So how to hit irons for beginners. Hopefully, this is more than just for beginners. There’s a lot of us that could use a little refresher on that, and the goal is to give you some clear, easy concepts so that striking the iron solidly will seem very manageable or at least easy to work on for you.
So the number one concept, if there’s one and one only we could get across to you, and that is this. It is not your job as the golfer to get the ball in the air. That’s the job of the club designer. That’s the person that makes the ball go in the air. So what is your job? Your job is to take the golf club and simply apply pressure to it, simply to strike it, and if you like, to drive it forward. The fact that the designer builds loft onto it, that’s what it gets it in the air. This is such a big problem for beginners.
You can use a simple hammer or mallet, like a wooden mallet and stuck a shaft at the end of it. There’s no way you’re going to get the ball in the air with the mallet, there are zero lofts, and usually, people stop trying to get in the air and they’re content to just drive it forward and strike it more like they would in croquet. That’s how you want to be hitting your irons a little bit more.
So if that’s the mallet, very easy to just bump the ball forward in this fashion, once we get the golf club in our hands, now we’re dealing not specifically with a mallet. We’ve got loft on this club. So the sweet spot of this club is in that little worn spot there. So just the opposite of trying to add loft and help it in the air. Hit it, drive it forward and reducing loft. If you can do that, you can make solid contact with the ball.
As we just said, you’re trying to tilt the sweet spot against the ball for solid contact, but that does not mean that you’re trying to chop down or bash down at the ball. As we said earlier, the job of the golfer is to compress the ball and drive it towards the target, and this mallet yet again comes in handy. You can pretty much feel without any effort what it would take to drive the ball forward and just bump it forward that way, and that’s exactly what you want to feel with your iron.
One of the things that happen most to golfers, not just new golfers, is just there’s this ferocious attempt to make contact with the ball. And that will lead you to hammering down at it. Take a little of the fire out, picture the angle the mallet would be it, don’t worry if you mis-hit one, and just try to make the same shaped swing, one that would drive the ball forward a little bit. As you get a little skill, just tilt the sweet spot slightly up against the ball. You’ll be hitting it just fine. Just do it on a small scale first.
As you get started with the golf clubs, something like an eight iron is terrific, that’s about the right idea. Just do some little small swings and practice solid contact, practice creating compression. Recommended that when you do this, you do somewhat called hit and holds a nice firm short finish. So often even when people, let’s say they don’t have a lot of skill, they haven’t hit a lot of golf balls, even if it’s their intention to just make solid contact and to avoid the pitfall of trying to help it in the air or whatever, they just haven’t practiced enough control over the club. When they go to strike it, it wobbles and flips out of position. That is not of course what we want.
So practice this and then you can feel these different ways, but here’s a suggestion for you. Take this lead hand and just practice turning some loft off the club, pushing your hands forward a bit and really feeling that turndown and firm. When you tap the ball, you want to feel like you turn the sweet spot of that club up against the ball and tilt it onto the ball and stay nice and firm and almost bowed under there. Not only is it a hit and hold, but you have that really from solid left wrists like that. Just camp out with that, trying to tilt the sweet spot and drive the ball forward. When you have a little success, add some speed and you will be hitting these on solidly.