Four Drills That Will Help You Achieve Clean Contact with the Golf Ball
Making clean contact with the ball is essential to becoming a good golfer. Only when you are able to make solid contact swing after swing are you going to be able to know how far the ball will go with each of your clubs – so you can get closer to the hole, more often. Before you worry about making your swing more powerful, first try focusing your efforts on making the best contact possible.
Below are four quick drills to help you find that solid contact you have been looking for –
- Stay on lead foot. To practice making a proper descending blow into the ball, work on hitting half shots while leaning most of your weight onto your front leg. As you take your stance, lean onto your left leg (for a right handed golfer) so that about 75% of your weight is on that side. Then make some gentle swings, not trying to hit the ball any more than 100 yards or so. This modified stance should help you understand what it feels like to swing down into the ball.
- Top hand only. Another way to learn the feeling of solid contact is to hit some practice shots with only your top hand. Just like with the previous drill, you don’t want to try and hit these shots very hard – just a partial swing with a short iron will do the job of helping you feel the proper way to develop solid contact.
- Slow-motion swing. Putting both hands on the club, hit a few balls on the driving range while swinging in slow motion. The effect that this drill will have is to help you feel the movement of your weight throughout the swing, so you can work on your balance and the position of your arms and the club. As you get more comfortable and start making good contact, slowly increase the speed of your swing until you are swinging at full power.
- Bad lie drill. If you are able to practice on a grass driving range, use the bad lie drill to improve your ability to make clean contact. Place your ball in any bad lies that you can find on the range, and work on making good contact by hitting down through the ball. When you go back to hitting from a good lie, it will seem easy by comparison.
