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Mastering Long-Iron Shots
LEARN FROM BRITISH OPEN CONDITIONS: MASTERING LONG-IRONS SHOTS
The 1999 British Open included some disconcerting twists and turns, but it certainly ended on a decisive note: Paul Lawrie’s magnificent 4-iron from 221 yards, to within a yard of the flag at 18, in the playoff. The Scottish crowd behind the green were beside themselves with delight. It was the first victory by a Scot in the Open in his own country since Tommy Armour won at Carnoustie in 1931.
Heroics with the long-irons are not generally within the province of the average golfer - in fact, it’s the opposite. So many of you have trouble with these clubs that I’d like to talk about the problem of bad long-iron play, and what to do about it.
This is one case where there’s no blanket advice that applies to everybody. That’s because, with long-irons, there are two very different mistakes that handicap players tend to make. They either move the body too far past the ball as they strike it, so that they effectively deloft the club (we’ll call these Group 1 players), or they try to get under the ball and end up staying too much on the back foot going through the shot (we’ll call these Group 2 players). Players who have difficulty with long-irons divide about 50-50 between these two groups.
So, if you’re hitting your long-irons badly, you must first understand which group you belong to before you can follow the appropriate instruction. Below I have listed symptoms of each group - so you can recognize yourself - followed by the appropriate instruction.
SYMPTOMS OF GROUP 1 PLAYERS:
- You generally take very deep divots.
- When you hit a long-iron, the ball is usually struck solidly but the flight is too low.
- You tend to cut your drives to the right.
- The best part of your game is short-irons, the worst parts are the driver and the long-irons.
- You find it difficult to draw the ball.
- You feel very comfortable performing the “Gardner drill” described later in this article.
SYMPTOMS OF GROUP 2 PLAYERS:
- You tend to take very thin divots, and your swing often bottoms out too early, so that you take a divot behind the ball.
- Your contact, using the long-irons, is often bad. You tend to hit the ball thin and it feels “tinny.”
- You sometimes go through periods of topping the long-irons and fairway-woods.
- Your swing thought might be that you want to “get under the ball.”
- You feel quite awkward performing the “Gardner drill” described in this article, until you get used to it.
Swing Thoughts and Drills for Group 1 Players:
The general idea is to get you more behind the ball, both at address and impact, and thereby allow you to make a swing through the ball and beyond that feels more like an uppercut - a “low to high” swing, as I’ll explain.
Start by playing the ball slightly more forward in your stance. Get the feeling that you are looking at the back of the ball, rather than the top of it.
In terms of posture, to hit long-irons high, it’s necessary to have the left side of your face behind the ball at impact. You can practice this in a mirror, while watching your long-iron swing.
As a corollary to the above: while making practice swings, work on the feeling that the bottom of your spine is closer to the target than the top of your spine going through impact. That’s so even at address, but it should be much more so at impact, if you want height on your long-irons. It’s possible to overdo this, bottom out too early and hit behind the ball. But you probably won’t, because your tendency has been the opposite.
As for the feeling of the swing itself, you want to get the sensation of an underarmed toss, and the Davis Love drill (named after the late Davis Love, Jr., father of the tour player) works very well for this. With your left hand, prop a club on the ground as indicated in the illustration, then sweep your right arm under your left, just as the right arm would move swinging through impact. The move is a half-sidearmed, half-underarmed throwing motion, with the right shoulder working more under the chin than you’ve been doing.
An image to help you: Seve Ballesteros has often said that the long-iron swing is like delivering a right-handed uppercut to a person standing to the left of you. Make this motion a few times (see illustration), and then make a long-iron swing with the same motion of the right arm. You’ll find it’s a far better long-iron action than you’ve been making.
Give no credence to the phrase “hit down to make the ball go up.” Because of your swing pattern, this advice will worsen your problems by causing you to deloft the club. Instead, think of the long-iron swing as a sweep, with the clubhead going from low to high through the hit. If you feel you’re hanging back on your right side a bit longer in the impact area, that’s fine.
It also helps to make swings concentrating on a high finish - the uppercut feeling, again.
I’ve found that using the above drills and images results in a very high success rate in helping Group 1 players hit their long-irons higher and farther, so your prognosis for improvement is good.
If you’re a Group 2 player, the success rate is not quite as high. With these players, we’re trying to move the bottom of the arc from in front of the ball up to the ball, and, when players try to do that, many tend at first to deloft the club, which causes frustration. Accordingly, more persistence is required for Group 2 players to solve their problem, but it most certainly can be done.
Swing Thoughts and Drills for Group 2 Players:
An excellent drill for these players is the old exercise of swinging with the feet together. You’ll find it’s quite impossible to hang back on your right side when you do this. In fact, for both groups of players, this exercise, which encourages centered-ness of the body, is a big help with the long-irons.
The best drill I’ve found for Group 2 players is what I call the Gardner drill, named after the late Gardner Dickinson, a wonderful teacher as well as a fine player, who used the drill a great deal in his teaching.
Set up in your normal address. Then, without moving your arms or hands or the club, assume with your legs and hips the position they should be in at impact - where the weight is on the left leg, the hips are turned slightly toward the target, the right knee has moved toward the ball, and the right heel has come up off the ground. Keeping the hips and legs in that position, make a mini-backswing with hands and arms, and practice hitting balls
and making solid contact.
If you’re a Group 2 player, this will feel very awkward at first, but stick with it. You’ll find yourself hanging back on your right side less, and getting into a proper contact position more and more frequently. In effect, we are giving you a “homing instinct” for a good impact position.
Another thing I tell Group 2 players is to imagine that they have a stake driven right down the center of their body, and simply revolve around that stake as they swing, rather than hanging back on the right side and trying to lift the ball. The more you can maintain the feeling of being centered, the better you can control where the bottom of your arc will occur, and the better your long-irons will be struck.
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