October 23, 2024 • 23 mins
Claude gives tips and tricks to help golfers improve contact and the overall quality of their strike in the off season.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's the Son of a Butcher podcast. I'm your host
Claude harmon solo episode of the pod this week. I
think it's an interesting time of year. I think there
are a lot of people that are golfers that are
going into the winter months. They're going to be maybe
going inside, maybe hitting a lot of balls off of mats,
and then there are a lot of people that are
maybe going somewhere to where they're going to be playing
a lot of golf. You know, I live in Florida,
(00:22):
so a lot of people from the East Coast come
down to Florida. So our season down here in Florida
is just kind of ramping up. But I know a
lot of people and a lot of places are going
to be kind of stuck with regards to weather, and
I think it's a really good time. I've talked about
this before on the pod, but I think the off
season for a lot of players is important. I do
think that if you are in a climate to where
(00:43):
you can't play golf year round, I think you've got
to use that time when you can't be playing golf
on the golf course all the time. You've got to
use think of it like an off season. You know,
other than really the PGA Tour, most people get time off.
Most other sports get an off season. So if you
(01:04):
are in a climate to where you're not going to
be playing as much golf outside as normal, you're not
going to be on the golf course as much as normal,
and you're in a simulator, you're hitting off a mat,
you're on the range, and stuff like that, I think
it's an important time to utilize the off season that
you're not going to be playing. So it's a time
to say, Okay, here are some things I need to
work on my golf swing. So I've said this a lot.
(01:26):
The most important thing for me as an instructor is contact.
It's not the direction of the ball, left to right,
right to left. I really don't care about which direction
players hit the golf ball. I work with players that
fade it, I work with players that draw it. I'm
not locked into one shape, but I am hyper focused
in my golf lessons and when I'm watching players hit balls,
(01:47):
is the quality of the strike and the contact. And
I always say this, I'm lucky to have a really
amazing teaching building here where I work at the Floridian.
We have three indoor bays, and the garage doors open up,
and we hit balls outside, hit balls from indoors to out.
And I always say this to players that are struggling
with contact. If we were hitting golf balls inside and
just around the corner, he walked out the building and
(02:10):
went to the left. If Roy McElroy showed up and
started hitting golf balls and you were inside and you
couldn't see who it was by the time he started
ramping up, once he got anything kind of past a
seven iron, once he started hitting five irons, once he
starts hitting long irons, and then once he starts hitting
three woods or drivers, you would be inside and you
(02:33):
would be hearing a sound that would make you think,
who the hell is out there? And if you went
out looked and saw it was Rory McElroy or Dustin
Johnson or Scotty Scheffler or Max Hoome, it doesn't matter
who it is. A elite, elite tour player. You were
going to notice if you're hitting golf balls on the
range and you're going through your shot process and four
(02:54):
or five slots behind you, John Rahm shows up, Scotty
Scheffler shows up, and they started hitting drivers, we are
going to turn around because of the sound. That is
the quality of the strike, and that is the quality
of the contact. So I think that's for a lot
of golfers, I think it's forgotten because they're so obsessed,
hyper focused on the curve in the direction of the
(03:15):
golf ball, right, how the golf ball is curving, how
the golf ball is moving, which obviously is hugely important.
But I always say this to players. If you're hitting
the golf ball off line, one of the easiest ways
to not hit the golf ball off line is to
start to hit the golf ball more solid, to catch
it more in the center of the face, to not
catch it off the toe, to not catch it in
(03:36):
the heel with your irons. One of the ways to
hit the golf ball more solid is to take a
divot right. Two different types of shots in golf right
iron shots where the golf ball's on the ground, and
then driver, where we tee the golf ball up. So
we have one golf club in our bag that isn't
on the ground when we hit it, and that's our driver.
We are going to tee it up. We can tee
(03:58):
that ball as high or as low as you want to,
but the golf ball is on a tee, so effectively,
the golf ball is in the air. And when the
golf ball is on the ground, it's on the ground right,
So if it's in the air, you've got to swing
the golf club up to where the golf ball is
on the tee. When the golf ball's on the ground,
you've got to get the golf club back to the ground.
(04:19):
You've got to get the golf club back. I always
say this in lessons as well. When you start your
golf swing, when you set up to a golf ball,
the golf ball is on the ground, it's on the surface,
and I'd venture to say most people with their irons
put the golf club on the ground on the surface.
So the ball and the club are on the ground
and on the surface. You've got to get the golf
club back to the ground to hit the golf ball
(04:42):
in the air. Now, obviously, if you return it back
to the ground where you hit behind the golf ball,
you're going going to hit the golf ball fat. If
you don't get the golf club back to the ground,
you're going to hit the golf ball thin. And that
is going to have a significant effect on the quality
of the strike, on the distance, and on the shape
and the direction. So off season, utilize the off season
(05:04):
to say, Okay, I am just going to focus one
hundred percent on solid contact. I'm going to try and
contact the golf ball consistently, so I'm not really going
to worry about the direction the golf ball goes. And
again I said this a few minutes ago, I think
most golfers they never really think about how they're striking
(05:25):
the golf ball. They only think and they only react
to how much the ball is slicing, how much the
ball is hooking, how much the ball is curving left
to right, how much the ball is curving right to left.
