How To Stop Hitting Fat Or Thin Golf Shots

So you've hit the perfect drive down the middle and left yourself an iron shot into the green, leaving a great opportunity for a solid par, or even a birdie. But then you end up FATTING (chunking) or THINNING the shot and it leaves you disappointed and frustrated. If that happens to you then this blog is really going to help.

A fat or thin golf shot is the result of the low point of the golf swing not being at the desired location relative to the golf ball. For an iron shot you would like the clubhead to strike the ball before penetrating into the ground.

The result of a fat shot would be the ball travelling a much shorter distance.  This is because less energy is transferred from the clubface to the golf ball as the ground has slowed the club down as well as the earth being trapped between the ball and the clubface. 

On the flipside, the thin shot can cause a ball to fly over the green as the leading edge of the clubface meets the equater of the ball.

You could also have the depth of your arc too high or too low. The depth can be described as having your club too low (too much into the earth), or too high (missing the ground or ball completely) at impact. Controlling your low point is a key skill when it comes to improving your ball striking with your irons and wedges.

If you're a player that struggles with fat or thin shots it's because you haven't hit the correct low point of the swing. A hula hoop is a great visual for this, with the lowest point of the hula hoop representing the low point of the arc of your golf swing.

When it comes to hitting crisp and pure iron shots we're really looking to get that low point about 3 or 4 inches (7-10 cm) after the golf ball to help get that ideal ball turf contact.

To improve your low point control there are a number of technical elements that need to be checked and perhaps changed to assist in improving this. However, i'm going to give you two SKILL-BASED practice drills that you can do to improve your ability to control your low point, regardless of where your technique is at.

If you practice on a mat, grab yourself some strike spray or anything that you can use to make a mark about 3 or 4 inches ahead of where you would usually hit the ball from. From here you can make a few swings (from a normal set up), with the sole focus and intention to try and hit the mark you've made on the ground. Do whatever you need to do to make the leading edge of your club contact this mark first.

Your body should instinctively react in such a way that helps you get your club to contact the ground at this point. I've used this drill so many times during my coaching sessions and people have been able to change their low point with 100% success rate using this drill. It has never failed me, which is why I'm suggesting it here for you. 

Many people often have the misconception that the low point of the swing needs to be directly at the ball for the irons, so when they go to this drill, just the intention and shift in concept can be enough to feel the desired change and get their weight shifting towards the target and generally encouraging some wonderful things to happen in the golf swing.

Then you can go ahead and place the ball down and hit a few shots where you're still focusing on hitting the mark 3-4 inches after the ball and just letting the golf ball get in the way. Try this a number of times until you feel the sensation of a well struck, compressed iron shot.

For this drill, grab yourself 4 to 6 tees and place these into the ground at different heights from really low to high. Space them apart and place a ball on each tee. From here go ahead and to try hit each ball crisply off each tee. This will really challenge your ability to control the depth of your golf swing relative to the ground. If you don't get it quite right, you'll know about it as the miss strikes will create a rattling sensation in your hands, or you may even miss the ball completely at first. This is not easy! 

If you can also use some strike spray on your clubface you'll also be able to see whether your hitting the ball high or low on the face. This will help you calibrate your low point even further.

Being able to transition correctly in the golf swing and shift your weight towards the target is a key technical component that will assist in developing great low-point control with your irons and wedges. See the video below for more on this.

Ensuring your golf ball is in the correct position with your irons and wedges is also very important. This will either help or hinder your ability to strike your irons pure. The video below shares more on how to set up correct every time.

So there you have my two favourite skill-based drills to improve low point control. Without thinking technically, you'll become a better ball striker just by working on levelling up your skills. The more you practice these, the more often you'll be able to take advantage of those perfect drives by striking your irons pure, hitting more greens and lowering your scores!

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