The quickest way to improve accuracy with your irons is to develop a consistent ball flight—preferably one that flies high and lets the ball land soft. But even if your flight is usually a little lower, there’s no way to really predict where the ball is going to end up if you can’t get the same trajectory time after time. Let me show you how I’ve grooved the high-and-soft iron shot for my game. If you follow my advice and try my favorite drill to raise your trajectory, you’ll be holding more greens in no time. — with Keely Levins.
Photo by Dom Furore
The first step is to check your ball position. If you play the ball too far back in your stance, the more likely you’ll want to swing off your back foot. You end up hitting it fat or thin and way too low.
Instead, address the ball closer to your front foot than your back. When you swing, you’ll instinctively want to move your body toward the target, keeping your torso over the ball—no more hanging back—but the forward ball position lets you return the club to the ball with a lot more loft. That’s how I get that high iron shot.
Try this drill that helped me learn how to shift my weight and hit crisp irons. Set up with the ball way forward of where you’d normally play it—off your left pinky toe (above). Now try to hit a shot. Notice that you have to shift your weight toward the target if you want to get the club back to the ball. This drill exaggerates the correct feeling. And the extreme ball position will help get the shot up, probably a lot higher than normal.
Once you’re routinely hitting it flush when playing it off your front foot, you can start moving the ball back a few inches and still produce those high-and-soft irons with ease. It’s all about having good weight shift.
IN GEE CHUN hit 72 percent of greens in regulation on the LPGA Tour in 2018.
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