- Welcome, Adam Bazalgette again
back here in Naples, Florida.
Two-time PGA Teacher of the Year Award winner.
Today's subject, how to hit irons for beginners.
Stay tuned.
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So, how to hit irons for beginners.
Hopefully, this is more than just for beginners.
There's a lot of us that could use
a little refresher on that.
And my goal is to give you some clear,
easy concepts so that striking the iron
solidly will seem very manageable
or at least easy to work on for you.
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plan to have a lot more coming your way.
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Okay, so the number one concept,
if there's one and one only I could
get across to you and that is this,
it is not your job as the golfer
to get the ball in the air.
That's the job of the club designer.
That's the person
that makes the ball go in the air.
So what is your job?
Your job is to take the golf club
and simply apply pressure to it,
simply to strike it and,
if you like,
to drive it forward.
The fact that the designer builds loft onto it,
that's what gets it in the air.
This is such a big problem for beginners.
Now, one of the things I have
at the Teaching Academy,
I've used this on a couple of videos,
I have a simple hammer, a mallet,
it's a wooden mallet and they've stuck a shaft
in the end of it.
And I'll often get players
that are struggling with this
to just bump a few balls forward with the mallet,
like that, there's no way you're
gonna get the ball in the air
with the mallet,
there's zero loft.
And usually people stop trying to get in the air
and they're content to just drive it forward
and strike it more like they would in croquet.
That's how you wanna be hitting
your irons a little bit more.
So if that's the mallet,
very easy to just bump the ball forward
in this fashion.
Once we get the golf club in our hands,
this is my eight iron here,
now we're dealing not specifically with a mallet,
we've got loft on this club,
so the sweet spot of this club is
in that little worn spot there.
And as you can see with loft,
I actually need to tilt that forward
a little bit for really solid contact.
So just the opposite of trying
to add loft and help it in the air,
what I'm really doing is hitting it,
driving it forward and actually reducing loft.
And if I can do that,
I can make solid contact with the ball.
So as we just said,
hey, you're trying to tilt the sweet spot
against the ball for solid contact
but that does not mean that you're trying
to chop down or bash down at the ball.
As we said earlier,
the job of the golfer is to compress the ball
and drive it towards the target.
And this mallet, yet again,
comes in handy.
I can pretty much feel without any effort
what it would take
to drive the ball forward here,
and just bump it forward that way
and that's exactly what I wanna feel with my iron.
One of the things that happens most to golfers,
not just new golfers,
is just there's this ferocious attempt
to make contact with the ball,
and boy, believe me,
that will lead you to hammering down at it.
Take a little of the fire out,
picture the angle the mallet would be out.
Don't worry if you miss-hit one
and just try to make the same shape swing,
one that would drive the ball
forward a little bit.
And as you get a little skill just tilt
the sweet spot slightly up against the ball,
you'll be hitting it just fine.
Just do it on a small scale first.
So my suggestion as you get started
with the golf club,
something like an eight iron's terrific,
that's about the right idea.
Just do some little, small swings
and practice solid contact,
practice creating compression.
And I strongly recommend that when you do this,
you do some what I call hit in the holes,
nice firm, short finish.
So often, even when people do it,
let's say they don't have a lot of skill,
they haven't hit a lot of golf balls.
Even if it's their intention
to just make solid contact
and to avoid the pitfall of trying
to help it in the air or whatever,
they just haven't practiced enough control
over the club and when they go to strike it,
it wobbles and flips out of position.
That is not, of course,
what we want so practice this.
And you can feel there's different ways
but here's a suggestion for you,
take this lead hand,
in my case of course as a right-hander,
it's my left hand,
and just practice turning some loft off the club,
pushing your hands forward a bit
and really feeling that turn down and firm.
And when I tap this ball I wanna feel
like I turn the sweet spot of that club
up against the ball and tilt it onto the ball
and stay nice and firm
and almost bowed under there.
So not only is it a hit and hold
but I have that really firm,
solid left wrist, like that.
Just camp out with that,
trying to tilt the sweet spot
and drive the ball forward.
When you have a little success,
add some speed and you will be hitting
these irons solidly,
I promise you, pretty quickly,
without a lot of thinking.
Well, whether or not you're
a somewhat experienced golfer,
I hope you found that helpful in terms of
how to hit irons for beginners.
We have all kinds of material
at ScratchGolfAcademy.com, my website,
including a whole course on irons.
And of course we have the YouTube channel here,
I hope you'll subscribe to that.
Leave a comment if you'd like me
to get back to it,
happy to try to do that.
Appreciate your time, as always.
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