The Rotary Swing Book

by Chuck Quinton

Watch "Hitting the Ball Low - How to hit low penetrating golf shots" Video
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Hitting the Ball Low
by Chuck Quinton

I can rarely think of a time where I have played a perfectly windless day of golf. I treasure those days because they don't come around too often. But more often than not, I find myself needing to hit the ball low to keep it under the wind. But it's not just when it's windy that I pull out this shot. The lower you hit the ball, the easier it is to control in general, so when I need to be very accurate and don't have any trouble in front of the green that I must clear, I will hit this boring shot. It will release a bit when it hits the green, but not a ton because it will have a fair amount of spin because I still hit the shot at full speed with my body, it's just my arm swing that becomes restricted. If you need the ball to release more, you will want to hit it a bit easier with more club to take some of the spin off.

Take a look at the two pictures below. The one on the left is a screen shot from the "Hitting the Ball High" video and the one on the right is from the "Hitting the Ball Low" video. There are two important observations to be made here. First, is the launch angle. While I hit both these 6 irons the same distance, there is a significant difference in launch angles, with the one on the right coming out much lower. Second, the low shot has traveled much further at the same point in the swing, about 28" more and with 3 mph more ball speed. So how to two golf balls travel the same distance when one is traveling at a higher rate of speed? Trajectory. Even though the lower shot has more ball speed, it doesn't have the trajectory to travel as far in the air. Even though the high shot wasn't hit quite as hard, it traveled the same distance because it spent much more time in the air. So, that begs the question, why not just hit it higher all the time since you don't have to hit it as hard and get it to go the same distance? In one word - wind. At times, you will need all three shots, low, medium, and high to score your best in all conditions. Master these two shots and add them to your shot making arsenal to play your best under any circumstance.