So what are some ways in the off season if
you are stuck inside, if you are hitting golf balls
into nets, into simulators, into matts, maybe just going to
(05:45):
the driving range right, because the driving range is covered
and you can hit balls. So some of the drills
that I use to try and help players improve contact
is first of all, just to explain the difference, like
I just did. I mean, there's there's a difference between
iron shots and driver shots. Holy grail for driver fitting.
If anybody listening has been to a driver fitting on
(06:07):
the tour at the tour level, the holy grail. The
numbers they want is high launch, low spin. So they're
trying to launch the golf ball at the driver as
high as they can, and they want the spin to
be down. Most of us are hitting down on the
driver because we're coming over the top of it. We're
slicing it. The angle of attack. That's a word that
I think everybody maybe is familiar with, but if you're not,
(06:30):
I think it's an important phrase that it comes from
launch monitor technology. All the launch monitors now with all
the radar and the data, they give you a lot
of numbers, right, carry, launch, total carry, spin, side spin,
all of this stuff, right, But one of the things
that launch monitors do tell you is angle of attack.
That's the angle that the golf club is coming into
(06:53):
the ball. So when you set up to the golf ball,
the club is zero, you swing it back up. Now
you've got to swing it back down. How much you're
swinging it down is kind of a you know, launch
monitor for dummies. That's an indicator on angle of attack,
how much you're hitting up, how much you're hitting down.
So if you're trying to hit a driver, you would
want to be hitting up. So what launch monitors do
(07:15):
is they give negative and positive numbers. So down would
be negative, positive would be up. So using Brooks as
an example, right, Brooks Keepka one of the really elite
drivers of the golf ball with his driver, he's one
degree down with his driver. Why because he's hitting a fade.
When he tries to hit a draw, he's hitting one
(07:36):
degree up on it. Okay, so when players are hitting irons,
you want that. The reason why I think a lot
of players can't take dibots is they just they don't
hit down on the golf ball enough. Now, there are
a lot of reasons why. I think a lot of
players it's optical, Right, the golf ball's on the ground,
and what you're going to try and do is you're
(07:58):
going to try to get the golf ball in the air.
If you're topping the golf ball a lot, if you're
hitting a lot of golf balls, thin, I think logically
it would make sense to say, Okay, the ball's on
the ground, I've got to get the golf ball in
the air, so I need to swing up. I think
a lot of that is perception. But if we put
you in your golf stance and took the club away,
(08:21):
set up to a five art, said hey, get into
your golf pusture, go ahead and set up to this
five art, take the golf club out of your hands,
give you a ball, and say, okay, now we're gonna
throw the golf ball from your setup underhanded, and you're
gonna try and get it into the air. Most people
the arm would work up. And I think that I've
seen this enough to where I think that's what players
are trying to do. The ball isn't getting into the air.
(08:44):
They're coming from out to in. Their weight is going
back because they're tired of hitting it thin. They think
if they go back they'll hit up on it, and
they hit it fat. They hit it thin, and it
doesn't work. So one of the easiest ways with your
irons to start to think about improving your contact is
when you set up to the golf ball. You're setting
(09:06):
up and ideally we would like your weight to be
at fifty percent on the left fifty percent on the right.
If your right handed golfer, left is your lead foot,
right is your trail foot. Reverse that if you're a
left handed golfer, so fifty to fifty. One of the
best ways to improve your contact is to think of
the relationship between where your weight is on the right
leg and the left leg. So, if you're a right
(09:28):
handed golfer, at impact, we need you to have more
weight on your left foot, on your lead foot. So
if you're a right handed golfer, your left foot is
your lead foot as you're swinging the golf club into
impact and at impact, you need to have more weight
on your front foot. Fifty to fifty at impact not great,
(09:51):
sixty forty at impact better, seventy thirty at impact better,
eighty twenty at impact better. You know, with force plate
technology now we swing catalyst. When players are hitting golf balls,
I can see where their weight is. I can see
how their weight is shifting and how their weight is transferring.
So one of the easiest ways with your irons is
(10:13):
to feel like at the moment of contact, at impact,
you have to have more weight on your front foot
than your back foot. So if you're right hand golfer,
more weight at impact on your left foot. An easy
way to feel that is go ahead and get out,
get a pitching wedge, get a sand wedge, get a
small club that you can control it. You can't even
do this with nine irons, you know, nothing more than
(10:35):
kind of a nine iron nine iron pitching wedge, sand wedge.
You can even do this loob wedge set up to
the golf ball normally. Then if you're a right handed golfer,
drop that right foot back so your toes are all
you know, almost behind your left heel, and then lift
your heel right heel up, so now all your weight
is going to be on your left side. Right, all
(10:57):
of your weight is going to be on your left side.
So if you struggle with contact, if you struggle with
hitting the golf ball thin, if you struggle with hitting
the golf ball fat heavy, this is a great way
to start to change and improve how the golf club
is being delivered into the ball at impact, but also
improve your angle of attack. So take a sand wedge.
