(whack)
- Hello there, Adam Bazalgette here,
founder of Scratch Golf Academy.
And today's subject is a good one.
Three must do's with your irons.
I'll show you what I think those are.
I'll show you also a drill, kind of an image really,
that really makes this seem simple.
You'll kick yourself when you see it.
And then towards the very end of the video
I'll show you a big pitfall
that when people work on these things,
they frequently run into this pitfall.
(upbeat music)
Well if you're new to the channel
or if you watched the videos and haven't subscribed before
I'd really appreciate if you did that.
Helps us build the channel.
Helps us bring you more content
here at Scratch Golf.
Just hit the little red subscribe button there.
Go ahead and do that and the bell next to it,
you'll want to hit that so you're notified
every time a new video is coming your way.
(whack)
So the important things in iron game,
first thing of course, you've got to hit the ball
before the turf.
Everybody knows that.
But people find that surprisingly elusive.
Second thing, you have to have the handle
in front of the club head at contact.
And I'm gonna show you a pro now,
and I'll show you why there's such an inextricable link
between those two fundamentals.
So here's Bryson DeChambou,
looks like a short iron on the driving range there.
Let's see if he hits the ball before the ground.
Well no doubt about that.
There's the ball, there's the ground.
So here's the principal.
Let's say we draw a line up from the golf ball,
let's put that right there.
His club shaft gets to straight up and down or vertical
probably slightly before that,
let's say there.
In other words, it happens after the ball.
And here's the thing.
Your club will reach its true low point
when that shaft is vertical before starting back up again.
You have to make sure that that happens
after the golf ball is hit.
If we look at Bryson again,
by getting the handle past the ball
and getting most of the shaft past the ball
before he hits it there,
and then reaching vertical,
he ensures a nice crisp downward hit.
Then he ensures hitting the ball before the turf.
I have a full three part in-depth course
on solid strike form and hitting solid golf shots.
Pick it up down in the description box there.
It's yours for free.
Okay the next principal is an impact.
I've got a nine iron here.
You have to deloft the face.
You have to hit it with less loft
than it's effectively built with.
Now, I've done some videos that have mentioned that before
and obviously given a lot of golf lessons
and the subjects come up.
And people ask, but why do you have to do that?
Wouldn't it be easier to just use the loft you have
and maybe take a less lofted club if you needed to?
There are definitive reasons.
Let me show you up close why you have to be able to do that
to be a good iron player.
Well as I've showed you, you have to have the handle forward
to hit the ground in front of the ball.
But also there's the sweet spot.
It's up here.
It's not down at the bottom.
And if you have say, a nine iron and no real cushion
under the ball, and you hit it with full loft,
you are gonna make contact way at the bottom.
So they designed these so that when you deloft it
you take that sweet spot and tilt it onto the golf ball.
Now let's have a look at a drill
that I think will help you.
Then we'll come out and show you a pitfall at the end
that gets a lot of people into trouble.
So here's the drill, and it's really as much of an image
as a drill.
Look at that gigantic nail there, screw really,
slightly angled into the ground.
If you had a mallet and you had to tap that
so it went into the ground on that angle,
is it conceivable that in a thousand tries
you'd only bend the nail upwards?
Of course it's not.
Nobody would do that.
It might take you a few minutes to get real skill
at hitting it, but you wouldn't be sentenced there.
People tell me all the time, oh I've spent my whole life
scooping the ball.
I'll never get out of it.
That's for Pro's.
That's just nonsense.
You could take a club, now remember when you add loft
you have to have even more tilt to drive the nail
down in the ground.
And by the way your downward hit that you want
on a nine iron isn't nearly as severe as even that screw.
So don't sell yourself short.
You can do it.
Play around on a small scale.
I've got my nine iron here.
I'm not tryna beat down on it too much,
but I'm tryna tilt the face forward,
(whack)
tilt the handle in front of the ball,
and just work on this 'til you start to get
some sense of it.
An again, use an image I think is great.
I'm tryna drive the nail downwards.
I'm not worried about the golf ball.
Those balls popped off nice and low.
Now let's have a look at a real pitfall people get into
when they try to start doing this.
So here's Ernie Els.
I think anybody, me included, would love to have
his golf swing.
Beautiful, through the ball, and you can see
he clips a little bit of turf right after the ball.
So here's the point, here's the pitfall.
If you look at Ernie there, he's approaching impact.
If I draw line straight out from the handle
you can see, as he goes through, the tab of his glove
is just at the top edge of that.
Watch where the handle and the tab of the glove go.
Just slightly the tabs up here and for sure
the handle is up there at that point.
So what's happening here is
right at the critical moment of contact,
the club itself, or the grip end,
is beginning to arc up away from the turf,
really in conjunction with the way the left side
arcs up away from the turf.
And that reduces the tendency
to maybe beat down on the ball too much.
So, if you had as much angle as Ernie does,
if you had that much shaft angle and you kept hitting down
you would drive a hole into the ground.
So remember, you're not trying to swing the whole club down,
you're trying to swing it pretty level
across the ground even slightly ascending there.
But if you have enough forward lean
and the hands are beyond the ball enough
you will still get an appropriate amount of downward hit.
So as we work on this, for most people, let's face it,
they do too much of this.
So really work on tilting the face, leaning the shaft,
trapping the ball before the ground.
But if as you do it you start to stick the club
in the ground too much, take some of it out.
Land the proverbial plane a little more shallow.
Take a few practice swings
where you can sense it's more level,
left side rising slightly
like you're brushing the ground a little bit more.
You gonna make a few mistakes.
If you start to do that and then you lose your tilt,
that's okay.
Make it a smaller scale, add the tilt in.
So let's have a go here.
I'm gonna tilt this one and hit down a little bit too much.
(whack)
I definitely got the tilt.
I don't wanna hit down that much.
Again, people talk about being feel players.
You have to play around and develop feel.
So don't sell yourself short.
This one I'm gonna attempt to do with less downward hit.
(whack)
I like that one pretty well there.
Just raked the ground a bit.
Definitely felt the shaft was forward.
Play around with this.
You can even do it at home without a ball.
You will help your iron game.
Well if you like the video, and I hope you did,
I'd really appreciate it if you hit that thumbs up button.
Helps me build the channel and bring you content.
Leave a question or a comment.
I will get to those, happy to do that.
And hopefully these are great keys
for you to build that feel
of the three must do's with your irons.
Thanks again.
(upbeat music)