If you’ve ever read or watched golf instruction - or, likely, simply listened to “amateur instructors” on the driving range or golf course - you’ve probably heard a few variations on a piece of advice about hitting irons:
- “Hit down on it” or “hit down on the ball”;“Stop trying to lift the ball”;or “let the iron do the work for you.”
All these catchphrases relate to something about the design of golf irons and the proper way to use them to hit a golf ball: Irons are designed to contact the golf ball while still traveling down. Hit down on the ball means your iron should contact the ball before it hits the ground.
‘Hit Down on the Ball’ Seems Contrary to Our Instincts
“Golf is a difficult game, yet to so many of the uninitiated it might seem incredibly simple,” says golf instructor Clive Scarff. “The objective is to strike a ball … that is just sitting there. How tough can it be? It’s not like baseball, or tennis, where the ball is moving as we attempt to make contact with it. Or hockey, where someone is trying to knock you down while you hit the ball.”
So if the ball is just sitting there, what makes it so hard to hit good iron shots?
“Golf is difficult - deceptively so - due to our perception of how to get the ball airborne,” Scarff explains. “We want the ball to go up, and our natural inclination is to hit up at it. However, with irons, we need to hit down.”
Why Hitting Down - Not Trying to Lift the Ball - Works With Irons
Trying to swing up at the golf ball might make sense at first glance; after all, you want the ball to get up into the air. So we asked Scarff to explain the concept of hitting down to make the golf ball go up.
Scarff’s explains:
That’s the technical explanation of what happens when an iron face correctly impacts a golf ball while the iron head is still traveling a downward path. When the iron is “hitting down on the golf ball.” (The path any club travels into the moment of contact with a golf ball is called the angle of attack.)
Scarff continues:
