Instruction
My 2 Cents: The best chipping drill ever
If you struggle with your pitching and chipping, hitting the ever-popular chunks, skulls, and flipping at the ball at impact, then I have a simple, yet effective practice drill for you to try.
When hitting this type of short shot, your pivot should “pull” your arms, hands and club through impact, keeping the club head lagging behind your hands. But when things get out of sequence, impact becomes wildly inconsistent. In fact, when your pivot stops, the lag pressure on the club shaft is lost and the hands take over with a flip — a move that is the death of any short game.
So for this drill, all you need is astro-turf or a tight carpet in your house, a few pennies and a wedge. Set up to the two coins about two inches apart, as pictured below, and set up to hit a normal greenside pitch to the rear penny. Then, make your normal pitching motion and try to sweep both coins off the ground.
If you flip at the “ball,” or in this case, the first coin, you’ll either miss the coins entirely or only hit the first one. Remember, the goal here is to hit both coins every time.
This drill will subconsciously teach you the correct pivot sequence, and will certainly keep you from flipping at the coins — and eventually, at a golf ball.
After you can do this drill successfully time after time, a golf ball will look like a beachball on the course and your confidence will soar. It’s also a great drill to do in the winter winter… and by spring, you’ll be getting up and down from everywhere.
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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Nick Coleman
Sep 17, 2016 at 10:46 pm
This is similar to a drill with a ball and tee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EzCinK-glo
Jack
Sep 17, 2016 at 12:39 pm
Would you grip down on the grip as clubs get longer
Scooter McGavin
Sep 16, 2016 at 4:04 pm
Can I still do this drill in the summer summer?
Steelydan
Sep 16, 2016 at 12:09 pm
ChuckB, sounds like ingraining proper ball-divot sequence to me! A real fundamental.
Josh
Sep 15, 2016 at 4:09 pm
Not dinging up my Miura’s with no pennies. Thanks tho. 😛
Stump
Sep 15, 2016 at 7:49 pm
Guess you cant afford another wedge
larrybud
Sep 16, 2016 at 3:01 pm
You’re not supposed to hit them 100 yards!
Scott
Sep 16, 2016 at 3:24 pm
lol!
Scooter McGavin
Sep 16, 2016 at 4:08 pm
I’m pretty sure zinc and copper are a lot softer than steel and chrome wedges… I don’t think you need to worry.
2cheese
Sep 15, 2016 at 10:22 am
Could you translate this drill to irons in order to better improve ballstriking overall?
tom stickney
Sep 15, 2016 at 1:57 pm
Yes you could 2cheese
Justin
Sep 15, 2016 at 2:51 pm
but you’d have to bring about $20.00 in pennies unless you wanted to walk out on the range and pick them up each time, haha
ChuckyB
Sep 15, 2016 at 9:37 pm
I was playing golf with someone once who told me of a drill similar to this but for full shots that may be of some help to you; so far as I know it was specific to iron shots. Basically, you would place something in front of your ball (1-2″), such as a piece of a broken tee (which can easily be found lying around everywhere on a driving range) when hitting shots on a range; when you hit the ball, you would also attempt to hit/pick/brush the object as well; from my understanding, the intent is to shallow or level out the bottom or your swing arch, so as to improve your ball striking. Hope this helps.