If you struggle to make pure contact with the ball, GOLF Top 100 Teacher Tina Tombs has a simple drill you can practice to help.
In a video posted to the LPGA Professionals YouTube page, Tombs explains that practicing good contact will pay dividends in every part of your game, from tee shots to approaches and close-range chips.
The drill Tombs proposes is simple: draw a white line in the turf (a white foot powder does the trick) perpendicular to your feet. Ideally, you’d have an alignment stick on the ground to make sure your aim is sound. The idea behind this drill is to identify the low point, or bottom arc, of your swing. Take some swings and work on consistently brushing the grass across the white line.
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“When I know that I’m very comfortable at hitting the white line, then I know I’m always going to make good contact to the ball,” Tombs says. “This is an important fundamental in golf. If I can hit the ball consistently on the center of the face and at the bottom of the arc, I’m going to hit very good shots. So when you practice this without a ball and you can hit the white line, you’re going to get a lot of confidence in hitting the ball solid.”
Once you can hit the white line consistently, Tombs says you can move on to hitting balls. Place a ball directly in front of the white line and take a swing. You should find that you brush the white line the same way with the ball there as without it. Another benefit of the line drill is the visual it gives you of your clubface alignment.
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“You’ll also notice here if you’re setting up whether the club face is straight or crooked, maybe aimed to the right or to the left or straight. So this is another way that you can use this white line to aim your club face,” Tombs says.
As Tombs demonstrates hitting the ball on the line, she says she notices that she missed the line just a touch with the bottom of her arc, but still hit the ball in the center of the face, resulting in a pretty good shot.
“Even when you miss it just a tiny bit and you hit that white line, you’re going to make great contact,” she says. “And even your misses are gonna be as good as your best shots.
“So remember: Be as good as your misses and you can play great golf.”
Check out a full video of Tombs’ tip above, and for more tips from Tombs, click here.