(11:19):
You're going to make a kind of a half swing,
half swing back, half swing through, and you're just basically
going to keep all of that weight on your front foot.
I'm guessing if you do that, you're going to feel
something different because the reason why we're lifting that back leg.
That back foot that heal up is we're trying to
(11:39):
put you off balance, right, We're trying to balance you
on your front foot, on your lead foot. And I
think if you get that feeling, all of the sudden,
the contact is going to improve. The contact is going
to be different. You're going to be hitting most likely
the ball then the turf. Right. That's that's what the
(12:00):
best ball strikers with their irons do. They get the
ball first and then the divot is in front of
the golf ball. Another phrase that launch monitor technology has
given us is low point. Where is the low point
of the golf swing that you're making. So if you
think about your golf swing, it's kind of a little
bit of a like a half circle. Right. Start with
(12:23):
the golf club on the ground, take the golf club up,
take the golf club back to the ground, golf club
works back up. So where the club is bottoming out,
the low point of the golf club it needs to
be in front of the golf ball, not at the
golf ball, not behind the golf ball. So that's another
thing that during the offseason, if you do have access
(12:44):
to go to a range, to go to a club
and you know, if they have a launch monitor that
you can get on, you could go ahead and take
a look at this yourself. But hey, if someone's got
a launch monitor at the range or the club and say, listen,
any chance that I could book you for a half
hour and I could just get some basic numbers of
what I do. Right, So, if you've never had access
(13:06):
to that type of technology, I think it's really really
important to do. You would see whether you're hitting down,
whether you're hitting up, So having all of that weight
kind of shift it onto that front foot and then
just basically leaving there and then that right heel is
in the air, hit some half shots and then maybe
say all right, let me make some three quarter shots.
Maybe start off with a sand wedge and you're kind
(13:28):
of in that exaggerated close position, the right heels up,
all your weights on your front foot, and you're just
making swings. If you try and go backwards, you're not
going to be able to do it because that right
heel is in the air, right, so you're going to
be off balance and you're just not going to make
really good contact. You might not even make contact at all.
So you would maybe all of a sudden One of
the things I think that might happen is all of
(13:50):
a sudden, you're taking a divot and the divot's in
front of the golf ball. I think that's that's a massive,
massive change. Another really basic drill to fix contact that
I like is an alignment stick. If you've got an
alignment stick in your bag, go ahead and take your setup,
and you know, start off with this with sand wedges
and work your way up. Go ahead and take your setup,
take your stance, and then say, okay, once I get
(14:12):
the width of my stance, I'm going to take the
alignment stick okay, and I'm going to place it on
the inside of my right foot. If you're a right
hand golfer, right, so you're just going to place it
inside and it's just going to run parallel to your
right foot. Right, so the alignment rod sticks out, and
you want to kind of have the end of the
alignment stick kind of in line with the end of
(14:35):
your right heel, so the majority of the alignment stick
is now kind of in your field of play. The
idea behind this is to make some swings and land
the golf club onto the ground without hitting the alignment stick. Right.
I think that's a good one. I think it's it's again,
it's very similar to the drill where your weight is forth,
but it's optical, right, It's an optical illusion that we
(14:59):
want to try and we know that that alignment stick
is there. So what we're going to do is it's
going to force us to cover the golf ball a
little bit more with our chest because obviously if we
go back and you can start off by doing this
and just make some practice wings, no golf ball, just
make a practice swing and get this feeling and see
if you can make practice wings and not hit that
alignment stick. That's kind of you know, running parallel to
(15:22):
your right foot, your left handed golfer, it's parallel to
your left foot, and the majority of the stick should
be out in front of you because we're trying to
have it as a barrier. Make some practice wings and
just say listen, let me see if I can make
practice wings and not hit the alignment stick. If you're
hitting the alignment stick, that is going to show you
a lot of things. It's going to show you that
your weight probably is going back that you know you're
(15:45):
trying to move backwards to try and get the golf
ball in the air, all of those things right. And
again I think you will see in this drill that
you're starting to take a divot. So you could do
this with sand wedges up to you know, pitching wedge
seven iron. You can move the alignment stick as close
to the golf balls as you want, right, just to
(16:07):
see what that angle is. If you look at divot
patterns with tour players with their irons, right, what tour
players do with their irons is they hit a golf
ball and they take a divot in front of the
golf ball. So then the golf ball moves back, so
they're moving back right, They're not going forward. What most
(16:27):
people do is they try and find on the ground.
They basically trying to find a t right. So they
hit a ball, they take a divot, and then they
address that golf ball right at the top of the divot.
The club's a little bit below it helps it get
it in the air. So you want to try and
think in terms of landing the golf club down and
taking that divot in front of the golf ball. If
(16:48):
you don't want to do that, sometimes I want to
hitting golf balls. I'll take a golf ball, and directly
in front of the golf ball, I'll stick a t
in the ground, push it all the way down. So
imagine that you're on a parth three, Go ahead and
tee your golf ball up. Then take the golf ball
off the tee and move it back to If you're
a right handed golfer, so tee it up and then
(17:09):
just drop it off the tee right behind it right.
