The Key Move to Hitting Your Irons With Precision and Accuracy

"Here is Tiger Woods starting down with his pelvis, letting his thoracic spine follow his pelvis, and his lead arm following his thoracic spine down to impact. He is making sure he keeps rotating through the shot post impact, allowing his hands and the club head to exit left through the golf shot"

The Key Move to Striking your Irons Pure

Your individual physiology and anatomy determine how you swing the golf club. Every player brings a different style of golf swing to the table, and it is important to figure out what works best for a player. If you want to play your best golf, it is critical that you find the swing that suits your physiology.

Most players driver swing will be different from their iron swings. The reason being is that there is a big difference in how we come into impact with the driver vs the iron swing. Your iron swing involves impact conditions where you will be hitting down on the golf ball. Hitting down on the golf ball means that the path of your golf club will be shifted out to the right. To hit the ball with precision and accuracy, you will need to adopt a different approach to hitting the golf ball.

To hit the ball straight with your irons, you need to match the club face to the path of your golf club. If you are hitting down with your irons, your club face will need to remain slightly open in order to hit the ball with minimal dispersion. This is because when you hit down on the golf ball, the path shifts to the right and the face needs to remain open to match the path.

A great way to hit your irons without worrying about hitting down to much on the ball is to try to clip the ball off the turf. Tiger Woods is the best iron player of all time, and he said it best. He stated “when I am hitting it my best, I am clipping the golf ball off the turf. This makes total sense because when you get to a point where you are clipping the ball off the turf, you are minimizing your downward angle of attack, and this helps you minimize shooting the club path out to the right so you can align more with your target at address.

How to Clip the Ball off the Turf for Optimal precision and Accuracy

In order to clip the golf ball off the turf with precision and accuracy, there is one particular move that needs to happen to control the club face through the ball. The best way to accomplish this is by making sure you rotate your body through the shot from the top of the swing all while keeping a center pivot. The best way to think about this is through the kinematic sequence.

The Kinematic Sequence

The kinematic sequence works through a series of movements that starts from the top of the golf swing. To adopt the kinematic sequence, you need to do the following:

1. You start the down swing by starting to turn your pelvis.

2. Following the rotation of your pelvis, your thoracic spine start rotating.

3. Your lead arm will follow your thoracic spine as you move the club down to the ball.

4. The club will make impact with the ball as you successfully completed the kinematic

sequence.

*** One key problem that rarely gets discussed is what happens at impact and post impact. You need to make sure you continue to rotate your pelvis and thoracic spine through the shot. In doing so, you will create a ton of space so you can exit the club and your hands to the left, staying on a proper arc. Staying centered as possible while you go move through the kinematic sequence is the best way to hit the golf pure without hitting down on the ball too much. This will create consistency and repeatable contact, giving you the ability to have much more control over your iron shots!

Stay as Centered as you can!

When you swing your irons with a centered pivot and use rotation as the main driver to govern your iron swing, you are creating a situation where your hips and thoracic spine will clear and you will be creating lots of space for your hands and arms to come down into the golf ball and exit left, keeping your hands moving on the arc. The best iron players in the world do this incredibly well. If you let your hips and thoracic spine stall through impact, it can become very difficult to manage your impact conditions with your irons and you will start making inconsistent hits, mainly hitting the ball fat because you will be driving the club into the ground. Shanks can also come into play if you do not clear your hips and thoracic spine through the shot.

There should not be a whole lot of lateral movement from side to side during your iron swing. You want to try and create a situation where you are rotating around your centered axis point while you swing your irons. Your iron swing will work best if you build it around rotation instead of laterally shifting back and forth.