It all starts with finding the fairway of the tee, half the tee to green battle is won there. Keeping the ball on the short grass goes a long way in promoting good, consistent contact with your irons.
Maintaining a good tempo and not getting quick through the swing in search of added distance or trying to get the ball up are keys to good contact.
The biggest fault visible in amateur golfers is they try and hit the ball on the upswing in order to scoop the ball up. The best amateur iron players know how to shoot good scores with their iron play without bombing it off the tee.
Follow these three easy keys and you will notice an improvement in the quality of your strikes.
Get set over the ball
Maintaining the same ball position for every iron shot is essential as well as a method for consistency., the ball should be placed slightly left off center, in other words, in line with the logo on your shirt.
Focus on driving towards the target with your weight shifting to your left side. This will help you in catching the ball solid while the club is still on the descent.
Attention should also be paid to width of the stance at address. The middle of each foot should be directly below the shoulder. This gives you a goof foundation for the weight shifting towards the target.
Swing wide to the top
Concentration should be on a wide extension during the take-away and maintaining it until the top of your backswing.
Many golfers lose their width going back meaning that their arms collapse which leads to their hands getting close to their head at the top. It makes it hard to hit down on the ball because the hands as a compensatory measure go out and you tend to throw the club away leading to hitting on the upswing.
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A good drill to promote a wider arc is, take your setup position, drop your left hand off the club and swing to the top. Put your left hand back on and feel that stretch. That's the sort of width you want in orde to strike your irons flush.
Go down and through it
Start the downswing from the ground up.
What I mean by that is shift your weight left by driving your legs towards the target. This will drop your hands and arms in a good hitting position as your body starts to rotate on your downswing.
Avoid starting down with the arms as that will result in a loss of synchronisation between body parts and ultimately poor contact.
To hit-down on the ball, get into your setup with a middle iron, lift the clubhead up a few inches off the ground and make a normal swing from there. Instinctively, you will hit down on the ball because if you don't, you'll miss the ball.
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