Give Me 8 Minutes and I’ll Unlock Your Best Iron Striking

Are you afraid of being the worst golfer in your group? You no longer can find the middle of the clubface, too many heel strikes, toe strikes, topping the ball, too big a divot, and hitting it fat. What if I told you you need to practice some poor shots to get back to the middle of the clubface? By changing our intent, trying to strike it on the toe, trying to strike it on the heel, without having too many complicated swing thoughts, I guarantee you can improve your game. I'm going to give you three simple drills today to show you how. We're going for a centered strike. It's a little bit on the heel. That tends to be my miss. Okay shot, but I'd rather be more centered. I'm going to practice the opposite of that. This next one, more on the toe. More on the toe. Success. When I play poorly, I just mentioned I tended too much on the heel. So for me to practice a heel shot, you really don't want to do it. I'm going to try it, but I get too close to the hosel, might even shank it. That was hit somewhere over here. Ugly, ugly, ugly, but nowhere near the toe. I hit it about where I want it. By practicing the opposite of our mistake, we can get back in the middle of clubface. Back in the center. Again, practice the opposite of our miss to improve those poor shots and get back to a quality strike. A key fundamental is having great clubface awareness at contact. We use Trackman technology at the academy. I'm going old school in this case. I have an impact bag. Probably can't read this, but it says Gary Weirin's Impact Bag. Gary Weirin was the freshman college coach on our team at the University of Oregon. And he's a wonderful instructor. He's taught all the world. He was head of the PGA America education program for many years. I believe he still teaches in Florida. So we're going to work on clubface alignment here. Closed at contact. Open and square. All starting from the same position. With good alignment at address. Good grip. So this one's closed face at contact. Go 20 or 30 yards left. You're going to have an open face. Miss the green to the right. So by practicing clubface awareness, we're going to gain more control and our center strike down the middle. One of the best iron players ever, Johnny Miller. Johnny Miller had a slow motion drill at home practicing. He had a mat, a net, and he used this before he became a member at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. So this was in his learning stage. He would take slow motion swings and hit balls and he practiced enough. He felt he had such good clubface control even when he was off kilter, off tempo. He could still find the clubface in a square position and hit quality strikes. So we're going to start normal speed. Square alignment. Hitting one left. Way left. Miss the truck. Hit a tree. Square alignment. Hitting his way right. That'd be right of a green, right of a bunker. Now middle of the green. Not quite as good at Johnny Miller, but with more practice, we're going to shoot lower scores. So quality strike. We want ball first, ground second on full swings. Ball first, divot second. People can't always practice on turf northwest sometimes in wet weather in the wintertime. We're on a mat today at the academy. I'm going to use some tape. You could do the same tape as a drill on a mat. I'm going to take a swing and miss the tape on purpose. Ball would be at the back of this tape. I'll hit three shots in a moment. I'm going to swing too high and miss this tape. This would be for somebody who hits the ball too fat. I'm going to swing too high. I'm going to swing too low and hit behind the tape. This would be the fat shot on the golf course. I'm going to hit the imaginary ball and on this third piece of tape, get this tape out of the way. There's our quality strike. I'll now do that with three golf balls. First one, hitting too high in the ball. This would be thin or a top shot. The tape won't move unless the ball moves it. Those sting. We get away from that middle of clubface. That hurts in cold weather. The tape didn't move. The ball quail high. I'm going to hit too far behind the ball. A fat shot. Great big divot in a wet turf. The ball would go high and short. Hit behind it. A high shot. Lost maybe 10 yards distance. The tape didn't move. Would have been worse on wet turf. Wouldn't have gone very far at all. Quality strike. Ball first. Tape second. Quality strike. Tape gone. Ball in the middle of the green. It's a great drill. I have some impact tape in my golf club. Going for a centered strike and a straight shot. Down our yellow target line. Quality strike. So having intent of getting back in the middle. Practicing the opposite of our missed hits. We can be more consistent and play better golf. So we've talked about three simple drills. Using impact tape on the clubface. Using tape on the ground. And some simple practice exercises. So we can have less swing thoughts and get back in the middle of the clubface by practicing the opposite of our miss. We're at the Reserve Golf Academy at the Reserve Indians and Golf Club. We have two wonderful full-length golf courses. At the Academy we use TrackMan and Video. We have Gyrus Technology. We coach year-round because we're undercover in poor weather. We're outside in good weather. And we're on the golf course for playing lessons also. So if you want more weekly content, like this video, subscribe to the channel. Any comments or questions down below. And remember, practice a little bit often and prepare to improve.