This video addresses how to handle common golf mishits, such as snap hooks and block slices that go out of bounds. By focusing on controlling where the ball hits the clubface—whether it’s the heel or toe—you can significantly improve your accuracy. Practicing hitting the ball alternately on the heel and toe helps you understand and control ball flight. The video emphasizes the importance of striking closer to the center of the clubface to avoid errant shots. Additional drills and techniques to improve precision and swing path are also discussed.
What's Covered: Drill on controlling strike location by intentionally hitting the heel and toe to eliminate snap hooks and block slices.
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Video Transcription:
It's fantastic to have you back here. Today we're gonna talk about the big miss hits, those snap hooks that you hit on the course that go outta bounds left, or those block slices that you hit that go out of bounds. Right? What's going on there? Well, as we work on swinging to the inside out and releasing the face to draw it, and we swing outside in to and, and hold the face a little more open to fade it.
You're gonna get pretty accurate. It's gonna be pretty tough to hit one out of bounds unless you're hitting the wrong side of the face. I gotta hit it pretty far off the toe to Snap Hook one and I gotta hit it pretty far off the heel to slice one, cut slice one. If you hit it on the center of the face or around the center of the face, it's pretty tough to get the ball to curve that much.
So if I try to snap hook one and I hit it off the heel, it's almost impossible to snap, hook it. The rule of thumb is about every dimple width. So you think about a dimple on a golf ball, every dimple width is gonna make the ball curve or so every dimple width off the sweet spot is gonna make the ball curve about four yards or so.
So if I miss it about, let's say, an inch off the heel to ba be pretty exaggerated, I'm talking, you know, six dimples, seven dimples, and I'm gonna have about 30 yards of curve from hitting that heel shot. So the more I miss off the heel. Even if I swing dead straight, that ball is gonna cut. The more I hit it off the toe, the more it's gonna hook.
If you start to spray your face and notice what your bad shots are, your big hooks, the ones that really get you in trouble, not only are you making a hook swing, but you're also hitting it way off the toe. Your big block slices. Not only are you making a slice swing, but you're also hitting it way off the heel to get those to go way offline.
If I can learn to hit more around the center of the club face, I don't have to be perfect, but I gotta be around the center of the club face, it becomes almost impossible to hit shots out of bounds, especially when I start to pair it up with getting my face in path straighter, like we're gonna talk about, uh, throughout these drills in week three and week four.
The first thing I wanna do to train this is we're gonna use the variability practice the same way we've done these other things. I want you to learn to hit it off the heel in the toe so that you can move it around. And then we're gonna start to hit it a little bit more square, a little straighter. Most people will say, well, clay, I can't control it.
I have no idea how to hit off the toe or the heel. I just can't feel it. I haven't found that to be true in my own testing. And when I've worked with players on this, what I want you to do to prove it to yourself is we're gonna set up like we're gonna hit a normal drive and set up and address the golf ball.
Then we're gonna take the golf ball off the tee, and I'm gonna dress this tee like I'm gonna hit a normal drive. And when I swing. I'm gonna swing to the inside of this T and completely miss the T. So I don't wanna hit the T, like I'm gonna hit a drive. I'm gonna swing completely inside of it so that the T would be all the way off the toe side of the club.
I have yet to meet a player that can't do that. All you're doing there is hitting it way off the toe, like an inch off the golf club, off the club. So if I set up with this tee in the middle of the club and I can swing and miss the tee to the inside of the tee so I can. Set up here and swing through here.
I can control where I'm hitting the face. If I can set up in the middle and miss outside the T, so I can set up here and swing through out here, I can control where I'm hitting the face, so go through and hit about 10 shots, alternating. I'm gonna set up normal. I'm gonna miss it to the inside of the tee.
Set up normal. Miss it to the outside of the tee. All right, so let me pause the video for a second. I realize I messed up when watching this back. I meant to say that I want you to make 10 practice swings alternating hitting inside and outside the tee. So we're not putting a ball on the tee, we're just putting a tee in the ground, swinging inside of it, and swinging outside of it.
Let's get back to the video and you're able to move around what you're doing with the club there. I've never had a player that couldn't do that. After practicing it five or 10 times, get 10 wins. One to the inside, one to the outside, one to the inside, one to the outside. 10 successful shots doing that.
Now, once you've done that, we're gonna do the same thing, just a little less severe. Now, hitting the golf ball. Now, a common question I'll get is, well, when I wanna hit it off the toe, should I set up further away? Or if I wanna hit it up the heel, should I set up closer? That can help. But what I found when I really test that with players is your body subconsciously knows, you know, I set up with it.