So now you are going to hit your iron and
the goal is the tee that's in the ground, press
down that's in front of the golf ball. You're going
to try and hit a shot and move the tee
in front of the ball right again. That's all designed
to try and help you get that angle of attack
(17:32):
to hit down on it, to get that feeling of
the weight being more forward, another good way to feel,
and I ask players to do this all the time.
And lessons is go ahead and take a setup, set
up to the ball, and then imagine someone has asked
you that has never played golf before, what is impact?
(17:52):
But what does impact look like? Can you just show
me what impact looks like without making a backswing. That's
the important part here. We're not going to ask you
to make a backswing. So if you've got a camera
and you can film yourself doing this, go ahead and
set the camera up if you've got a tripod, and
(18:13):
put it on a tripod and rest it. But you're
gonna want to take a look, and you're gonna have
the camera facing your chest right, And then imagine someone
was going to ask you to explain to them what
impact look like. Just go ahead and get into what
you think would be an impact position, and then go
ahead and hit one, and then go ahead and look
(18:35):
at the two. I'm guessing that if you're not a
great ball striker, if you don't take a ton of divits,
if you're not a great iron player, your impact position
with a golf club and a ball is going to
look very different than your impact position with no ball, right,
if you're just getting into impact, and I'll be honest,
I don't think I've ever had anyone do this drill.
(18:58):
And we're talking from elite tour player down to regular
average fifteen twenty twenty five handicappers trying, you know, someone
trying to break a hundred for the first time. There
isn't anyone whose impact position looks bad. They all get
into good impact positions that the club goes, the handle
goes a little bit forward, the weight goes forward, the
hips turn whatever, the head goes a little bit forward. Definitely,
(19:21):
the weight goes forward. I have never seen anyone when
I say show me impact and we're able to measure
how much percentage of weight is on the left and
the right. I can't think of anybody that's gone sixty
forty right leg versus left leg. Everybody say when I
say say just show me impact, you know where impact is?
(19:42):
What would impact look like? Everyone tends to get into
a good impact position. And I think if you can
work backwards from that and say, okay, I've got an
image of what my body looks like when I'm in
a good impact position, right, so man, maybe I can
try and make my regular golf swing look like that
getting into that really really good impact position. Impact contact,
(20:06):
the quality of the strike, the quality of the interaction
between the golf club and the ball and the ground
is massively, massively important to become a better iron player,
to become a better ball striker. One of the things
when we're looking at launch monitor technology as well, When
people's contact and impact gets better when the quality of
(20:29):
the strike gets better, when they start to take a
divot with their irons, I see the speed. Right, there's
two things we're looking at speed wise in the golf
when we're looking at clubhead speed and ball speed. But
when I see players contact improve, the number one thing
that I see is the ball speed increases. The speed
(20:50):
the golf ball is coming off the golf club increases
because you're going to be hitting it more in the
center of the face, You're going to be creating a
better impact position, You're going to be creating better contact.
So the quality of the strike. We will tend to
see that in ball speed right, in the speed of
the golf ball coming off the golf sometimes right if
(21:13):
we look at when players are struggling, we'll look at
their club head speed on a bad shot versus a
good shot, and sometimes the good shot, the clubheads speed
actually goes down maybe a mile per hour, half a
mile per hour, two miles per hour, but the ball
speed jumps five ten miles per hour, and they hit
the golf ball fifteen yards further with maybe one mile
(21:35):
per hour less clubhead speed, but the ball speed jumps.
That's contact, that's quality of strike. One of the biggest
differences not the single I was gonna say the single,
but one of the biggest differences between regular average golfers
non elite elite players is quality of strike. I mean
(21:58):
Roy McRoy doesn't hit the golf ball thin, right, John Rahm.
Every maybe a couple of times a year you might
see an elite elite to where a player hit one.
I mean Scotty Scheffler doesn't hit the golf ball thin
the five iron. It's not blading it over the green right,
he's not hitting six inches behind it. Quality of the
strike is good. So in the offseason, if you're going
(22:20):
into that or if you're ramping up your golf again
and you're going to be playing a lot of golf,
think about contact. Contact for me is the single most
important thing you can improve to improve the quality of
your golf shops and the quality of the direction. I
(22:40):
think if you're hitting the golf ball more solid, it's
not going to be moving as much so rather than
if you're slicing the golf ball, get good contact and
then see what that does to the slice. If the
contact improves, the club isn't coming in so open, the
weight's not going back, maybe instead of licing the golf ball,
(23:01):
we go to hitting a poll, or maybe we just
go to hit a little bit of a fade, but
it goes further, it curves less, and same thing. If
you're struggling with the draw and you're hitting snappook after
snappook after snap hook, the impact position gets better. If
the quality of strikes gets better, maybe instead of hitting hooks,
we just go to hitting straight balls, or we just
go to hitting little draws. Something to think about. Hopefully
(23:24):
that made sense. But like I said, I gauge golfers
off of the quality of the strike because as I
said earlier, I don't care if you hit draws or fades,
but the quality of the strike. I think if that improves,
your golf will improve. I want to thank everybody for
listening rate reviews. God, wherever you get your podcast, Son
(23:45):
of a Butch, you'll see you sore.
