Sunday, September 6, 2009

Hitting a Punch Shot

It's amazing how many people cannot hit this shot. Keith Wood explains how:



This is actually a good drill for helping get rid of the flip as usually flippers cannot hit a punch properly. It also resembles a 'Mike Bennett drill' as described by Nick Clearwater



As Wood explains, you don't want to close the clubface when hitting a punch because the ball will start off left. But you also have to remember that the ball is likely to draw with the low punch because your angle of attack should be steeper, which makes the horizontal plane go out the right. So if you were to close the clubface, then you are really going to hook it. If you want to hit it straight, swing left. If you want to hit a punch with a fade, swing very far to the left.

The punch is a good shot to learn not only because it helps into the wind, but it's a shot that if you can master can save some shots when you get into trouble. One of the issues with 'ballstrikers' is that they are never used to hitting shots under trees and don't really know what to do when they have this issue.




3JACK

2 comments:

TeddyIrons said...

So if the ball is further back in the stance, does that mean the club-face is slightly open to the club path? Or do you set the club-face square to whatever the ball position is?

Rich H. said...

You can have an open face with the ball further back. It's actually something that happens frequently. So when you punch a shot, a lot of times it will start slightly out to the right and then draw a little back to the left. Most of these posts assume a square face (or almost square face) at impact. It's good to note this as I have a friend who is a 3 handicap who hits the ball very low and hits down on it quite a bit. He was pushing everything off the tee so I just told him to move the ball up in his stance by 2 golf balls or so and he saw a great turnaround. Great question.