I set up farther away from it. And then we end up kind of reaching out more and hitting it off the heel anyways, so I don't, I haven't really found setting up closer or further affects it that much. It can help fine tune it when you get around where you wanna be, but it doesn't really get it perfect.
When I go to hit these shots, now I'm gonna purposely hit one anywhere off the toe. Let me give you an example. I'm gonna make a hook swing and I'm gonna hit it off the toe and watch how bad this ball hooks for me. I'm gonna show you how the toe shot can really affect. How this ball curves in the air.
So that was a big nose dive to the left. Massive hook. And when I look at this mark on the club, you're gonna see that I hit it well off the toe. Lemme try to zoom in here and show you this. There you go. So you can see that was a fairly well off the toe shot if I hit that off the heel and made that same swing.
That would actually not curve nearly as much. So I'm gonna try to do the same thing there again, where I make a little easy swing. I'm gonna make a hook swing. So I'm gonna try to make an identical swing and try to hit it off the heel and you'll see that it will not hook very much at all. If it, if any.
So remember, one dimple is about four yards a curve. Here's my hook. Swing off the heelside.
That ball actually still sliced. Because I hit it so far off the heel, even though I made a hook swing. So you can see here with this shot, I'll get it focused in here in a second way off the heel, that ball sliced, I felt like I made the exact same swing. So part of the reason when you had miss hits over the last couple of weeks, and I didn't want to get to this right off the bat 'cause I want to get the patterns in, but part of those shots that you were trying to draw that didn't draw.
Or you were trying to fade, that didn't fade, you probably hit 'em on the wrong side of the club. Once we do what we're doing today, you're gonna be able to have control of that. All you're gonna do today is hit 10 shots, alternating heel toe, heel toe, and I'm gonna try to get 10 successful shots. As soon as I get one off the heel, I'm gonna go to the toe.
As soon as I get one off the toe, I'm gonna go to the heel. What we can do to practice to warm up, let's say, I'm gonna start out with my heel shot. I'm gonna set up on this T again, and I'm gonna swing outside that T. That'd be way off the heel. If I wanna do a little less, I could set up to it and try to hit that T on the heelside of the club.
You should be able to see a mark on here when you hit it on the heelside. So if you wanna do a couple practice swings to get the feeling before the shot, that's totally fine. But now I'm gonna hit balls until I can successfully hit one. Off the heel side of the club. Let's go ahead and give that a whirl.
Really exaggerated it. Big slice. That was a low heel, so I was successful. I was trying to hit off the heel. I really hit it way off the heel. Soon as I get a win there, I'm gonna go back and hit one off the toe. Same thing here. I can set up to that tee and when I swing, swing inside the golf ball, which would be way off the toe to get the feel, then I'm just gonna hit a shot doing a little bit less of that same.
Feeling Again, everyone can do this. I've yet to meet a player that can't miss that tee. You do have control of it. It may take a little practice to get as accurate as you want, but you can get the correct side of the face. At least there's my toe shot. That ball hooked and it's way off the toe, so you're just gonna alternate.
Heel toe, heel toe, heel, toe. Now once you've done that, let's start to hit a little bit better shots. I want you to try to hit five shots that are your preferred shot shape and hit 'em anywhere toward the middle of the face. Now you'll notice a lot of the ones that don't go well tend to be the ones that hit the wrong side of the face.
So here I'm gonna play a draw, and when I'm hitting a draw, I either wanna hit it dead solid, or if I miss hit it a little bit, I like for it to be a little bit on the toe side. That way I guarantee it draws. The last thing I wanna do is set up right. Play it to draw back to the left and then I slice it right?
So when I'm playing my draw, I want to err toward the toe side a little bit to help that ball draw and ensure that it does turn over. So I'm gonna try to hit a little off the toe and make my draw swing I've been working on. And we're just gonna hit a couple bonus shots here.
There we go. Hit that one. Fantastic. Probably a five yard draw. And I hit it a little bit off the toe, which helped it turn over. These are just bonus shots. The only thing you have to do today is 10 alternating missing the T, and then 10 successful ones, alternating hitting the heel, hitting the toe, hitting the heel, hitting the toe.
Once you've done that, I recommend hitting a couple bonus ones where you try to make a good swing and just be aware of where you're hitting on the face. You'll start to realize that the more I miss it on the face. It messes up the ball flight a little bit. In the next drill, what we're gonna do is we're gonna jump back on the blue brick and we're gonna start to hit good draws and fades and a straight shot or two in there also.
And pair it up with working it on the face. And this is when you get really dialed in. You get control of the face, you're gonna control of your ball flight 'cause you've done the work to get the other stuff. Pretty dagg on close.
