Welcome to Shaving Strokes, a GOLF.com series in which we’re sharing improvements, learnings and takeaways from amateur golfers just like you — including some of the speed bumps and challenges they faced along the way.
In my humble opinion, there’s almost nothing sweeter than compressing an iron shot. It feels perfect. It feels right. And that’s because it is.
Compressing the golf ball means you’re making ball-first contact rather than hitting the ground before impact — which is the reason why so many amateurs chunk their shots. By making ball-first contact, the ball will, for a split-second, feel like it’s grabbing the grooves of the clubface to create a more predictable spin and ball flight.
Having the ability to consistently compress your iron shots is an elevated skill that requires knowledge of attack angle and clubface control. Unfortunately, the regular ol’ Average Joe doesn’t necessarily understand either.
This simple divot drill will help you compress the golf ball. Here’s how
But even if you’re not a scratch golfer or a pro, you can still learn how to compress your irons — and it’s actually not as difficult as it may first appear.
In the video below (courtesy of Titleist’s YouTube), GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jason Baile explains an easy drill that’ll help you learn the feel and motion to compress your irons. All you need is a disc, a quarter, and some two-sided tape to give it a try, too, so there’s no excuse not to get to work and start to see better shots almost instantly.
How to compress your irons like a pro
As Baile begins the video, he holds up a plastic slider, sort of a miniature frisbee, and explains why it can do wonders to help you compress your iron shots.
He then says to visualize the slider as a “big quarter,” with one side marked as heads and the other side as tails.
“We’re going to pretend that the non-marked side is the tails of a really big quarter, and then the marked side is the heads of a really big quarter,” Baile says. “When we put our hands on there, the trail hand’s going to be a little bit lower than the lead hand. As we come down here, we’re going to try and take the lead head side of the quarter down and over the tails side of the quarter.”
This simple grip hack will confirm if your clubface is square at address
By doing this simple move with the hands, Baile says you’ll deloft the golf club and begin to experience the feeling of compressing your irons.
“By delofting that golf club, it’ll send the face down and slightly to the right of the target line, really turning the loft there,” he adds. “So heads side versus tails side, turn the right wrist over and really stay on top of the golf ball with the palm.”
After practicing that feel to understand your hand and wrist motion, Baile takes out some two-sided tape with a quarter, explaining how to use each in order to compress your irons.
“I’ve got a piece of two-sided tape with a quarter, and I’m going to put the tails side down on the ‘magic spot’ [on my glove] where we connect our grip,” he says. “I’m going to take my grip — with the right hand on top of the heads side of the quarter [for a right-handed golfer] — really feel that up against it.”
The image below shows how the hand position should look on top of the quarter.
“As I come down through impact, I’m going to trap this golf ball against the ground to hit a little trap draw.”
Baile’s able to hit the ideal draw, keeping the flight of his ball low with a right-to-left curvature.
“There’s just a slight bit of divot,” he adds. “We took that heads side of the quarter, we turned it down and over the tails side, and we hit our trap draw.”
So whether you struggle with ball flight, clubface control, or general contact, by practicing these drills from Baile, you’ll begin to strike it better and start compressing your irons like a pro.
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