When your ball is placed deep in the approxit’s easy to feel like there’s no good way to make solid contact. You swing harder, but the club still seems to catch and roll into the grass.
According to GOLFTEC‘s Josh Troyer, that’s because the problem isn’t a lack of movement speed — it’s about your angle of attack.
“Players with steeper angles of attack tend to handle hard hitting better,” says Troyer. “This allows the club to land on the ball more directly, rather than going through the grass too early.”
This concept is closely related to something that Troyer (and all GOLFTEC teachers) harp on every day: the hip swing. This is how your hips move toward the target during the landing. Most skilled golfers move their hips about six and a half inches toward the target from the top of the backswing to the bottom, which helps control two main things:
- Low point – where the club meets the ground.
- Swing direction – the path the club takes through impact.
“Good players move their hips enough toward the target so they can hit the ground in the right place and the right way,” Troyer explains. “Bad players either don’t move forward enough, or they stay too far back. That’s when the club’s path goes out—too far to the inside or too steep and down.”
Here’s where it gets interesting: players who move their hips too far toward the target often produce one inside-out road that is very extreme, leading to a shallow angle of attack. This is the kind of swing that cuts through the terrain instead of going through it – and it’s a killer in thick grass.
“When you start hitting from the thicker rough, it becomes really difficult to get clean contact with a shallow angle of attack,” says Troyer. “You see a lot of players who hit big draws really struggle because their club gets too close to the ground too early – the grass catches it and they can’t get through the ball.”
That’s why Tour players often talk about trying to hit fades or cuts when they’re on fake lies. These shot shapes naturally encourage a steeper angle of attack – exactly what you want when you need to cut the ball cleanly.
“They may not even know why it works,” says Troyer. “But when you hit a fade, your club lands a little steeper. It’s easier to go through the grass and make hard contact.”
So the next time your ball is buried in the fairway, don’t swing any harder. Adjust your setup and thought process: aim a little left, feel like you’re hitting a soft cut, and let the club land a little steeper. You’ll catch the ball cleaner – and give yourself a much better chance of hitting a clean iron on the green.
If you’d like to get some expert insight into your swing, book a swing assessment with GOLFTEC below.
