- Hi Adam Bazalgette here in sunny Naples, Florida.
I'm two-time PGA Teacher Of The Year award winner here.
A long time David Leadbetter associate.
Today's subject, how to stop hitting toe shots.
Stay tuned.
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So how to stop hitting toe shots.
They can really plague your game.
They'll rob you of not only accuracy,
but certainly distance.
We'll have a look at what I think is
the leading cause of those today.
Kind of flush out how you might work on that.
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Okay, let's get started.
So there's a number of things
that could cause you to hit the ball on the toe.
Certainly you could stand too far from the ball.
It's possible as well to lose your balance
and straighten up away from it a little bit.
That'll make you hit it out on the toe.
But I think the most common one
and the one we really wanna tackle today,
and that's the one where the club's coming
from outside the target line to inside the target line.
And what happens is, the club's moving closer to you as hit
and your arms are getting shorter,
and it is very easy to catch it out there in the toe.
Let's have a look from that angle.
So you could also say as we look from here,
that the swing's too wide on that side of the ball
and consequently we'll start to get narrow
on this side of the ball.
You often see this chicken wing
kind of pulled in look with the arms.
Again, the fact of the matter is
if the club's moving too much towards you
and if your arms are getting a little shorter as you hit,
there's a good chance you're gonna catch it on the toe.
Let's look at a couple of great players in action here.
And I'll show you here the kinda look that you want.
So there's Lydia Ko, number one ladies player.
And if we look at her downswing,
let's say midway down
she's just at the outer edge of that KIA sign up there,
right at the right-front headlight.
Now compare that position with out there.
So look how much wider she is here
than she was on the downswing.
So, that's what we're shooting for.
Narrow to wide.
And that'll get the bottom of your swing
in front of the ball,
but it prevents you pulling in
and cutting it off the toe there.
So here's Dustin Johnson.
Now what we're not saying is,
I'm not saying the club comes,
if that's the target line right there, I estimate.
I'm not saying, the top club comes from
the inside to the outside.
What I am saying is, it comes from the inside
and sustains down the line a little longer.
It doesn't wipe in there too close.
And you can see his hands are up away from it a little bit
at that point right after contact, that contact.
That's part of that narrow toe-wide look,
and you can get out there and hit it solidly doing that.
So as we start to look at how to work on it,
here's one of the best suggestions I could give you.
Listen, there's a lot of facets
that can cause someone to get a little wide,
and get a little chicken wing.
But we're gonna focus on
what you could feel right down here,
that would make a difference for you.
And I would set up a couple of golf balls
so you've got affectively an imaginary ball in the middle
and just practice striking the turf a little bit more
over here in front of that imaginary golf ball.
And of course, we're not allowing you
to get steeped to do that.
We'll take that piece of information for granted.
But if you can strike the turf further over here,
it basically means the club had to be closer to you there,
and would have to be getting wider in this position.
This is just a fact of geometry,
you can't have the swing super-wide on both sides,
nor can you really have it super-narrow on both sides.
It's gonna tend to be wider on one side
and narrower on the other,
and we want wide there and narrow here.
So this is a great drill, brushing the ground over there,
then just bring a golf ball over
and work on it a little bit.
And you can see I could hit the ground on that side.
And again, we're just dealing with this
little component of the swing.
But if you can get the right feel here,
there's a good chance other things
are gonna start to sort themselves out too.
Let me show you a view from over here.
And a little trick with your wrist as well
that might help you accomplish this.
So again, I'm gonna practice my sense of hitting the ground
as far out there as I can.
And that fosters the feeling of narrow to wide.
Now let me just reiterate again,
we're not trying to swing in-to-out,
we're trying to swing from the inside nice and wide
up the target line, before it start's to come around a lot.
Let me give you one little tip here.
If you struggled a great deal with coming across the ball,
a lot of people have,
hey there's a lot of things that can be causing it.
But when you work on it on this scale,
and this would be great for people hitting it off the toe,
try to feel that about a foot after contact,
the handle of the club is higher a little bit.
Not dramatically higher, just a little bit.
And we don't wanna feel that by raising the body,
but by feeling that as the wrists unhinge,
they arch a little bit.
Believe me, if you can arch them a little bit
it really keeps the club head out there.
So, fiddle with that on a small scale.
And again, just practice it.
See if you can get the proper feel.
That's nice and high with the handle.
Hit myself a little draw.
Felt like the club was nice and wide
and stayed on the line for a little bit there
as I went through.
Well I hope that's helpful for you
on how to stop hitting toe shots.
If you like the video, please leave a comment below.
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