Whenever you are about to hit a shot, you envision a beautiful flying ball towards the flag, or beautifully land on the fairway, but the. It happens again, the club hits the turf before the ball and gets stuck, the ball travels almost nowhere.
This happens to most golf players, this can be frustrating to handle and the score on the hole might be a nightmare.
Here are seven most common reason why golfers hit the ground before the ball:
1. Condensed posture
Proper posture is one of the most important fundamentals to good contact. Giving yourself enough room to bow from your hips so that your hands can hang below your shoulders puts you into a balanced position that allows you to be athletic throughout your swing.
If you crowd your club and stand so close that your arms do not have enough room to hang and swing can often result in your golf club getting stuck into the ground. Being too crowded, effectively makes the club too long relative to your body, so it has nowhere to go but into the ground.
Give yourself enough room to bow from your hips and get into a setup that allows you to be in balance throughout and at the finish of your golf swing.
2. Ball position too forward
Ball position is one of the most important fundamentals. All it takes is playing your golf ball a fraction of an inch too far forward for you to chunk the ball.
You can easily check this by taking a practice swing and seeing where, relative to your feet, your club hits the ground. If your club hits the ground centered in your stance, it would be greatly to your advantage to place your golf ball there.
3. Stance too wide
Ideally, for a ball on the ground your stance should be approximately hip width, give or take a little.
If your stance is significantly wider, it can often cause your hips to move too much side to side and your hip seeks being over each foot. As your hips move too much side to side, this can often cause the club to hit the ground before the ball if you do not recenter yourself exactly the same amount.
Also, when your stance is too wide, the potential locations the club has to hit the ground increases, which results in more inconsistent strikes.
4. Club not sitting properly
When you set your golf club on the ground behind your golf ball, it is important that you set it properly. This can often look odd to golfers when it is correct, in particular for the more lofted clubs in your golf bag. The aiming line on a golf club is the leading edge and the more lofted the club the more crooked the top line may look.
Often golfers will not set the club properly on the ground as a compensation — they hit slices, for instance, so they set the club closed at setup. Other times, it may be because their clubs are poorly fit.
The reason this is important is because the more twisted the clubface is at address, the more likely one side would dig into the ground at impact.
5. Getting Too Steep
You will often get out of your forward swing what you put into your backswing. If your backswing is a straight line back that tends to go toward the sky and is just a lifted motion, all you will have is straight down, which tends to get stuck. It reminds me of the letter V. Straight back and up equals straight down and dig.
It is important to understand that your backswing is circular in nature and will help to avoid this sharp digging motion.
One of the most efficient ways that I have seen to achieve this is to keep your underarms relatively close to your body as you make your backswing. This will help your upper body to rotate as it faces away from your target, creating a more shallow swing that will make it so much easier to brush the grass.
6. Deceleration on the downswing
Once your setup is good, speed and momentum are your friend. I often add speed to good swings with my students. I tell them when I am adding speed and momentum that is a vote of confidence that they are doing really well.
When you make your forward swing, you want to be athletic and just let it go and keep going. This often also helps to pull the trailing heel off of the ground. This athletic momentum, where the club stays in motion, can also keep the club from slowing down where it may get stuck.
7. Incorrect body shape on short shots
Another insurance policy you can take out against chunked shots is to keep your sternum and head target side of the golf ball. By getting into good posture and placing your upper body and club shaft evenly forward of your ball, this will produce a bottom of your arc that happens after your golf ball. The club may make a bit of a digging feel into the ground but the ball will already be gone. This allows you to use lower-lofted clubs, producing more roll and distance. Even though they have a sharper leading edge, it will contact the ground after the ball producing a crisp, low and running chip or bump and run.
