Scooping
What is actually happening
Your instincts are trying to help the ball into the air. It's the most natural move in golf, and it's exactly backward. Through the strike, your lead wrist breaks down and the clubhead passes your hands before the ball. Instead of delivering the loft the club was built with, you're adding to it at the worst possible moment.
What it costs you
This is the number-one reason irons launch high and land short. An iron is designed to compress the ball with the hands leading the clubhead. Scoop it and you lose the shaft lean, the compression, and every yard built into that club. The ball goes up when it was supposed to go through.
Lead wrist stays flat and your knuckles turn down toward the turf through the strike. Trap the ball against the ground. The club gets the ball up, not you.
Ball-Back Punch Shots
Take a 9-iron and play the ball two ball-widths back of center, with a little extra weight on your lead side. Hit punch shots that finish at hip height, hands ahead of the clubhead the entire way. Playing the ball back makes proper impact easier to find, because the club meets the ball while it's still traveling down, and the short finish removes the room a scoop needs to happen. The ball should come out low, hot, and heavy, and the divot should start in front of where the ball sat. That divot is compression you can see in the grass. Hit ten punches, then two normal swings holding the same trapped feeling. Rotate through that cycle for a bucket, and film the last swing face-on to check the shaft leaning toward the target at impact.
Is this the one costing you shots?
Film one swing and the analysis checks for it at every position, on your video.
Analyze my swing freeCurious how the measuring works? See what we measure at each position.