×

News

For a Downward Strike, Keep Your Eye on the Sticker

By Todd Bordonaro, PGA Teaching Professional

To achieve proper impact with your irons, you need to hit the ball with a downward strike, which produces a divot in front of the ball.

One common drill is to focus your eye on a spot a few inches in front of the ball. That’s right, don’t look at the ball! This will cause your swing to bottom out in front of the ball, ensuring a downward strike. If your clubhead bottoms out behind the ball, you are likely to hit the ball fat or thin.
hit your irons with downward strike

But how do you work on this when you’re playing indoors or on a range with a mat, where you can’t make a divot? Simple.

Just place a small sticker about 1 inch in front of your ball. I use dots like you see here, but anything that sticks will do the job, so raid your kid’s superhero stickers if necessary.

Once your sticker is in place, focus on hitting the dot, not the ball, so you can groove that feeling of hitting down and through the ball.