Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you play smarter, better golf.
If you want to hit crisp iron shots, you have to make ball-first contact. When you do this, you compress the ball into the turf, leaving a nice divot in the clubhead’s wake.
The key for making ball-first contact is managing your attack angle and moving the low point of your swing arc in front of the ball. It’s something that’s consistent among all elite ball strikers and something that every golfer should strive for in their own games.
Hitting down on the ball properly isn’t as simple as just chopping down during your swing, though. While it’s true that you want to make ball-first contact, you want to do so in a way that’s efficient and repeatable. For more on that, we turn to GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jonathan Yarwood.