It's the Son of a Butcher podcast. I'm your host
Claude harmon solo episode of the pod this week. I
think it's an interesting time of year. I think there
are a lot of people that are golfers that are
going into the winter months. They're going to be maybe
going inside, maybe hitting a lot of balls off of mats,
and then there are a lot of people that are
maybe going somewhere to where they're going to be playing
a lot of golf. You know, I live in Florida,
(00:22):
so a lot of people from the East Coast come
down to Florida. So our season down here in Florida
is just kind of ramping up. But I know a
lot of people and a lot of places are going
to be kind of stuck with regards to weather, and
I think it's a really good time. I've talked about
this before on the pod, but I think the off
season for a lot of players is important. I do
think that if you are in a climate to where
(00:43):
you can't play golf year round, I think you've got
to use that time when you can't be playing golf
on the golf course all the time. You've got to
use think of it like an off season. You know,
other than really the PGA Tour, most people get time off.
Most other sports get an off season. So if you
(01:04):
are in a climate to where you're not going to
be playing as much golf outside as normal, you're not
going to be on the golf course as much as normal,
and you're in a simulator, you're hitting off a mat,
you're on the range, and stuff like that, I think
it's an important time to utilize the off season that
you're not going to be playing. So it's a time
to say, Okay, here are some things I need to
work on my golf swing. So I've said this a lot.
(01:26):
The most important thing for me as an instructor is contact.
It's not the direction of the ball, left to right,
right to left. I really don't care about which direction
players hit the golf ball. I work with players that
fade it, I work with players that draw it. I'm
not locked into one shape, but I am hyper focused
in my golf lessons and when I'm watching players hit balls,
(01:47):
is the quality of the strike and the contact. And
I always say this, I'm lucky to have a really
amazing teaching building here where I work at the Floridian.
We have three indoor bays, and the garage doors open up,
and we hit balls outside, hit balls from indoors to out.
And I always say this to players that are struggling
with contact. If we were hitting golf balls inside and
just around the corner, he walked out the building and
(02:10):
went to the left. If Roy McElroy showed up and
started hitting golf balls and you were inside and you
couldn't see who it was by the time he started
ramping up, once he got anything kind of past a
seven iron, once he started hitting five irons, once he
starts hitting long irons, and then once he starts hitting
three woods or drivers, you would be inside and you
(02:33):
would be hearing a sound that would make you think,
who the hell is out there? And if you went
out looked and saw it was Rory McElroy or Dustin
Johnson or Scotty Scheffler or Max Hoome, it doesn't matter
who it is. A elite, elite tour player. You were
going to notice if you're hitting golf balls on the
range and you're going through your shot process and four
(02:54):
or five slots behind you, John Rahm shows up, Scotty
Scheffler shows up, and they started hitting drivers, we are
going to turn around because of the sound. That is
the quality of the strike, and that is the quality
of the contact. So I think that's for a lot
of golfers, I think it's forgotten because they're so obsessed,
hyper focused on the curve in the direction of the
(03:15):
golf ball, right, how the golf ball is curving, how
the golf ball is moving, which obviously is hugely important.
But I always say this to players. If you're hitting
the golf ball off line, one of the easiest ways
to not hit the golf ball off line is to
start to hit the golf ball more solid, to catch
it more in the center of the face, to not
catch it off the toe, to not catch it in
(03:36):
the heel with your irons. One of the ways to
hit the golf ball more solid is to take a
divot right. Two different types of shots in golf right
iron shots where the golf ball's on the ground, and
then driver, where we tee the golf ball up. So
we have one golf club in our bag that isn't
on the ground when we hit it, and that's our driver.
We are going to tee it up. We can tee
(03:58):
that ball as high or as low as you want to,
but the golf ball is on a tee, so effectively,
the golf ball is in the air. And when the
golf ball is on the ground, it's on the ground right,
So if it's in the air, you've got to swing
the golf club up to where the golf ball is
on the tee. When the golf ball's on the ground,
you've got to get the golf club back to the ground.
(04:19):
You've got to get the golf club back. I always
say this in lessons as well. When you start your
golf swing, when you set up to a golf ball,
the golf ball is on the ground, it's on the surface,
and I'd venture to say most people with their irons
put the golf club on the ground on the surface.
So the ball and the club are on the ground
and on the surface. You've got to get the golf
club back to the ground to hit the golf ball
(04:42):
in the air. Now, obviously, if you return it back
to the ground where you hit behind the golf ball,
you're going going to hit the golf ball fat. If
you don't get the golf club back to the ground,
you're going to hit the golf ball thin. And that
is going to have a significant effect on the quality
of the strike, on the distance, and on the shape
and the direction. So off season, utilize the off season
(05:04):
to say, Okay, I am just going to focus one
hundred percent on solid contact. I'm going to try and
contact the golf ball consistently, so I'm not really going
to worry about the direction the golf ball goes. And
again I said this a few minutes ago, I think
most golfers they never really think about how they're striking
(05:25):
the golf ball. They only think and they only react
to how much the ball is slicing, how much the
ball is hooking, how much the ball is curving left
to right, how much the ball is curving right to left.
