Hit down on the ball. You can’t get away from this advice. It’s like bad weeds in your garden that you spray and dig up and think you’ve gotten rid of them and a month later there they are again.

Why do you keep hearing this nonsense? Because it kind of makes sense.

The club is way up there in the backswing and it has to come back down to get to the ball, so in that sense you are hitting down on the ball.

But that is not the sense that too many golfers interpret the words. They think it means to be hitting down steeply. That is the sense that leads to frustration because they end up chopping down.

I’ll admit if you hit down like that, you can get some pretty good shots out of the effort with the short irons.

But with the lesser-lofted irons, it doesn’t work so well. Forget about it with your fairway wood, and don’t even mention your driver.

Instead of hitting down, think about the spot where the club travels level with the ground, because it does that eventually. With an iron, it’s then just a matter of addressing the ball so that it lies a little bit behind that spot, and a ball on a tee is positioned a little ahead of that spot.

That’s all there is to it.

Remember “13 clubs, 1 swing” from a few months ago? Remember about hitting the ball forward?

There’s no “hitting down” in any of that. Don’t hit down. Hit forward.

[Revised July 7, 2019.]

A few years ago I started advising anyone who would listen that this is the way to build a competent, consistent golf swing: hit wedges, lots of wedges. Take the club back halfway, swing through to a full finish.

This is my second post on the subject, hence the quantifier in the title. But the notion is so important that I don’t want to let it be one and done because you might never find that first post. So I’m posting the idea again.

Actually, I should post it every other week, it’s that important, but that probably would create a different impression in your mind than emphasis, so I won’t.

There are four reasons why this is such an important practice.

1. You learn how the timing of your swing works–how all the parts work in the right order and what it feels like when they do.

2. You learn to relate distance to tempo rather than effort.

3. You learn how to hit the ball on the center of the clubface. Your score is directly related to how often you do this.

What you learn with your wedge applies to every other club in the bag. And because it is so easy to hit the wedge, you will transfer that feeling of ease to every other club and hit shots with them just as confidently as you do with the wedge.

Here’s how to do it. First, set aside twelve balls out of your bucket. Take out your sand wedge. Make four practice swings. Swing halfway going back, and follow through to a full finish. After the four such swings, pull a ball forward hit it, using the same swing you made those four times. Go through the entire rest of the bucket in this way.

Do not rush the practice swings. Take a few seconds after each one to absorb the feeling of what you just did. You’re training your mind, and that won’t happen if you don’t give it a chance to soak in what it just did.

When you have emptied your bucket, take those ten of the balls you set aside and go through your bag, hitting each club, going from pitching wedge to driver, one swing each, a full swing, with the same timing and tempo that you used with all those sand wedges you hit. During this drill you will realize the fourth very important point:

4. You swing your driver just like you do your 9-iron, and you swing your 9-iron just like you do your driver. Ditto for every club in between.

You have two balls left. End the session by going back to the start: four half-swings with a sand wedge, hit one ball. Repeat.

I’m writing this post for the better golfers among my readers, the ones who shoot in the low 80s and high 70s. While it is true that lowering your score from here depends on improving your short game and putting, don’t think that you are finished with your swing just yet.

Up to this point you have likely thought that the purpose of the swing has been to hit the ball. Your swing starts at the ball and ends when the ball is struck.

Thinking like that keeps you stuck in technical details that makes you swing not fully reliable. While you hit a large number of good shots, you aren’t really sure beforehand that you’re going to hit one.

You might be thinking that one more tip that will pull everything together. What you need instead is a new conception of the swing.

The golf swing is built on mechanics and the ones that you have put together to build your swing may not be ignored. But the point of learning the swing is to play golf. And you play your best golf not by doing what it takes to hit the ball, but by doing what it takes to swing through to the finish.

You might have heard a professional golfer say that he just swings and the ball gets in the way. That’s correct, but let’s go deeper than that.

When a top-rank golfer stands over the ball, he feels the feeling of a good shot. He already knows how it should feel and his body responds to that feeling. Other golfers have no such feeling ahead of time which is why their good shots come as such a surprise.

A good golfer plays the shot based on his feeling of a good golf shot and plays through to the finish. The lesser golfer plays the shot based on his knowledge of good technique.

