Golf Tips: Hard Fairway Iron Shots

As I mentioned in the last post, I ran into some trouble yesterday when hitting a 6-iron off of a very hard lie in the fairway.  I believe my club hit the ground behind the ball first, then bounced up into the middle of the ball.  That resulted in a very thin "worm burner" shot which ended up about 60 yards short of the target.  I decided I'd work up a new Tuesday Tip for that situation to help myself as well as our great Frogger fans who follow the blog here and our Facebook and Twitter social networks. Hard Fairway We want to prevent the club from bouncing behind the ball like I described.  So the setup is going to be a bit different.  We are going to move the ball toward the back of the stance.  This ball position will help make sure we hit ball first, rather than the ground. We are going to change the swing a bit as well.  Rather than a standard swing, we want to take the club back inside the line.  This means a lower takeaway which travels more around your back as opposed to a higher takeaway which would be higher over the shoulders.  We will return the club to the ball during the swing on the same inside-out path, with a lower approach the the ball.  This is much better than a "steep" approach which can lead to fat shots. This setup and swing will result in a lower shot which will hopefully start a bit right of target and draw back on target. I'll try it if you will! Next time I'm on a hard and tight lie on the fairway I'm going to give this a shot.  I'll post a followup.  Try it as well and see if this concept helps you save a stroke or two!