How to Hit Your Irons Crisp

I often hear golfers ask how they can hit their iron shots more solid like the pros. This entails hitting down and through with the club head, making a nice divot past the ball. In this way you’ve compressed the golf ball in between the club head and the ground in front of it. This is what creates that great sound of having made square impact, in which the ball explodes off the club face.

One of the main problems that prevent amateurs from achieving this kind of contact, is that they don’t retain the angle long enough on the downswing. That is, they break and uncock their wrists too soon, before getting to the ball. This is usually because they are trying to scoop the ball up, trying to help the ball into the air. This is an incorrect perception, as your irons have plenty of loft to get the ball in the air, they don’t need any help. club-hitting-down-on-ball

What you want to concentrate on in order to avoid that early unhinging of the wrists, is to point the butt end of the club (top of grip) toward the ball for the first ½ of the downswing. This will keep the club head nicely behind the hands with all the energy of your swing loaded into that club head, equaling potential power.

For the last ½ of the downswing, and on into the follow through, you want to think about releasing the club. That is, rotating and turning the arms and club over, just as if you were flipping pancakes over on the griddle. The right arm should pass over the left arm through impact.

This whole movement should simulate the action of hammering a nail in, at point of impact. When you use a hammer correctly, the handle is ahead of the hammer head to create leverage and power. The handle then acts as a fulcrum point as the hammer head bursts forward at impact. This is the same in the golf swing. The handle of the club will be ahead of the club head on downswing, and then at the last second the club head will pass the hands at impact, the grip end staying still for a brief half-second.

A great visualization for this is to see the head of a nail on the back of the ball, and to think of hammering that nail through the ball into the ground in front of it. This will help you to hit down and through with your irons, making that elusive, solid, dynamic contact we all strive to achieve.