving my body in the right direction. Okay. Simple task here then. Dead simple. So just don't hit the tee.
05:11Very good. Okay. And there it is. Good contact. Right. But there's a third part. There's a third
05:16element to this drill. So if I take a third tee and I now put it here so it's on the opposite side
05:23around the same distance from the one that's at the back. Okay. So now what we're looking at doing
05:32is not just missing this tee but now I want to hit this one. Yes. Because that now is giving me the
05:38feeling of that downward angle of attack controlling the low points more target side. Again we're back
05:44to being ball turf which is everything that good ball striking is. Is okay. Okay. So now I just want to miss
05:51the back tee. Hit the shot and try and clip this tee that's in front here.
06:01Yeah. It's a really solid contact and it's a really simple drill that one to just help you establish
06:06that right angle of attack so the club bottoms out in exactly the right place because that is where
06:11really good quality contacts come from.
06:12Here's a great ball striking drill for those golfers that don't want to get caught thinking too
06:22technically about the golf swing. It can really help Jed. What is it? So it's about trying to make a
06:28comfortable speed swing and stopping as fast as you can beyond impact. Okay. What it does is it gets the
06:33body to organize itself a little bit more naturally. We play our best golf when we're in the subconscious,
06:38when it doesn't, you know, thinking about anything. So that's what we want to try and encourage. So from
06:42this drill here, it's simply just taking a, you know, a lofted club at nine nine here. We're just going
06:48to make some swings, which only go maybe halfway back, but the key to it is feeling like the downswing,
06:55the focus is just stop. What you'll find is when you look at it from face on at this point here,
07:01I'm not really doing anything other than stopping yet. You can see how my weight's moving forward.
07:07My pelvis is tucking underneath the torso. So I'm extending, extending to the legs, to the pelvis,
07:13to the spine. And I've got a little rotation in there as well. And you're nicely connected between
07:18your arms and your body as well. What I'm looking at when I see this is just how good the impact
07:23position is just by doing such a small and simple golf swing. It trains everything to just happen in the
07:29order that it really wants to happen. It's almost the brain, which confuses it and makes it happen
07:33in different ways. So you can start off at slower speeds and then just build up your speed and you
07:38can go flat out speed if you wanted to there. So when you're accustomed to the drill, you could be a
07:43little bit more and get some real crispness to what's happening there. And you can see where those
07:49divots are always left of where I'm taking the setup. It's developing that speed into it, but just
07:56focusing on the stop as quickly as you can. So from a setup point of view, you're only thinking
08:01about putting a little bit more pressure into your lead foot, just almost like there, just pushing
08:06down into the ground a little bit more, keeping that pressure there, and then just making a nice
08:11controlled swing, stopping as quickly as you can beyond impact.
08:18Yeah. And you can see that divot. It's perfect. It's just after where the ball would have been.
08:21Definitely. Just this shot of Jed here just shows you so many good things about the golf swing. If you
08:27can focus on finding that position, the chances are the quality of your ball striking will greatly improve.
08:37This drill is all about swing direction. It's something that's going to really help you with
08:41your iron ball striking. Jed, what's the thinking here? What's the drill all about?
08:45So all great ball strikers have a fairly neutral swing direction. So that's not to say that it is
08:52always, say, a bit to the right. Some are a little bit to the left, but it's minute. We're
08:57talking a couple of degrees left of target, a couple of degrees right of target, not excessive,
09:02which you would see from people who would slice and hook it. They would maybe be 10 degrees to the
09:07right, 10 degrees to the left. So getting your swing direction more neutral will help you control
09:12your sensedness of strike and also help you control how your body then wants to move towards the target
09:18so you can control the ground contacts and get those lovely crisp ball turf strikes.
09:22Yeah. And it sounds complicated, but it doesn't have to be if you have a really good drill that can
09:26help you sort of visualise what you're trying to achieve. And that's what we're doing here. So
09:30talk us through it. Okay. So we're looking at it from sort of both perspectives. Obviously,
09:34I've got this little station set up here. This is just as a quick visual, really,
09:39to what would represent a fairly neutral swing plane of being sort of up and down. But the swing
09:47direction is literally what the club is sort of doing as it comes here through the impact. So if
09:52I was like sort of this there, that would be a swing direction quite a lot to the right. That would be
09:57quite a lot to the left. So this is tailored relative to you as the individual. If you were
10:03somebody who slices the golf ball. Pulls it or slices it. Yeah. So you'd have a swing direction,
10:11which would be if I put it into sort of a 2D visual on the floor would be a bit like that.
