Why 90% of Golfers Can't Strike Their Irons & Hybrids

So this week I coached almost 50 students and every single one of them were struggling to strike their irons, hybrids and fairways consistently off the ground. Now they've been playing for quite a while, they understood concepts of like you've got to strike the ball then the ground, you've got to have shaft lean, you've got to have your weight forward, all those kind of things, but nothing they tried consistently gave them the results they wanted. Now they all had different swings but they did have one thing in common, they didn't understand the concept I'm about to share with you in this video. Once I explained how to hit any club off the ground, two things started to happen. One, they said Danny this feels a bit weird, but two, there was a rapid improvement in their level of consistency. In this video I just want to take the time to share with you what I shared with them because I don't see people understanding this or knowing this very much. Before I do though, look if you're new to the channel, it's one of your first lessons of mine, please consider subscribing. I release videos just like this one every single week to try and help you improve your game. You never have to remember a thing, I always put a free downloadable practice guide in that description box below. So to help you hit every single club consistently off the ground, I want to give you exactly what I gave my students. The first thing I'm going to give you is the concept and then I'll give you a drill that I gave them which worked very very well. So the first thing, let's start with the concept which most people don't really truly understand. So I want you to look at this hula hoop. This is what we call a very straight swing direction. This is a swing, right? A direction of a swing. If it was a pendulum, right? But we don't play golf with shafts like this. We stand at an angle to the golf ball. Because of that, this kind of angles also which makes a big difference to the way the club moves. So as I swing the club back, notice this. The club works inwards and upwards on the backswing. And this is what then screws people up. It works downwards and outwards on the way through before gradually working back to straight. And then once it moves, it works inwards and upwards on the way through. Like this. It's always working on an arc. But my question to you would be where in that arc should you strike the golf ball? Because this is important. There is a low point to this arc, right? Just like that circle there. There's a lowest point to that circle. Your low point of your golf swing is right where your lead shoulder is, right? Now we don't ever want to hit a golf ball at the lowest point because it basically gives you no margin of error whatsoever, okay? Let me just show you here actually. I'm going to hit a ball. Listen for this sound and notice what you hear. Hear that almost thin noise, right? Look at my low point there, look. 0.7, only 0.7 after the golf ball. So it's right at the bottom of the low point and the strike was really bad. Now I could hit it there and just about get away with it but there's no margin of error. So what we do all the time is we take this low point and we make sure that this is step number one, your ball position is behind the lowest point of your golf swing. So the first stage I got my players to do was this. I got them to hold the club out straight in front of them like this, drop it straight down and this is the low point of your golf swing. You need to make sure that your ball position is at least two to three balls back of that place there. That is the first thing to do, right? Great, simple, right? However, now we move on to step number two. So they've got the ball position in the right place, we now know that we have an opportunity to strike. In fact, I'll just hit a shot for you and then we'll show you the next bit. So if the ball position is now back here, listen to the difference in the sound. Suddenly you'll see this low point now, four inches, look, after the golf ball. So suddenly we get a much better sound. But I'm a professional, they are professionals, which for that reason, they needed step number two, because here's the problem. They now understand that low point needs to be back, they've moved the ball back. But here's the weird thing. When you move the ball further back in your stance, where in the arc do you strike the ball now? Where's that club heading? Notice on here, look, it's heading to the right of target. Why is this difficult? Well, Tony, one of my students, he just said, it just doesn't feel right, Danny, because as I'm coming into the golf ball, it feels like I'm going to hit the ball, because you're saying the ball has to be here, it feels like I'm going to hit the ball to the right. But how am I supposed to hit it straight? I said, that's the point, you don't try and hit it straight. We try to play golf in curves. And it's like, what? It says, yeah, if you try and hit a ball straight, you have to have the ball at the lowest point of your arc. And that has no margin of error, you can hit it straight, but you'll hit it fat, thin, all kinds of stuff. So by building in that margin of error, by moving the ball back in your stance, so it's now behind your lowest point, which is your middle of your left shoulder, you're now going to catch the ball earlier on in the arc, that is what you're doing to basically strike a solid shot. Right? So how do I get it on target? Well, if your swing now is going to strike the ball as it's heading out to the right, I want you to make one little adjustment, take the club and just close it. So it's just closed down just a little bit here. And what this will do now is this, it