All this, again, begins with the setup. The right setup allows correct movements to occur and prevents the wrong ones. But more than that, it creates the feel of a good shot, which is what the player uses to play the game.

So if you have gotten to single-digit golf but seem to be stuck, it might well be that your technique is sufficient. What you need to do next is to adopt a different conception of what you’re doing when you approach the ball.

These ideas come from the book On Learning Golf, by Percy Boomer. It is likely the most valuable golf instruction book ever written.

There’s a chapter by Lou Riccio in Johnny Miller’s book, Breaking 90, that talks about the importance of good play up to the green. Riccio says:

“If Phil Mickelson did your putting for you, you’d probably break 90 only a handful more times per year. On the other hand, if you putted his ball, he’d still score in the 70s.”

Hale Irwin said, in an article in the January 2010 Golf Digest magazine, “The shortest route to improvement is to get on the green in fewer strokes.”

If you want to become a good golfer it is imperative to have a good swing.

A good swing is one you can rely on to hit the ball straight. With a driver in your hand, you expect to hit the fairway. With an iron in your hand from, say, 150 yards out, you expect to hit the green. Maybe from 160.

What happens if you don’t have a good swing is that you don’t get the ball on the green or close to it in the regulation number of strokes. It’s likely that your next shot is from too far away to get the ball close enough to the hole for one putt. It could be that just getting the ball on the green is an issue.

The solution is not to learn how to hit those demanding short shots better. The solution is to get a better swing so you don’t have to hit them so often.

Now the golf swing is a very complicated act, and there’s a lot of instruction out there in print and video meant to guide you around the curves.

Lessons? By all means take lessons. Most lessons, though, are meant to patch up your swing. To get a better swing you really have to start over and build it from the ground up. That’s a huge commitment most recreational golfers do not have the time to make.

What to do? It’s me to the rescue.

My latest publication, Six Fundamentals of the Recreational Golf Swing, identifies six key features of the golf swing that lead to straight shots, in the air, time after time. That good swing I defined earlier? Here’s how to get it.

I took long-standing swing principles, added a few twists of my own, and came up with an organized way to get the clubhead to the ball with a square clubface and traveling toward the target. And if that doesn’t happen (nobody’s perfect), you’ll know why and you can correct yourself before the next swing.

Six Fundamentals is FREE, available for download on the blog’s home page.

Everybody tells you the best way for an amateur to shoot lower scores is to have a good short game. That is one way to shoot lower scores, but not the best way. The best way is to have a good swing.

Let me get right to the point by quoting from On Learning Golf, by Percy Boomer. In his chapter on putting, Boomer says that sayings such as, “A good putter is a match for anyone,” are pure nonsense. Instead, Boomer says:

“Golf is one whole game. It is true that if you cannot putt you cannot win, for no hole is own until the ball is down–but good scores are only made possible by good play up to the green.”

The saying should be, according to Boomer, “A good golfer is a match for anyone,” but it all starts with getting the ball on the green as quickly as possible. That means you have to have a swing that can do the job.

I have a collection of golf shows from the 1950s and early 60s–All-Star Golf, Challenge Golf and so on. When you watch every shot you really see how the pros make their scores, and it’s by hitting fairways and hitting greens.

I’m not playing down the importance of the short game or putting. Once you’ve gotten the ball up to the green, you need to close out the hole as soon as you can. But if you’re getting the ball up to the the green or on it in regulation every hole, you can be mediocre around the green and still shoot a good score.

Otherwise, your greens game is all about preserving bogeys and maybe even doubles, not about shooting a low score.

Maybe 90 is a low score for you right now. What I mean by a low score, for a recreational golfer, is 78. A 90-shooter has twelve strokes to lose, and you won’t lose them by becoming a wizard around the green. You’ll lose them most of all by improving your swing and then by learning to hit the ball with that swing more often.

In two weeks I will release my latest publication, Six Fundamentals of the Recreational Golf Swing. These fundamentals are the distillation of my work over the last three years to identify explicitly what I do when I hit the ball well. If you install these fundamentals into your swing, you WILL hit the ball better and shoot lower scores.

This publication is FREE and available for download at the blog’s home page.

