Lost Distance

[lamebums]

So, here's something I can't quite figure out. Two months ago, I could bump my 7 iron out there almost 170 yards. Then, I started struggling with hitting all my irons off the toe. I've recently fixed that, but I can't get more than 145-150 out of my 7 iron anymore. I think I'm swinging as fast as I used to, and I am making good contact on the sweet spot. (In fact, my swing has gotten faster - my driver is longer now than it was two months ago). In short I've lost 30 yards on all my irons.

Even my 3 iron can't get past 200 on a regular basis these days. What am I doing wrong

[sonicblue]

My quickest guess is that you were achieving better "de-lofting" before, and really making a downward strike on the ball. If your impact plane is now upward on the ball, it will significantly lower your "compression" factor on the ball. Thing is, with a driver, an upward strike is a good thing, so that may be why your driver is flying long, but your irons lack "oomph."

HTH.

[lamebums]

Yeah, that might be it. My trajectory used to be a bit lower than it is now, when I hit down on the ball and played the ball back in my stance. Now, it's closer to the middle. I still make good contact, I just don't hit it long. I'll have to try it though.

[BritBoy]

I'm just coming out of the same situation. I lost about 10 - 15 yards per iron, so I went running back to my coach to find out what was going wrong. It took him two swings to fix me I wasn't letting my hips rotate at all on the back swing, which in turn gave me a very upright swing. I worked on taking the club away a little more inside, with the swing thought of "get the right hip out of the way", a little narrower stance (by bringing in the right foot) and everything fell back into place. The first few swings I pulled the ball a lot, but then started to get the hips into the downswing too and am now hitting the ball just like before. Give it a try.