Question on swinging down on the ball with irons...

I've seen it mentioned and I see the pros hitting the ball on their downswing with their irons. I'm just curious how that happens.

I know that with a 9 iron the ball should be placed between both your feet. As you move down to more distance irons the balls moves further up towards your leading foot. Without moving your hips you would always be hitting those balls on your upswing.

I'm guessing then that to hit the balls on a downswing it would be due to both your hips moving forward and your hands moving in front of the ball before the club face makes impact? So while you may line up a shot with the ball 1" in front of your center line, after your hips swing into the shot and your hands move in front of the ball your swing will still be headed downwards instead of hitting the ball on the upswing?

I was told by a few people not to move my hips at all... but watching different pros swing it appears their hips don't move on the back swing, but they do move forward on the down swing. Is that the correct way to swing? One of my many swing problems I've been trying to correct is not moving my body (hips especially) backwards on my back swing. I've been trying to only rotate my upper body on my backswing. But I guess it's only to move my hips forward during my downswing?

And back to my iron question... if moving my hips is ok during my downswing I would need to move them more so for each greater distance iron right? So a 9 iron would see only a little forward movement from my hips. But a 4 irons would see a lot more since the ball is placed closer to my leading foot? At the same time, my sand wedge would see very little (if any at all) forward hip movement because the ball is placed behind my center line.

To hit down on the ball is more what I would call compressing the ball at impact....this only can come from executing the swing in the proper sequence and allowing the club to do what it is designed to do.

If you try to hit down you will most likely hit it fat.

Compressing the ball at impact comes from firing your hips in the downswing and the club coming down on an inside-to-outside path...that puts your hands and arms in a position for the right arm to extend through impact therefore compressing the ball...the result is a boring ball flight with lots of distance and little dispersion... HOWEVER , as we all know easier said then done...

Two last things as follows:

1) Ball position is important but is not soley responsible for compressing the ball at impact

2) YES you need to turn your hips on the backswing to put the club in the proper position to execute the downswing...otherwise you will tend to snatch the club back on a very inside path and have to re-route the club to get back to impact, therefore, not allowing you to compress the ball properly.

Just my 2 cents...hope it helps...

You may find some useful information on this recent thread:

http://thesandtrap.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19602

Boy do I get tired of hearing about how golf balls need to be compressed by hitting down on them!

This ranks right up there with sports announcers talking about how pitches break "at the last moment."

Such comments reflect total ignorance of physics.

1. All golf balls compress to varying degrees when they are hit with a club, irrespective of up, down, or sideways.

2. Short of frozen tundra, no turf is hard enough to contribute significantly to compression of the golf ball. And, if it were, it would take tremendous distance off the shot.

3. What actually happens in a perfect iron shot is the following. As the club head is moving very slightly downward, the bottom of the sweet spot contacts the ball and begins to compress it because of the inertia of the ball. For the very, very brief time the ball remains in contact with the club head, the ball rolls slightly up the sweet spot as the club head continues to descend slightly. This imparts spin to the ball. By the time the club head is into the turf, the ball has left the clubhead and is on its way.

4. This is the basis for the correct statement about "hitting down on a golf ball": hit the little ball first, and the big ball (the earth) second.

This was an answer that I posted another thread about this same subject:

Now to explain hitting down on the ball if you simply watch some swingvision shots of a pros impact you will see what hitting down on the ball is. It doesn't mean that you clubhead comes into the ball steeply, it simply means that the clubhead bottoms out AFTER the ball. If this happens then the clubhead was traveling downward at it impact with the ball in effect hitting down. Now how does that happen? You have to know where the lowpoint of your swing is. At address the lowest point in your swing is right AT the ball. I used the sternum (located between your pecs) as a reference to help me monitor the lowpoint of my swing. Any movement of the sternum in any direction changes the lowpoint of your swing. If it moves back and stays back you will catch the ball thin, if it moves up you will skull it because the lowpoint will move to about the equator of the golf ball, it is moves down you will hit is fat because the lowpoint of the swing has moved below the ball so the club bottoms out behind it, if it doesn't move you will be what is called a "PICKER" who doesn't take a divot and you can play like this but you border on disaster with hitting it thin, fat,skull, or chunky if you aren't perfect. If you move too far forward then you will hit the ball first which is good, but you will drive the ball into the ground or chunk it. Now finally to what happens when you move the lowpoint of your swing only about 3 to 4 inches in front of the ball. The clubhead will strike the ball on a slightly descending path and then it will strike the ground taking just the right amount of turf sending the purely struck ball towards it target. All the things that happens during this swing is what pros are describing but we amatuers take to the extremes i.e. " hitting down on the ball, trapping the ball against the turf, or pinching the ball against the turf." This is what you want for you irons and hybrids. With the fairway woods " see description of PICKER" and for the driver you want the club SLIGHTLY ascending. To work on it practice you chipping and half wedge shots by focusing on a spot 2 inches in front of the ball and then take a normal swing. At first it will be hard to convince yourself to do it but it works. Also listen to the ball as you are hitting your half wedge shots because a purely struck ball makes a distinct noise if you know what you are listening for. To me it sounds like and egg being dropped on the ground. When I practice my iron play I am listening for these "eggs cracking" and I know if I've executed my shot before I even look up to find the ball.