Improve Your Skills
with These Six Drills
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By Matt Fields with Kate Allen
The key to improving your golf game is proper practice. The following drills will help you practice more effectively and improve your fundamentals to hit the ball straighter and farther with more consistency.
1. Posture Drill
Stand a golf club up vertically and put the palms of your hands on top of the club with your arms extended out from your body. Gradually apply pressure on the club while adding a slight flex in your knees. From this athletic position, make sure to maintain your spine angle, knee flex and grip on the club. This will give you the ideal posture to make the proper swing.
2. Alignment Drill
Take two golf clubs and place them on the ground one to two feet apart directly down your target line. Place the ball between the two clubs. Work on hitting a couple of shots with the clubs there, then step away from the clubs and try to align yourself to your target. When you are standing behind the ball looking at your target, make sure it is a small, specific target, and not the entire fairway. Pick a spot that is one foot in front of the ball and align to this spot. It will get you on track for hitting your targets.
3. Plane Stick Drill
Take two plane sticks (found at any hardware store) and place them in the ground two irons apart directly down your target line. Place the plane sticks at the same angle as with the club you are going to hit your shots. Place a golf ball between the two plane sticks and hit shots, making sure your club stays on plane.
4. Baseball Bat Drill
Take practice swings while holding a baseball bat or a club waist high. Allow yourself to feel the rotation of your shoulders, arms and the clubface.
5. Directional Control Drill
This drill will help you to work the ball from right to left (draw), left to right (fade) and straight away for better control of the direction of your shots on the course.
To hit the desired shots, focus on taking your club away and swing the club through around the appropriate golf balls. To hit a draw, take your club away to the inside left of the back golf ball and feel the golf club swing to the outside right of the front golf ball. To hit a fade, take your club away on the outside of the back golf ball and swing through to the inside left of the front ball.
6. Towel Drill
This drill will help you to swing faster to hit the ball further.
Take a towel and tie it around the head of the golf club and make swings above the ground. The increased weight during your practice swings will increase club head speed during play and ultimately help to increase distance.
Matt Fields, a 14-year PGA Class A Professional, is the Assistant Director of Golf at the International Junior Golf Academy in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Matt’s students’ accomplishments include two AJGA Major titles, 25 IJGT titles, and exempt status for the 2008 LPGA Tour. Matt has been featured in numerous golf publications and appeared as a guest on an episode of The Turn on The Golf Channel. Matt can be reached at matt@ijga.com.
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