10:16So right. Okay. Well, what you need to do is practice the opposite. So we would turn the sticks
10:25out to the right. I mean, that's probably somewhere in the regions of 40 degrees, maybe
10:30to the right. So right. Okay. Your visual then, if you were somebody who's coming here,
10:34your visual is to swing the club in the downswing between the sticks. Yeah. And then suddenly your
10:40angle of attack improves, the amount of the face you're getting on the ball improves, the quality
10:45of the strike goes up. It can do so many good things for you, can't it? Yeah. And then vice versa,
10:50if you hook the golf ball, then you would just turn them the opposite way and feel like you were
10:54coming across a little bit more. Now, bear in mind, these are feels, what you're feeling and what really
10:59happens are completely different. You know, a slicer would feel like they're swinging way off to the
11:04right. And when you look at the swing direction, it's probably still a little bit left. It's just
11:07that, you know, if what feels hugely one way might move at eight degrees, but if you were already 10
11:13left, then you're still a little bit left. But the important point is it's more neutral. So you're going
11:19to make your striking better. You're going to make your start lines better. You're going to make your
11:23overall ball striking better. Yeah. So this is one for those players who have big shapes in their
11:27game. So either big draws or big fades. If you want to just rein those in slightly, you'll improve
11:33the quality of your ball striking. And this is a great way to do it.
11:40Okay. So this is a ball striking drill aimed specifically at those golfers who have a tendency
11:45to hang back through impact, hit the fat shots and the thin shots that we all hate so much.
11:50Yep. And it's a, it's a great one for the range. Talk us through it, Jed.
11:54Okay. So on the driving range, you could use the basket of the balls coming. It's simply just propping
12:00your trail side up. So all your pressure, all the weight goes to the lead side, you're probably going
12:06to be talking 90 to 95% of your pressure is going to be lead side. So that's going to mean, well, I can't
12:12go back because I'm up on an angle. That's going to keep me there. So I'm going to get used to feeling
12:17what it's like to have the pressure forward through impact. And it's going to give you the ability
12:22then to have a nice downward angle attack and give you those lovely ball turf, crisp strikes.
12:25Yeah. And that feeling of what the correct contact should feel like. So, Jed, go for it then. Talk,
12:31talk us through the drill. So obviously, I've just put my bag on the ground there.
12:34And all this is going to do is this is going to help me elevate my trail foot. So from here,
12:40and bear in mind, you only need to sort of hit lofted clubs out. We're not talking about doing this
12:44with driver. It's just getting used to doing it with like a wedge or a nine iron or something.
12:49So just taking, you know, if that was my normal set up there, then what I'm going to do now is
12:53I'm just going to take my trail foot. I'm just going to lift it and I'm just going to rest it
12:56on the back of my bag. So now all my pressure is into my lead side. So from here, I'm going to keep
13:03the pressure into my lead leg. I'm going to flex it a little bit more than normal, just because it's
13:08taken all the weight pretty much. You'll notice then on my right leg, I'll sort of really straighten out a
13:13little bit as you see from this angle is very little flex left in there. Keeping the pressure
13:17then pushing down into the left leg. I'm just going to make little swings now. So it's going to be a
13:21little half swing back and then just down. So you see the angle attack is going to come down. It's
13:26going to help me find a low point more to the left. So I just need to keep my arms nice and extended.
13:32You know, I'm going to swing to there. I'm not making a full follow through. I'm just making a nice back
13:37and through swing. So if I was to click this one now, I'm set, I'm ready and I'm just going to make
13:44a nice smooth swing. Yeah. And you've got that little ball turf strike. You will really, really
13:51struggle to hit the ground before the ball if you try this drill. And as I say, it's a great one for
13:56getting your body in the right position, get the weight moving towards the target so the club hits
14:00the ball before it hits the ground. Give it a go. So there you have it. That's Jed's five best ball
14:05striking drills. If you are having issues with the quality of your iron strikes, then give some of
14:10those drills a go. If you can find a feel that helps you hit the ball before the turf, then you
14:16should start hitting your irons much better. But that's it for now from the London Club.
14:20Thanks very much for watching. We'll see you next time.
Be the first to comment