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In this video, Golf Monthly Top 50 Coach Ged Walters explains the main cause of fat and thin shots and demonstrates an easy drill that should help elevate your ball striking abilities! He also helps with that particularly destructive and expensive shot, the skied drive using a simple but clever drill that involves a headcover.

► This video was shot on location at Sandiway Golf Club in Cheshire.

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Transcript
00:00The fat, the thin and the top, the most destructive shots in golf. Jed, please help us fix these.
00:08They all live in the same house, they all come from the same issue and that issue is not being
00:14able to control where the lowest point of the golf swing is. So sometimes you might hear the term
00:20low point, it's the bottom of the arc of the swing and if that is either in a real variable
00:27place
00:28or it's just way too far back from the golf ball, you're always going to struggle.
00:34And then from there, that's where we start to sort of cast, release, scoop, all those
00:40sort of knock on effects all come from golfers who struggle to control where the low point is.
00:46So the low point, where should it be? Well, I mean, I've got a six iron in my hands here,
00:52but even if I had a driver in my hands, there is still a bottom to the circle and it
00:58would be
01:00over here, it will be forward. As a reference point, you could think about it as being not a
01:06million miles away from being in line with your front heel. Yeah. Because when we're making our
01:14downswing, we are moving the pressure of the body towards our target. So that is shifting where the
01:19bottom of the circle is going to be. So that's going to move it over here. So if we think
01:24about
01:25those golfers who hit fats and thins, a lot of them keep the pressure on their trail side.
01:30So we can career into the ground back here, or we keep the club moving away from the ground to
01:36avoid
01:36that. And that's where the thins and the tops come into it. So the bottom of the circle of the
01:40golf
01:40swing is back here where the club wants to meet the ground. We want to shift it and move it
01:45more
01:45towards the target. So it's more on this side over here. And as you can see, as I keep doing
01:51that and brushing and hitting that part of the ground, it is on the target side of the golf club.
01:56So a little drill that you can do to practice it is if you're on a grass range like we
02:01are here,
02:02just get two T-pegs to create a gate and put the golf ball right in the middle. Your task
02:06is to hit
02:06the golf ball and the ground on the left hand side of the gate. If you're on a normal driving
02:11range
02:12where you're on a mat, get some chalk, just chalk a line and then put the golf ball behind it
02:17so that
02:18if you move the golf ball, nice strike, brush the chalk away, then you'll have the chalk dust
02:22on the bottom of the golf club. So you're getting constant feedback on whether or not you are or are
02:27not controlling where the low point of your swing is. Jed, do you mind, let's have a look at this
02:34drill
02:35in action? So taking your normal setup and then we just want to focus and you can rather than looking
02:42at the golf ball, keep your focus on the ground that's over here. So all you've got to make sure
02:47you do is when you get to the top of the backswing is you are moving the pressure of the
02:51body towards
02:52the target. Some people will start to do that and then they'll sort of back themselves up. Some people
02:58will just be way over on this side. Just try and keep that focus on moving towards your target.
03:05and strike your shot. And as you can see there, the divot starts right where the gate of T's are
03:12and that's where the low point, the bottom of my circle is. So there we go, an easy fix for
03:18the top,
03:19your thin and your fat. No excuses now to go out and hit that perfect golf shot. And finally,
03:25we're going to be looking at probably the most expensive destructive golf shot and that is the sky,
03:30skying your driver. Now, can you tell us why this happens and how we can go about fixing that?
03:38It's painful to watch. It's one of those where you cringe when you see it happen, you know
03:43the dread that the golfer's going to have to look down on forever until he can afford to buy a
03:47new one.
03:49It's a sort of two pronged attack of what's happening. When we get the club traveling down
03:56too much and it can travel down too much from both in to out as well as out to in.
04:05A lot of people think
04:06it's just going to travel down steeply and then come down and across and we get this sort of contact
04:11here. But there are golfers who travel too much from the inside, but they've got too much forward
04:18handle. So the club head is still traveling down at the point of contact and the face is now this
04:25way.
04:26So it's exposing the top of the golf club. But yes, down being the big key. If we're hitting down
04:32on it,
04:33then the club has not reached the bottom of its circle before it's made contact. And with the
04:40driver, ideally for most of you, you need to be hitting up. And hitting up on the ball, is there
04:45any drills or anything we can do that you can take home to your driving range to help fix this
04:50guy?
04:50There is. I've got a head cover here. You could use, you know, an empty box of balls. You buy
04:57your box
04:57of balls, take the sleeves out, use the empty box that it comes in. And really all you want to
05:02do,
05:02depending on how much down and how quickly it pops up into the air. You could probably look,
05:08I mean, if I was to put my foot here, I would say, well, if you were to put your
05:14head cover,
05:15your driver, about there. So it's probably about then 18 inches in front of the golf ball,
05:22then you just want both golf ball and club head to avoid hitting the head cover.
05:30Anyone who's hitting down, the ball will go up, but the head of the driver will just career into
05:38whatever you've got there. So if it's the empty box, it'll just obliterate the box. If it's the
05:42head cover, it'll just move the head cover out of the way. It won't damage the club, but you'll get
05:47your feedback on whereabouts your contact is. So what we want to be thinking of is when we're making our
05:53swing here, we want the club head to feel like it passes the hands a little bit more and it
06:00travels
06:00a little bit more on the up as we go through the shot. So the whole focus is not so
06:06much on trying
06:07to hit your fairway, stop your slice. It's about making sure that you avoid the object that you've
06:12put in front of the golf ball. So nice visual representation. Yeah. So hopefully it should
06:19look like this. That's a great drive. So the ball's been hit on the up and as you can see,
06:27head cover is still in place, missed by both ball and club face. Perfect. A nice,
06:33easy drill for you to take back to your driving range.
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