The typical amateur golfer has no idea how to control the trajectory of the golf ball. They hit weak, high, floating shots that get beaten up by the wind and make it nearly impossible to control distance.
In this video, I reveal the techniques I teach so you know exactly how to launch low, penetrating missiles with any club in the bag.
You will be able to hit the ball at any height you want and play confidently in any conditions, not to mention be able to pick up 1-2 clubs of extra distance on your irons.
As the video explains, you will learn a drill that teaches you how to properly release the club and achieve a perfect impact position that will help you hit the ball further on a Tour-caliber trajectory.
Before learning the drill, however, you first must understand what you are trying to achieve: The proper lead wrist position at impact is very slightly bowed.
The middle picture below illustrates a correct position, with the other two representing too much cupping (left) and too much bowing (right).
This video walks you through getting into this crucial wrist position and then provides two great reference points to help you practice and feel this position as you perform drills and swing.
Watch the video now because, as an added bonus, you will get a preview of the RST technique used to draw and fade the ball! To see how your own impact position and ball flight compare to elite standards, try a free AI swing analysis.
Video Transcription: Knuckles Down - Logo Down
When it comes to controlling ball flight, almost everything that dictates where the ball is going to go, how low or high you hit it, and what shot shape you produce is dictated by what you do with your lead hand.
Unfortunately, that is one of the frustrating aspects of the game — most golfers are right-handed. They do everything with their trail hand, and their lead hand has never been trained. Although it is interesting, if you watch a skilled golf instructor, they typically demonstrate everything with their lead hand.
I am no different. Most everything I demonstrate involves what I am doing with my lead hand, although in the real world outside of golf, I cannot even brush my teeth left-handed. It is completely useless. But in golf, I have taken the time to train it so it at least knows how to hit a golf ball.
When it comes to controlling trajectory, what you want to start feeling is working with the last three fingers — the last three knuckles of the lead hand — and the logo of your glove. I am going to give you reference points that you can check to start being able to control your ball flight and hit shots you did not think were possible, just by learning how to train the lead hand.
What we are going to do first is check our impact alignment. You should be able to simulate this position consistently by now. I am going to move back slightly so you can see the club face.
Now, if I am in a proper impact position, the back of my lead hand is slightly arched. You can see — this would be a wrist-neutral position, this would be very cupped, and this is a slightly arched position. This would be really bowed, so you can see the range.
What that allows me to do is take this 6-iron and effectively turn it into a 3-iron. That is why professionals hit the ball so far. It is not necessarily that they swing tremendously fast. It is that they use the club correctly by delofting it, so now they can hit the ball a long way without excessive effort because they have turned the club into a much stronger-lofted club.
Now what I can do if I take my trail hand out of the picture is notice some things. From my perspective — you will need to grab a club and stand up to see this — when I take my trail hand out of view I can see these last three fingers on my lead hand.
If I was in a cupped position, I would not really be able to see them. I can just barely see my pinky and maybe my ring finger. I want to be able to see almost all the way to my knuckles on my lead hand.
In order to achieve that, what I have to feel is that these three knuckles as I come into impact are rolling down so that the logo on my glove, from my perspective, is pointing at the ground. Obviously it is not literally pointing straight down. From your perspective, you can see it is pointing slightly at the ground but not straight down.
What you do not want is for your hand to be either pointing at the sky — that is terrible — or pointing necessarily directly at the target. You always want it to have a slight downward angle. That shows that you have taken loft off the club, which is going to help you hit the ball farther and get a more flat, penetrating ball flight instead of a weak, high, spinny trajectory.
This will, in short, help you compress the ball because your hands are always going to be ahead of the club, which gives you a more negative or steeper angle of attack. That is ideal for trapping the ball and compressing it properly, and getting it to launch correctly. I prefer the ball to launch fairly low.
Then at this point, once you can see those knuckles underneath, you can see that if I start rotating it over, this is how I am going to slowly start teaching myself how to shape shots.
I can start equating everything I do with a golf club to these three fingers of my lead hand — these three knuckles — and the logo of my glove. For real-time coaching on your impact position and ball flight control, try a free AI golf lesson.
As I start working on hitting a high shot, I am going to take this normal impact position and make it slightly weaker so that now the logo of my glove, from my perspective, no longer looks like it is pointing straight at the ground. It looks to me like it is pointing straight at the target.
Obviously it is still slightly down, but again what you want to pay attention to is what you see from your perspective at impact, because that is what you are going to be able to measure when you are on the course. My normal impact position looks like the logo is pointing at the ground. In a weaker position, it looks like it is pointing more at the sky.
At all points, it is pointing more or less down the target line. If I want to hit a fade, I am going to let that wrist position go slightly to the trail side. If I want to hit a draw, I am going to work on rotating a little more through impact.
We will get into those details in other videos, but this is where all of your club face control originates. At a minimum, what I would like you to work on is getting into an impact position where you start rolling those fingers down, being able to see the knuckles on your lead hand, and feel like you are getting the logo of your glove pointing at the ground.
If you start doing this, you are going to be able to hit the ball lower, start compressing and trapping it. But it is imperative that you work on it very slowly. Start hitting lead-hand-only shots, just going to the release point and stopping.
Then as you improve, you are going to start releasing fully. But for now, just work on keeping that lead wrist in that flat, arched position and rolling those knuckles under so that rather than coming in where your logo is facing the sky and you are cutting across it, you are going to start trapping it and hitting down on it.
Think knuckles down, logo down — and you will start compressing the ball and getting it to come out much lower and flatter.
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
This drill will help you take command over your ball flight and dramatically lower it for windy conditions.
If your wrist position at impact looks more like the pictures on the left or right, you need the drill in this video to help you reach the position shown in the middle.
Check impact alignment
Wrist in neutral (upper left), very cupped (upper right), slightly arched (lower left), very bowed (lower right)
Knuckles roll down into impact
Logo points at the target for a higher shot, slightly right for a fade
Keep the left wrist arched
