While driving the golf ball is always at the front of a player’s mind, if you’re incapable of hitting great iron shots, your round is going to suffer. It’s why compressing the golf ball is so critical — yet, unfortunately, something many amateurs struggle with.
Just last week, I wrote a story about only using my 6-iron from every shot outside of 50 yards. The whole point of the focused practice round was to avoid swinging my driver — since I had been hitting it off the heel the past month or so.
Focused golf practice: Rules for concentrating on each shot for better play
To my surprise, my first shot off the tee wasn’t actually what was killing my round: It was my iron shots and short game that had been leading to high numbers.
With that in mind, I’m always on the hunt for solid tips to improve my iron shots, and found something pretty interesting from GOLF Top 100 Teacher Brian Mogg — which can be seen in the video below.
How a towel can help lead to better iron shots
As the video from Mogg’s Instagram shows, hitting flush iron shots is a possibility — you just need to work on keeping your swing on plane and making sure the face is square at impact.
OK, so many of you already know that, but it’s how to actually do it consistently that’s always an issue.
That’s where Mogg suggests using your bag towel for a quick-fix drill.
“A great drill you can do is grab your towel and put it slightly behind the ball,” Mogg says.
Once you lay down the towel (about three inches behind your ball), focus on your setup prior to taking a swing. If you hit the towel, it means you’re mishitting your iron shots — which can cause hooks, slices, chunks or topped shots.
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“If you either setup too far on your backside or reverse backwards, you’re going to hit the towel,” Mogg adds. “Take your setup and make sure you miss the towel coming down. This gets that club to plane out, and bottom out a lot lower in the swing.”
By getting the club down to the turf, it will have a better opportunity to hit the sweet spot on the clubface — which will result in straighter and further shots.
“Good iron play requires you to get down and through everything,” Mogg says. “You want to compress it down on those irons.”
So whether you’re looking for more distance with your iron shots, or in need of a full reboot in order to stop all the mishits, incorporate this towel drill into your practice routine to start seeing positive improvement.