So what are some ways in the off season if
you are stuck inside, if you are hitting golf balls
into nets, into simulators, into matts, maybe just going to
(05:45):
the driving range right, because the driving range is covered
and you can hit balls. So some of the drills
that I use to try and help players improve contact
is first of all, just to explain the difference, like
I just did. I mean, there's there's a difference between
iron shots and driver shots. Holy grail for driver fitting.
If anybody listening has been to a driver fitting on
(06:07):
the tour at the tour level, the holy grail. The
numbers they want is high launch, low spin. So they're
trying to launch the golf ball at the driver as
high as they can, and they want the spin to
be down. Most of us are hitting down on the
driver because we're coming over the top of it. We're
slicing it. The angle of attack. That's a word that
I think everybody maybe is familiar with, but if you're not,
(06:30):
I think it's an important phrase that it comes from
launch monitor technology. All the launch monitors now with all
the radar and the data, they give you a lot
of numbers, right, carry, launch, total carry, spin, side spin,
all of this stuff, right, But one of the things
that launch monitors do tell you is angle of attack.
That's the angle that the golf club is coming into
(06:53):
the ball. So when you set up to the golf ball,
the club is zero, you swing it back up. Now
you've got to swing it back down. How much you're
swinging it down is kind of a you know, launch
monitor for dummies. That's an indicator on angle of attack,
how much you're hitting up, how much you're hitting down.
So if you're trying to hit a driver, you would
want to be hitting up. So what launch monitors do
(07:15):
is they give negative and positive numbers. So down would
be negative, positive would be up. So using Brooks as
an example, right, Brooks Keepka one of the really elite
drivers of the golf ball with his driver, he's one
degree down with his driver. Why because he's hitting a fade.
When he tries to hit a draw, he's hitting one
(07:36):
degree up on it. Okay, so when players are hitting irons,
you want that. The reason why I think a lot
of players can't take dibots is they just they don't
hit down on the golf ball enough. Now, there are
a lot of reasons why. I think a lot of
players it's optical, Right, the golf ball's on the ground,
and what you're going to try and do is you're
(07:58):
going to try to get the golf ball in the air.
If you're topping the golf ball a lot, if you're
hitting a lot of golf balls, thin, I think logically
it would make sense to say, Okay, the ball's on
the ground, I've got to get the golf ball in
the air, so I need to swing up. I think
a lot of that is perception. But if we put
you in your golf stance and took the club away,
(08:21):
set up to a five art, said hey, get into
your golf pusture, go ahead and set up to this
five art, take the golf club out of your hands,
give you a ball, and say, okay, now we're gonna
throw the golf ball from your setup underhanded, and you're
gonna try and get it into the air. Most people
the arm would work up. And I think that I've
seen this enough to where I think that's what players
are trying to do. The ball isn't getting into the air.
(08:44):
They're coming from out to in. Their weight is going
back because they're tired of hitting it thin. They think
if they go back they'll hit up on it, and
they hit it fat. They hit it thin, and it
doesn't work. So one of the easiest ways with your
irons to start to think about improving your contact is
when you set up to the golf ball. You're setting
(09:06):
up and ideally we would like your weight to be
at fifty percent on the left fifty percent on the right.
If your right handed golfer, left is your lead foot,
right is your trail foot. Reverse that if you're a
left handed golfer, so fifty to fifty. One of the
best ways to improve your contact is to think of
the relationship between where your weight is on the right
leg and the left leg. So, if you're a right
(09:28):
handed golfer, at impact, we need you to have more
weight on your left foot, on your lead foot. So
if you're a right handed golfer, your left foot is
your lead foot as you're swinging the golf club into
impact and at impact, you need to have more weight
on your front foot. Fifty to fifty at impact not great,
(09:51):
sixty forty at impact better, seventy thirty at impact better,
eighty twenty at impact better. You know, with force plate
technology now we swing catalyst. When players are hitting golf balls,
I can see where their weight is. I can see
how their weight is shifting and how their weight is transferring.
So one of the easiest ways with your irons is
(10:13):
to feel like at the moment of contact, at impact,
you have to have more weight on your front foot
than your back foot. So if you're right hand golfer,
more weight at impact on your left foot. An easy
way to feel that is go ahead and get out,
get a pitching wedge, get a sand wedge, get a
small club that you can control it. You can't even
do this with nine irons, you know, nothing more than
(10:35):
kind of a nine iron nine iron pitching wedge, sand wedge.
You can even do this loob wedge set up to
the golf ball normally. Then if you're a right handed golfer,
drop that right foot back so your toes are all
you know, almost behind your left heel, and then lift
your heel right heel up, so now all your weight
is going to be on your left side. Right, all
(10:57):
of your weight is going to be on your left side.
So if you struggle with contact, if you struggle with
hitting the golf ball thin, if you struggle with hitting
the golf ball fat heavy, this is a great way
to start to change and improve how the golf club
is being delivered into the ball at impact, but also
improve your angle of attack. So take a sand wedge.
(11:19):
You're going to make a kind of a half swing,
half swing back, half swing through, and you're just basically
going to keep all of that weight on your front foot.
