IMPROVE YOUR IRON STRIKE

Fight your instincts and feel the squeeze...

It’s one of golf’s quirks that the

clubface loft – the very thing designed to send the ball upwards – encourages us to try to assist that launch. But any attempt to help the ball up – conscious or otherwise – typically causes a weak contact, the powerless bottom of the clubface meeting the ball. We can expect heavy or thin contact. The first step in turning this around is trusting the loft to do its job of creating the ball’s launch. The second is to work on an attack that squeezes or compresses the ball. Monitor your success with this drill.

1 Focus on your glove badge.

Ideally use it to fasten a tee peg or pencil to highlight where it’s facing. With that weak strike, the glove badge and pencil point skywards at impact (inset) with the shaft leaning backwards. In contrast, a strong strike sees the badge/pencil point slightly downward at contact, the shaft leaning forwards. To work on this feeling, hit shots crisply but with no more than a three-quarter-length swing. This shorter action encourages a descending, punch-like move through impact.

2 Look again at those two images.

Note how the weak strike elbows are splayed while in the strong strike they’re much closer together. Squeezing the elbows together through the ball – both arms extended – ensures the swing’s arc is at its widest after impact – which keeps the club moving down through the ball. Squeezing your elbows as you swing through also promotes good rotation and release of the clubhead. If you struggle to keep that pencil looking downward through the strike zone, feel that squeeze.