Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.
Having a stock swing you can rely on under ideal conditions is great, but sometimes you’ll need to make adjustments in order to get the ball close to the hole. One of the most popular of these “unorthodox” shots is the knockdown.
When you hit a knockdown shot, you’re essentially trying to take a little something off the yardage you’d normally hit. This can be useful when it gets windy and you need less spin, or when you just want to hit a little more club and swing easy.
Learning to hit a knockdown shot is simple, and it’s something we’ve covered before. However, if you really want to be successful with the shot, you need to remember a key adjustment in your setup. Colt Knost explains more in the video below.
1 key adjustment for hitting a knockdown
The basics of the knockdown shot are simple. Move the ball back in your stance, take a little more club and then swing easy. But if you really want to turn this shot into a weapon, you need to remember another setup adjustment.
“One thing, and I learned this from the great Randy Smith, that’ll help you with your start line — you’ve got to open your stance a little bit,” Knost says. “I’m going to take my normal setup, move the ball back a couple inches and then just open my stance, which means move your left foot back a little bit.”
When you move the ball back in your stance, you are creating conditions for an in-to-out swing path. So, by opening your stance just a touch, you are offsetting that path and getting the ball to start more in line with the target.
“By opening your stance when you move the ball back, it’ll improve your start line,” Knost says. “So many people hit big pulls when they try to hit a knockdown shot, and that’s because your stance is too closed. Open it up a little bit, make a normal swing with the ball back and you’ll see beautiful knockdown shots.”