I'm guessing if you do that, you're going to feel
something different because the reason why we're lifting that back leg.
That back foot that heal up is we're trying to
(11:39):
put you off balance, right, We're trying to balance you
on your front foot, on your lead foot. And I
think if you get that feeling, all of the sudden,
the contact is going to improve. The contact is going
to be different. You're going to be hitting most likely
the ball then the turf. Right. That's that's what the
(12:00):
best ball strikers with their irons do. They get the
ball first and then the divot is in front of
the golf ball. Another phrase that launch monitor technology has
given us is low point. Where is the low point
of the golf swing that you're making. So if you
think about your golf swing, it's kind of a little
bit of a like a half circle. Right. Start with
(12:23):
the golf club on the ground, take the golf club up,
take the golf club back to the ground, golf club
works back up. So where the club is bottoming out,
the low point of the golf club it needs to
be in front of the golf ball, not at the
golf ball, not behind the golf ball. So that's another
thing that during the offseason, if you do have access
(12:44):
to go to a range, to go to a club
and you know, if they have a launch monitor that
you can get on, you could go ahead and take
a look at this yourself. But hey, if someone's got
a launch monitor at the range or the club and say, listen,
any chance that I could book you for a half
hour and I could just get some basic numbers of
what I do. Right, So, if you've never had access
(13:06):
to that type of technology, I think it's really really
important to do. You would see whether you're hitting down,
whether you're hitting up, So having all of that weight
kind of shift it onto that front foot and then
just basically leaving there and then that right heel is
in the air, hit some half shots and then maybe
say all right, let me make some three quarter shots.
Maybe start off with a sand wedge and you're kind
(13:28):
of in that exaggerated close position, the right heels up,
all your weights on your front foot, and you're just
making swings. If you try and go backwards, you're not
going to be able to do it because that right
heel is in the air, right, so you're going to
be off balance and you're just not going to make
really good contact. You might not even make contact at all.
So you would maybe all of a sudden One of
the things I think that might happen is all of
(13:50):
a sudden, you're taking a divot and the divot's in
front of the golf ball. I think that's that's a massive,
massive change. Another really basic drill to fix contact that
I like is an alignment stick. If you've got an
alignment stick in your bag, go ahead and take your setup,
and you know, start off with this with sand wedges
and work your way up. Go ahead and take your setup,
take your stance, and then say, okay, once I get
(14:12):
the width of my stance, I'm going to take the
alignment stick okay, and I'm going to place it on
the inside of my right foot. If you're a right
hand golfer, right, so you're just going to place it
inside and it's just going to run parallel to your
right foot. Right, so the alignment rod sticks out, and
you want to kind of have the end of the
alignment stick kind of in line with the end of
(14:35):
your right heel, so the majority of the alignment stick
is now kind of in your field of play. The
idea behind this is to make some swings and land
the golf club onto the ground without hitting the alignment stick. Right.
I think that's a good one. I think it's it's again,
it's very similar to the drill where your weight is forth,
but it's optical, right, It's an optical illusion that we
(14:59):
want to try and we know that that alignment stick
is there. So what we're going to do is it's
going to force us to cover the golf ball a
little bit more with our chest because obviously if we
go back and you can start off by doing this
and just make some practice wings, no golf ball, just
make a practice swing and get this feeling and see
if you can make practice wings and not hit that
alignment stick. That's kind of you know, running parallel to
(15:22):
your right foot, your left handed golfer, it's parallel to
your left foot, and the majority of the stick should
be out in front of you because we're trying to
have it as a barrier. Make some practice wings and
just say listen, let me see if I can make
practice wings and not hit the alignment stick. If you're
hitting the alignment stick, that is going to show you
a lot of things. It's going to show you that
your weight probably is going back that you know you're
(15:45):
trying to move backwards to try and get the golf
ball in the air, all of those things right. And
again I think you will see in this drill that
you're starting to take a divot. So you could do
this with sand wedges up to you know, pitching wedge
seven iron. You can move the alignment stick as close
to the golf balls as you want, right, just to
(16:07):
see what that angle is. If you look at divot
patterns with tour players with their irons, right, what tour
players do with their irons is they hit a golf
ball and they take a divot in front of the
golf ball. So then the golf ball moves back, so
they're moving back right, They're not going forward. What most
(16:27):
people do is they try and find on the ground.
They basically trying to find a t right. So they
hit a ball, they take a divot, and then they
address that golf ball right at the top of the divot.
The club's a little bit below it helps it get
it in the air. So you want to try and
think in terms of landing the golf club down and
taking that divot in front of the golf ball. If
(16:48):
you don't want to do that, sometimes I want to
hitting golf balls. I'll take a golf ball, and directly
in front of the golf ball, I'll stick a t
in the ground, push it all the way down. So
imagine that you're on a parth three, Go ahead and
tee your golf ball up. Then take the golf ball
off the tee and move it back to If you're
a right handed golfer, so tee it up and then
(17:09):
just drop it off the tee right behind it right.
