Question regarding hitting down and "trapping"

[kennay92]

yea when they say "hit down" on the ball, they dont mean to literally hit down on the ball. You take your normally sweeping swing but you will contact the ball first and then the turf after the ball so you will be coming down a little and through the ball.

glad to see my adivce/ video posted is getting around.. you musta read it in another thread huh.

[motteler621]

glad to see my adivce/ video posted is getting around.. you musta read it in another thread huh.

was that you hitting it into a net? You said it helped your students. I came across that video a while back.

[kennay92]

was that you hitting it into a net? You said it helped your students. I came across that video a while back.

not me in the video, i said i posted, not made it.

[motteler621]

oh ok, yea i came across that video on google.

[Zeph]

At the end of this video of Ernie Els, you can see how the club hits the ball and then the ground.

[Teddy]

I'm just a beginner but when lining up the ball, i like to aim at the point in which my swing will be at its lowest. When using an iron that would be a little bit in front of the ball, a driver, almost where the tee is. A key part is lining up your shot at an angle, similiar to how the club will hit it at impact. That will give you an idea of where to aim your shot, the hard part I find is trusting your swing and just letting it go to that specific spot.

[tws1098]

Although this picture does not show impact, it shows the ball elevating as the club is continuing down to the lowest part of the swing (which is why the divot should be after the address). Hopefully this helps a little, although i will continue to look.

[Dr. Strangeclub]

There are some physical realities that intrude on our imagination of what happens when you hit a ball properly.

The ball stays on the clubface for only half a millisecond and has no time to ride up the clubface. Any spin on the ball is imparted by elastic deformation and recovery of the cover.

The ball always -- ALWAYS -- starts off in the direction that the clubface is pointing, not the direction the clubface is moving. The greater the difference between the direction the clubhead is moving and the direction it is pointing determines how much the cover will deform sideways and how much spin will be imparted.

As long as the face (not the leading edge!) contacts the ball before the ground, it will go in the direction the clubhead is pointing. As long as the loft gets the launch point going up, the ball will go up, no matter if the club is moving toward the "big ball". Obviously, if you deloft the iron so much that face is slanted flat or toward the ground, that's where the ball will start heading -- it isn't going to turn out well.

Basically, the swing comes to the bottom of its arc on the way down and begins starting up thereafter. Unless you're "going down after the ball", in which case it never comes up. The ball is placed either at or just behind that low point. Placing it at the low point, you hit shots like David Toms -- no divot. Slightly back and you have most of the players on tour accounted for. Further back, you have players that deloft their irons, take big divots and hit 150 wedges.

If the club is moving downward at the point of impact, just before the low point of the swing, the cover will deform more than if the face is moving closer to the launch angle.

It might *seem* like trapping the ball, but it isn't really. If you really were trapping it, you'd bash it into the ground.

[tws1098]

...

I have wondered recently, why is this? Lower (more penetrating) ball flight?

[thenormankid]

So how do you break the hit down habit without hitting the ball thin? Should you focus on hitting the ball on the middle of the clubface?

[McGolf-Doggie]

There are some physical realities that intrude on our imagination of what happens when you hit a ball properly.

I hope you and Erik continue to do your very good work of debunking this pinching off the ground myth, wherever it rears it's trapped head .

[Zeph]

So how do you break the hit down habit without hitting the ball thin? Should you focus on hitting the ball on the middle of the clubface?

I would not focus on where you hit the ball really. Work on getting the weight forward and point of impact will fix itself.

[nevets88]

The clubface doesn't actually trap the ball. It's just a feeling. The ball will immediately start rising - it is never "stuck" or "trapped" between the clubface and the ground. Ever.

You must love Johnny Miller. More than Faldo?

[iacas]

You must love Johnny Miller. More than Faldo?

I don't really care about his "trap draw" except that he seems to think that's the only kind of draw people play, and that it only applies to draws.

"Trapping" is a valid "feeling" to many people. It can really emphasize a feel for a good player. (But that feel can apply to fades and straight shots too - that's the only problem I have with Johnny's constant use of the phrase.) But it should be used less often or clarified a bit better because it does seem to confuse new golfers. One decent golfer on this forum actually refused to accept the physical reality that the ball didn't actually get "squeezed" against the ground, and left the forum over it. He kept citing the numerous references to "trapping" or "pinching" the ball and was unable to realize that was just a "feel thought" and not a physical reality.

[McGolf-Doggie]

So how do you break the hit down habit without hitting the ball thin? Should you focus on hitting the ball on the middle of the clubface?

Somewhere, about 10 minutes into this video, if you have the patience, Manzella demonstrates hitting the ball "on the way down," rather than hitting down, and exactly where the club bottoms out after impact, thus tearing a divot after contact with the ball.

It might help you visualize, it might not.