Practice Swing Drill ~ Fix your Pop-Up and Skies!

Problem: The player’s weight tends to remain on the front foot into the downswing.

Result: The swing becomes extremely steep, and tends to travel out to in. Especially with woods, this problem tends to lead to a shot that goes extremely high, and doesn’t travel very far (pop-up).

The Drill: My father has always struggled with this type of swing path. He would routinely get underneath the ball when using his fairway woods. He has recently gotten rid of it through the help of using this drill.

On a side note: Check the height of your tee, the ball shouldn’t be teed up anymore than halfway above the face of your driver. Try the more obvious fixes before working on your swing changes guys.

A very important part of the swing that amateurs have a problem doing, is keeping their head behind the ball at impact. This means that if viewed from front on at impact, the head is well behind the ball. It comes natural if the weight is on the right side in the backswing, however if it isn’t it can lead to many problems… This drill will help you to keep your weight on the back foot during the first part of the downswing.

With your driver set up to a teed up ball, hover the club about six inches above the ball. Concentrate on keeping your head behind the ball at ‘impact’ as you make practice swings above the ball. Repeat this drill until you can routinely keep your head behind the ball at impact. Now setup to the ball and make a full swing, incorporating what you learned from this drill into the swing. You should see a drastic difference. This drill works well because it fixes two of the main causes of pop-ups in one motion. Swinging above the teed golf ball helps by flattening your swing path, and by keeping your head behind the ball you are getting rid of your tendency to get ahead of the ball at impact.

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• Ball Sweep Drill - Cure your Pull and Pop-Ups -02/06/2006