So now you are going to hit your iron and
the goal is the tee that's in the ground, press
down that's in front of the golf ball. You're going
to try and hit a shot and move the tee
in front of the ball right again. That's all designed
to try and help you get that angle of attack
(17:32):
to hit down on it, to get that feeling of
the weight being more forward, another good way to feel,
and I ask players to do this all the time.
And lessons is go ahead and take a setup, set
up to the ball, and then imagine someone has asked
you that has never played golf before, what is impact?
(17:52):
But what does impact look like? Can you just show
me what impact looks like without making a backswing. That's
the important part here. We're not going to ask you
to make a backswing. So if you've got a camera
and you can film yourself doing this, go ahead and
set the camera up if you've got a tripod, and
(18:13):
put it on a tripod and rest it. But you're
gonna want to take a look, and you're gonna have
the camera facing your chest right, And then imagine someone
was going to ask you to explain to them what
impact look like. Just go ahead and get into what
you think would be an impact position, and then go
ahead and hit one, and then go ahead and look
(18:35):
at the two. I'm guessing that if you're not a
great ball striker, if you don't take a ton of divits,
if you're not a great iron player, your impact position
with a golf club and a ball is going to
look very different than your impact position with no ball, right,
if you're just getting into impact, and I'll be honest,
I don't think I've ever had anyone do this drill.
(18:58):
And we're talking from elite tour player down to regular
average fifteen twenty twenty five handicappers trying, you know, someone
trying to break a hundred for the first time. There
isn't anyone whose impact position looks bad. They all get
into good impact positions that the club goes, the handle
goes a little bit forward, the weight goes forward, the
hips turn whatever, the head goes a little bit forward. Definitely,
(19:21):
the weight goes forward. I have never seen anyone when
I say show me impact and we're able to measure
how much percentage of weight is on the left and
the right. I can't think of anybody that's gone sixty
forty right leg versus left leg. Everybody say when I
say say just show me impact, you know where impact is?
(19:42):
What would impact look like? Everyone tends to get into
a good impact position. And I think if you can
work backwards from that and say, okay, I've got an
image of what my body looks like when I'm in
a good impact position, right, so man, maybe I can
try and make my regular golf swing look like that
getting into that really really good impact position. Impact contact,
(20:06):
the quality of the strike, the quality of the interaction
between the golf club and the ball and the ground
is massively, massively important to become a better iron player,
to become a better ball striker. One of the things
when we're looking at launch monitor technology as well, When
people's contact and impact gets better when the quality of
(20:29):
the strike gets better, when they start to take a
divot with their irons, I see the speed. Right, there's
two things we're looking at speed wise in the golf
when we're looking at clubhead speed and ball speed. But
when I see players contact improve, the number one thing
that I see is the ball speed increases. The speed
(20:50):
the golf ball is coming off the golf club increases
because you're going to be hitting it more in the
center of the face, You're going to be creating a
better impact position, You're going to be creating better contact.
So the quality of the strike. We will tend to
see that in ball speed right, in the speed of
the golf ball coming off the golf sometimes right if
(21:13):
we look at when players are struggling, we'll look at
their club head speed on a bad shot versus a
good shot, and sometimes the good shot, the clubheads speed
actually goes down maybe a mile per hour, half a
mile per hour, two miles per hour, but the ball
speed jumps five ten miles per hour, and they hit
the golf ball fifteen yards further with maybe one mile
(21:35):
per hour less clubhead speed, but the ball speed jumps.
That's contact, that's quality of strike. One of the biggest
differences not the single I was gonna say the single,
but one of the biggest differences between regular average golfers
non elite elite players is quality of strike. I mean
(21:58):
Roy McRoy doesn't hit the golf ball thin, right, John Rahm.
Every maybe a couple of times a year you might
see an elite elite to where a player hit one.
I mean Scotty Scheffler doesn't hit the golf ball thin
the five iron. It's not blading it over the green right,
he's not hitting six inches behind it. Quality of the
strike is good. So in the offseason, if you're going
(22:20):
into that or if you're ramping up your golf again
and you're going to be playing a lot of golf,
think about contact. Contact for me is the single most
important thing you can improve to improve the quality of
your golf shops and the quality of the direction. I
(22:40):
think if you're hitting the golf ball more solid, it's
not going to be moving as much so rather than
if you're slicing the golf ball, get good contact and
then see what that does to the slice. If the
contact improves, the club isn't coming in so open, the
weight's not going back, maybe instead of licing the golf ball,
(23:01):
we go to hitting a poll, or maybe we just
go to hit a little bit of a fade, but
it goes further, it curves less, and same thing. If
you're struggling with the draw and you're hitting snappook after
snappook after snap hook, the impact position gets better. If
the quality of strikes gets better, maybe instead of hitting hooks,
we just go to hitting straight balls, or we just
go to hitting little draws. Something to think about. Hopefully
(23:24):
that made sense. But like I said, I gauge golfers
off of the quality of the strike because as I
said earlier, I don't care if you hit draws or fades,
but the quality of the strike. I think if that improves,
your golf will improve. I want to thank everybody for
listening rate reviews. God, wherever you get your podcast, Son
(23:45):
of a Butch, you'll see you sore.
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