A golfing paradox: if you hit down on the ball it goes up, and if you hit up on the ball it goes down (or at least doesn’t get up very high). In general, that’s correct, but as playing advice, it’s not quite right.

Of course, we want to get the ball in the air. The higher the better, it seems.

I read where Gary Player, during his playing days, was commenting on Jack Nicklaus hitting a 3-wood. He said while some players hit that club farther than Nicklaus did, and some players hit it higher, no one hit it that high and that far at the same time.

And I saw it, too. At the 1973 Andy Williams Open in San Diego, Nicklaus on the 72nd tee hit the longest drive I’ve ever seen, and the highest, and it was the same shot. I’m still amazed.

My son wants to get the ball in the air. We go to the range together and I see him, time after time, lifting as he comes through impact.

Now, he does hit a high ball when he connects. Too many times, though, he doesn’t, because of the tiny room for error. The ball doesn’t get up when he misses.

I catch myself doing that on the course. I want the ball to go up and the logical way is to swing up. But that doesn’t work. Here’s what does.

You know that advice about swinging down at the ball? Please pretend you never heard that. Instead, swing level, THROUGH the ball.

Down, at: no. Level, through: yes.

Your downswing describes an arc which curves sharply downward at the start, but which is fairly flat at the bottom through the ball.

To be strictly correct, since you want your divot to be IN FRONT of the ball, the clubhead still has to be descending when it gets there. That descent is so slight, though, you don’t need to think about it.

Here’s what to think about instead. Whenever I remember to do this, the shots I hit are poetry.

Make sure your hands get to the ball before the clubhead does (it will be the opposite if you’re lifting) and feel like you’re dragging the clubhead through the ball. Dragging on a level path, parallel to the ground.

That’s my image, you can come up with one for yourself if you want to. Just deliver the clubhead to the ball in a brushing-through motion (there’s another image) with the hands leading the clubhead so you can use the loft built into the club to get the ball in the air.

This movement seems counter-intuitive. It it feels like you’re de-lofting the club excessively and driving the ball into the ground. You aren’t. You’re just using the club’s design to get the ball in the air for you.

You might have to slow your swing down a bit to get enough control to strike the ball this way. Don’t worry. The ball flies off the clubface, high and straight.

When you remember to do it.

Let me tell you the easiest way to hit the ball straight and hard. Swing the club with your hands. Not your body, not your arms. Your hands.

This was once the way people played golf. Now you’re supposed to swing with your large muscles in order to have a consistent swing. But think for a moment.

When you pound a nail into a board, what do you swing the hammer with? Your hand! When you swing a tennis racket, you swing it with…your hand!

Get this: a few days ago I asked to the manager of our local minor league team how he teaches his players to hit the ball. He said, you’re hitting with your hands, just like driving a nail with a hammer.

It’s the same with a golf club.

Humans have evolved hands that are wired to do complicated and precise activities. Use them! That’s what they’re for! Getting the clubhead back to the ball headed toward the target and with the clubface square to the path, all at many MPH, is a task requiring the utmost precision.

Tasks of utmost precision are what your hands are designed to accomplish.

This is how to do it. Take the club away from the ball with both hands. That means your mind is on the movement of your hands, and no other part of your body. When you swing down into the ball, your mind is on your hands delivering the club precisely to the ball. More to the point, the left hand guides and the right hand delivers, both at the same time.

Really, that’s all you have to do. Swing with your hands and your body will follow.

A few caveats. This does not mean rear back and slug the ball. Far from it. You still use the golf swing you have now, but with your mind on what is really doing the work. You still need to have good pre-swing fundamentals (grip, stance, posture, alignment, ball position, aim). You still need good rhythm and tempo.

Also, you don’t hit at the ball. You swing through the ball, with your hands leading the clubhead into the ball. And you swing with both hands, not just your right.

They say your hands should be passive. Nice thought, but they never are. That’s because they want something to do. And if you aren’t paying attention, they’ll do something wrong. Best to give them something to do that is the right thing.

Let them take over the swing. That’s what human hands are meant to do. Since I started doing this, I hit one straight shot after another. I’ve taken four strokes off a round (no kidding!), all because I’m swinging the club with the part of my body that was designed for this job.

Why not give it a try yourself?