Can’t stop hitting the ball thin? Try focusing on this

Everyone hits bad shots — it’s a guarantee in this game — but there are lots of different ways it can happen. There are slices and hooks, short and long, tops and chunks … you get the picture.

Unless you’re a club-testing robot, you’ll always hit your fair share of mishits. The key to improvement is understanding why these misses happen and how you can fix them.

Today, we’ll be talking about thin shots. For more, we turn to GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jonathan Yarwood.

Why you hit it thin

Hitting it thin essentially means you are making no contact with the ground as you hit the ball. As we all know, the key to solid ball striking with irons is making contact with the ball and then the turf. But when you’re hitting it thin, the contact with the turf is lacking.

Why does this happen? It all has to do with where the low point of your swing is.

“Your low point is behind the ball,” Yarwood says. “The club and the angle of attack are raising up as you hit it. What we see from the elite players is the angle of attack is going down.”

How to fix thin shots

As Yarwood notes, the key for hitting solid irons is getting the angle of attack to work down as you make impact with the ball. To do this properly, you need to focus on shifting your mass and pressure correctly.

From the top of the swing, you want your mass and pressure shifting to your lead side. Focus on feeling like your lead side is moving two to three inches closer to the target as your swing goes from the top to arms parallel on the downswing.

“That’s how you get the hands ahead and how you get that lean in the handle and the angle of attack down,” he says.

Try this drill

If you want to ingrain this feeling on the range, try this simple drill. Take your normal setup and backswing, but then as you start the downswing, take a tiny step with your lead foot.

“You do that, the angle of attack is going down, the path is going left, the mass is shifting like it should,” Yarwood says. “You will crunch it.”