The Secret To BETTER BALL-STRIKING
We reveal a simple adjustment that could transform your ball- striking without changing your swing
What’s the secret to better ball-striking? For Jack Nicklaus, it’s simple: “Striking the ball with the hands slightly ahead of the ball is fundamental to solid shot-making.” This is what the world’s best golfers do – they compress the ball, shot after shot, ball first, then divot. We mere mortals have our moments where we send one arrow straight at the pin – yet we don’t always know how we did it, and we can lack consistency. Well, what if we told you that you could transform your ball-striking without making drastic swing changes?
This ‘hands forward’ concept is an established truth. There are many ways to swing a golf club effectively. We all know someone with an unorthodox action. There are plenty of swings in the professional game, too, which you’d struggle to find in a coaching manual. For all the differences and little quirks out there,
however, the best ball-strikers share at least one characteristic: the hands are ahead of the ball through the hitting zone.
If you can achieve this position, you’ll reap the rewards. Biomechanics expert Dr Sasho Mackenzie, who has worked with many of golf’s leading manufacturers, has shown that this ‘lag impact’ can greatly improve clubface angle, dynamic loft and club path. What does this mean? Put simply, greater accuracy, greater distance and greater distance control – something every golfer strives for.
Despite these much-publicised benefits, the game is littered with ‘flippers’. The flipper – and there’s a fair chance you’re one of them
– is a player who tends to collapse their hands at impact. In slow motion, you’d see the shaft overtaking an extension of the lead forearm through impact, which will often lead to those confidencesapping heavy contacts, and shots that lack penetration and distance. Surprisingly, it’s not a fault that just exists among amateurs.
For Bertie Cordle, a former PGA professional and the man who commissioned the Mackenzie study, flipping is “the biggest problem in golf”. His own research supports this: of 448 golfers (112 professionals and 336 amateurs), he found that as many as 51% of professionals and 84% of amateurs reached a flip impact.
“It’s mind boggling,” he says. “These are the guys who are supposed to be teaching us how to play the game and they’re flipping their clubs. When you slow the swing down, you go, ‘Crikey, how did they ever win a golf tournament?’ The interesting thing
“It’s all about trying to maintain control of the club until after the ball has been struck”
& Wedges