(club whacks)
- Hello, Adam Bazagette, founder of Scratch Golf Academy,
here at the beautiful Club at Mediterra.
Today's subject, three golf swing drills for irons,
and I'll show you three drills I think
can really help you build a great impact.
They're very impact oriented drills,
and we'll take you through those.
We'll look at a pro at one point in the video.
I think it's gonna be helpful for you, hopefully.
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So have a look.
That black spot on the face represents the sweet spot.
This is a nine iron.
Any time you have loft like that,
you have to tilt the club to get solid contact
and compress the ball.
A zero lofted club, you would have to do that.
Obviously we don't play with zero lofted clubs.
So that is crucial if you're gonna hit solid shots,
that you have a good mental picture of that.
So our first drill is gonna be with the lead hand,
left hand of course for the right-handed golfer,
and we're gonna have you choke down midway down on the grip,
make that club feel a little bit lighter,
and it's really a coordination drill.
Can you tilt the sweet spot?
Do it statically.
Statically in the world of golf just means without motion,
static loft, dynamic loft.
Do it statically, practice it, then hit some little shots.
This'll be a test for most people.
It takes a few minutes to develop some sort of feel,
just tiny ones.
That could really feel like de-loft at the back of my hand.
I was able to kinda clip the ball
with the sweet spot pointed down.
Let me try that once again.
Hang in there with this.
You get good at this, you will be helping yourself.
Let's see how we do.
Yep, hit a hair behind it, but did,
I think, a good job tilting it down.
Now, one other feature here that's very important,
picture a hammer, let's say.
When you a hammer a nail,
you don't just move the hammer like that.
There's a purposeful pop to the thing.
That's what we're trying to create here.
So as you come in and do this drill,
you'll notice, I'll hit one more,
there's very much a little snap down there.
It's not just dragging the left arm and club through.
So, here we go.
Get my feel.
Right like that, and you should have a short, firm finish.
Okay, let's check out our next drill.
Well, if you're going to be a good iron player,
not only have you gotta tilt the sweet spot,
you've gotta have that shaft under reasonably good control.
It's got to be fairly stable there at the bottom.
If that thing's flipping all over the place
and unstable at the moment of contact
or your arms are all out of sorts there,
you are not going to apply consistent pressure to the ball.
You're not gonna have good contact, really,
but you're not gonna have consistent distance control.
So our next drill hits some little shots.
Again, nine iron's my choice, something like that.
And the idea, probably something like a 2/3
to half a backswing, something like that.
The idea is that you get down at impact.
You're gonna hit it fairly hard
but have a really short finish.
Picture as though maybe there's
a tree limb hanging over you.
Bang, hit, and hold it.
In order to do that, you've gotta have your ducks in a row.
You've gotta have your core working, your arms stable,
and you'll start to get a really good feel.
So let me try one here.
I'm just getting back in about there.
Right like that.
Now, you'll have to practice it a bit,
if you haven't done this, to get that sorta result
where you can hit it hard and put the breaks on,
but when you do, you will have really really good stability.
Now, listen, if you've gotten the sweet spot tilted
and you're smashing down in there
leaning the shaft a little bit
and your arms and club are nice and stable as you hit it,
you might find that you start to dig a little deeply
and thump the club into the ground.
So let's have a look at a pro,
and then our third drill will kinda deal
with how to level that out a little bit.
So here's Rory McIlroy hitting a little wedge
on the left picture, just ripping some kind
of a short iron on the right hand picture.
Let's have a look.
I've put yellow dots there.
That's about where the handle of that club would be there,
maybe there, and I'm estimating where
the top of his glove is, but you can see,
you can just see the handle there as it went by.
Look at the upward arc of that handle as he hits it,
and again, if he had that much lag
and the handle didn't go up,
he would literally smash the ball in the ground.
Now, you don't see his arms pulling in,
you don't see his head going way up.
So what you do see, look at his belt line
on this picture on the right.
What you do see is a thrust of the hips
that cause the tailbone to rise a little bit.
Watch this left shoulder over here
on the topside of the screen.
There, watch that rise as he goes through.
It's rotating on this axis.
Those are the things, that thrust of the hips,
the rise of the left shoulder and, consequently, left hand,
that are going to cause that club handle to rise.
Watch this white scoreboard right here,
and look how the handle of the golf club works
as he's going through right from the lake
up into the scoreboard there.
You do this kind of a move,
you have a magic combination for some great iron play.
Now, I have a free three part detailed course
on solid strike, solid strike formula.
Just go down into the description box of this video
and you can pick your copy up while they're there.
Okay, let's try it.
I've got my nine iron.
Could be whatever, six, seven, eight, nine iron,
probably something on the shorter side's better.
Can I tilt the face down?
Can I really put some pressure on the ground but not dig in?
This broom's a great image, by the way.
Even if you don't have one, pretend you have one.
I've sawed this off a little bit
so it's about the length of a fairway wood,
but you could brush the carpet or brush the ground.
In other words, you could tilt the bristles
without smashing the entire broom in there.
So if I had to flick, you can see how
the handle rises a little bit.
Again, I'm not trying to lift up, I'm not trying to scoop.
I'm just feeling that as I thrust my hips underneath me,
my left shoulder, my hands rise just enough
to kinda give me the clearance I need.
Let's try a couple of small ones here.
I really liked that one.
That was a nice clip of the turf,
but I felt I was able to brush the turf.
Took a little divot there, but still be really stable.
Like anything else, listen, this is a skill.
You have to practice this, and play with this,
and vary these things to get the right mixture,
but if you're bad in your mixture
or if you're one of the more typical golfers
that slamming way too much down at the ground
then bailing out on it by scooping the club,
you're never, never gonna be a consistent iron player.
You're not gonna hit the ball solidly,
you're not gonna have consistent trajectory, control.
You can do this stuff, you've just gotta camp out
with the drills a little bit.
Let's try again.
Mid-scale.
Yep, pretty good feel there, even a slightly bigger divot,
but at no point did I feel like the club
was gonna really pound into the ground.
Play around with these ideas.
Go back to drill number one, coordinate yourself,
and if you work through them enough,
you will benefit with your iron game.
Well, I hope that helps you
with three golf swing drills for your irons there.
Please hit the thumbs up button if you did like the video,
if you found it helpful.
Again, it's helpful for us here at the channel.
Love to bring you free content.
Hopefully this one's gonna make
a difference in your iron game.
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