It’s easy to get too steep on your downswing, but this drill from Top 100 GOLF Instructor Jason Birnbaum will help smooth things out.
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Your downfall is very steep and on the left. How do you know? You hit wicked pulls, pull hooks and slices, depending on what the clubface is doing at impact. You need to bend a little more a flatter swing. Here is a simple exercise that will help solve the problem with just a few repetitions.
Set up as normal, but with a second ball placed about two head widths in front of the one you’re actually going to hit. The goal here, as you can imagine, is to hit the first ball and miss the second, something that will be difficult to do if you swing over.
Before you start, reach down and touch your trail leg as a reminder to hang onto your side of the trail longer as you start down from the top. When you actually swing, think, flat through impact, not steep, feeling just a touch of suspension and that the club is moving up.
Keep in mind that these are really sensations – ie, you never want to “hang” when hitting – hitting an iron. Sometimes you learn faster when you make exaggerated swings. Try it.
Jason Birnbaum is one GOLF Top 100 Teachers who is the director of instruction at Manhattan Woods Golf Academy in West Nyack, NY