will help the ball, it'll close the face the path and it will help the ball curve back to the target. So I want you to start seeing the ball setting off to the right and drawing back. Nobody was doing this whatsoever. Every single one of them were trying to hit the ball straight. And they all had different faults. Some of them did this, they would try, they would come over the top, because this would give them the feeling of swinging straight down the line. Some would in a sense, come down here, but then they do this, they'd flick the wrist to try and hit it straight. Yeah, because this didn't feel right, it was going to go out to the right hand side. Other people would move their body backwards like this again, just to try and hit it straight. None of them, not a single one liked this feeling of the body almost being at this angle as it's coming into the golf ball because every single one of them felt it was going to go to the right hand side. This is the feeling I needed to help them kind of be accustomed to. So we've got ourselves set here. Stance is completely straight. Ball position is behind the low point. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to close the face down just a little bit, then I'm going to grip it. Now from here, look, take a look at this. Take a look at that look. Beautiful. So even just tweaking that, it's a lovely look, a little soft draw. Low points after the golf ball here, my swing circle is almost zero, which is perfect. Club path, as we said, look, will be out to the right, posit number, and the face to path is slightly closed, which brings it back, right? So it's always a little draw. So before I show you the drill that I gave them that they could take to the golf course, every student, once they understood this, then had to get used to this feeling of, look at this, on the way down, my hips and my shoulders look at where are they aiming? They're aiming, look, to the right of the target. Most of the people to start with initially always wanted to go to straight, which meant that they would unfold their shoulders too quickly to try to hit straight, which affects strike, affects direction, increases slice, all that kind of stuff. Now suddenly had the concept of appreciating that they could actually start the ball to the right of the target, as long as they had the club face slightly closed, it encouraged them to stay much, much more, look, close to the target and get that feeling that the club is heading to the right as they struck the golf ball. Huge, huge difference. Now to really kind of hit home with this, I gave them a real simple drill that I got from a friend of mine, Andreas Kelly, who ultimately, I think this is just brilliant, really, really is good. Now it's on your drill, right? To train the feeling. So you get yourself set here, you've got your low point here, look, make sure the ball position is behind that low point by at least two or three balls. And then what I want you to do is this, take your pelvis, shift it right over your lead heel. Why do we do this? Because you'll see the best players in the world look when they're here, the middle of their pelvis is over their left heel. This is one of the key factors of striking it. You don't see this with most amateur golfers. Why? Well, we've just talked about, they're trying to hit straight a lot of time. It feels easier to hit straight when his pelvis starts to fall backwards than it is here. This gives you the feeling that you're going to be now, certainly with my students, they felt like they were now, if that goes there, Danny, I feel like I'm now hitting even further to the right. Absolutely. So pelvis over that lead heel, get the face slightly closed, then grip it. Now from here, what we're going to do, all I'm going to get you to do to start with is just simply turn the hips to face the target, get the chest, the hips facing the target and your trail arm at this stage, just parallel to the ground. So it looks a little bit like this, pelvis over and through. That's all we're doing. And it's getting them to feel, which they're not used to, the pivot happening over their lead leg, because everyone who was trying to hit it straight had a combination of people trying to pivot from their center like this, or even worse still, over their right leg. And all this did was get them flicking. You can see it's not going to be powerful. It's not going to be consistent. So they've got the concept. This feels really exaggerated for most of them, but I said, trust it. Right. We get ourselves set, faces ready to go. And then all I'm going to do now is turn and finish here. Okay. So I'll make a swing. I finish here, probably extend it a little bit on the way through more than I really wanted to, but hey, Presta, we hit a beautiful look draw. Low point is after the golf ball. If you do this right and you repeat this in slow motion, it's one of the fastest ways to really learn this feeling, but no drill, nothing you work on will actually work unless you really appreciate the concept and you're consciously trying to play this draw shot. If you've got any questions on this subject, don't hesitate whatsoever. I answer absolutely everybody. Leave them in the comments box below and look, share it with a friend who you know is struggling with their game. I'm sure it will help look. If you're new to the channel, press that subscribe button and the bell. I'll put a free download or practice guide in the description box below. If you want to help on other parts of your game, there's a couple of things you can do to click this video out right here on the short game. Great, great video, or head over to dannymore.com where I can give you personalized advice, but until next week, have a wonderful golfing.