im watching "playing lessons from the pros" on TGC and colin montgomrie says that divots should be an inch after the ball. i know for a 100% fact that my divots are not even close to an inch beyond the ball, this worries me...
any tips on hitting good irons shots with these correct divots?
thanks for your time.
Most peoples divots are before the ball & not after... Ideally we shouldn't make divots, but if we do, then the way I've been taught is as Monty says, they should occur after the ball.
Its interesting looking at the divot we've made & where it is if we do take one & compare that to the shot we've made & how we've commited ourselves to the ball & swing.
I would love to practice what I preach on this.. Consitency & time will tell I suppose
Any divot you take, is taking energy from your swing, the idea I was told is that you should simply be brushing the ball off the turf... & it should leave no more than a scuff mark after the ball. Though when you watch a pro on the telly you rarely see one who doesn't take a great clod of earth.
However, If Monty's advice is right & you are taking a divot after striking the ball, I suppose it doesn't matter. As that part of his advice does coincide with what my better golf coach was telling me.
I may try & purposefully take some divots next time I'm playing in the aimed manner to see what happens, though I am painfully aware of what happens if I hit the ball heavy & so dig in it does reduce the distance the ball goes, but that is probably due to occasional bad technique on my part than anything else. & usually when I'm rushing & letting the tempo go wrong... nerves on my part
If I interrupt my natural flow & take too long in address routine, the amount of nervous tension I build up is something else. :(
All my life I never understood that the divot was supposed to be in front of the ball. When I found out, I just though, "How??". The answer is that you must make the proper weight shift during the downswing, which allows you to make ball-first contact on the club's way down to the ground.
You might want to check if you are shifting your weight to your front foot (left foot if you are right-handed) at the start of your downswing. This will give you more power, because of both clubhead lag and added weight behind the ball, and you will hit the ball first instead of taking big chunks behind the ball.
Yeah, its alright to take a divot as long as you take it after you've hit the ball first. You wont lose any power that way. If it wasn't alright to take a divot then 100% of the touring pros wouldn't take one.
The reason that you are 'supposed to take a divot' so to speak, is that the clubhead should still be decending when you strike the ball. Thus if you hit the ball right before hitting the ground as you should, you would necessarily take a divot. You should impart backspin on all shots (save your driver off of a tee). That is usually the difference between a better player and a worse one; notice how good players balls stick or spin back slightly when they hit the green while bad players do not. You can tell much about your swing from a divot (ie how deep, how long, at what point it starts). I am a big fan of divots. Big fan.
It imparts backspin on the ball to begin with, it also causes the ball trajectory to be higher and softer than a typical beginner's "swipe" where the ground is just brushed, it has to do with the leading edge of the club getting under the ball and allowing it to roll up the face of the club smoothly. Take a look at your clubs and you will notice the bounce of the club, if you come in flat, which is what your are doing when you just barely brush the grass, the ball has a tendency to hop first off the leading edge and then rebound off the face of the club from there, that is due to the bounce of the club not allowing the leading edge to get under the ball cleanly.
When you hit the ball on a downward strike the leading edge gets to the ball first causing it to be compressed on the clubface and roll up an off, the divot afterward can be big or small or just cut a little grass but the key is the downward strike of the ball instead of the sweeping of the club on the ground till it hits the ball. Taking a good divot is basically a "check" in your swing and allows you to get pretty much instant feedback without even having to look at your ball. No power is lost because you hit the ball first then ground so all the energy is released on the ball first then dicipated into the ground and followthru.
Work on a decending strike and imagine in your mind as you practice, making the leading edge of the club hit the lower part of a ball before any part of the club hits the ground, in order to understand the whole thing its best to put a ball on a table and see the spot your looking for, then relate that to the edge of the club. Good luck with it, and you will see higher/longer shots that land soft and tend to not roll out as much.
July 19th, 2005, 03:22 AM
divots?
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