Oh me, oh my the September 24, 2024 article on Golf.com entitled Trevino’s secret for hitting solid irons made me shake my head in disbelief. Here’s Lee Trevino, the preeminent elder statesman of golf, promulgating one of the most egregious old wives’ tales in the game—stating that compressing the ball with your irons; no, more than that, actually pushing the ball into the ground, is necessary for getting the ball into the air.
Here is a direct quote from the piece:
“The secret to playing is to push the ball in the ground,” Trevino says. “What makes a ball come up into the air is compressing the ball into the ground.”
Here is another quote from the article, from the Journalism major[1] who wrote it:
“The secret to hitting solid shots with your irons is compressing the ball into the turf. This means you need to be hitting down on the ball at impact.”
The author of this piece got things half right in that paragraph, to wit: Yes, you should be hitting down on the ball with your irons (fairways and hybrids, too—but that is a discussion for another day); that is to say, club-to-ball contact should occur before the club head reaches the bottom of the swing arc, as the club head is still descending (this is often described as “hitting the little ball before the big ball”.) What he got wrong—really, really, wrong—is the part about compressing the ball into the turf.
Without getting into a discussion of force vectors and horizontal and vertical components of impact force, let’s use a visual aid. In the illustration below, the left-hand figure shows a club striking a ball above the equator, or horizontal centerline, of the ball. It is easy to visualize the result of that impact: while the club head is sweeping forward, and will impart some amount of forward motion to the ball, the downward motion of the club head as the swing continues will cause the ball to be driven downward, into the turf. Even the rankest novice will understand that this is a bad thing.
Now look at the figure on the right. As the club head is sweeping down and forward it contacts the ball first, a fraction of a second before it contacts the turf. The club head’s forward motion propels the ball forward, and due to the angle of the face, upward—and at the same time the downward motion of the club head imparts back spin on the ball due to the friction between the club face and the surface of the ball. Thanks to the aerodynamic phenomenon known as the Magnus Effect, back spin helps the ball rise higher than it would otherwise, adding distance to the shot. In addition to the added distance, the residual spin that remains when the ball lands can reduce rollout by imparting a braking action when the ball hits the turf.
Also apparent from the figure on the right is the path of the club head after contact with the ball (light blue line). Since the club face contacts the ball before the low point of the arc of the club head’s path, the club continues to move downward and forward through the turf after the ball leaves the club face, creating the nice divot that indicates a well-struck shot. The earlier in the swing that contact comes, the steeper the contact angle is and the greater the induced back spin will be, but there is a point of diminishing returns, because the earlier that contact comes the deeper the sole of the club will dig into the turf .
It is the combination of the downward motion of the club head with club-to-ball contact before club-to ground contact that results in a great iron shot—and it is the act of hitting ball then turf, which can be described as “hitting down on the ball”, that is often described (as in the Golf.com article linked to above) as “compressing the ball”, though I have never before seen or heard it characterized as “pushing the ball into the ground.”
The article concludes with a couple of paragraphs that are a mixed bag. The author correctly cites the tendency of the less-skilled (shall we say) golfer to create a scooping motion, by breaking the wrists forward at contact, in an attempt to help the ball into the air.
“Often time amateurs will try to help the ball in the air with a scooping motion when they come into impact. This is a poor idea as it will rob you of power and limit the amount of spin you can produce, meaning the ball will actually fly lower than if you hit down on the ball.”
This action lofts-up the club face and tends to slide the club head underneath the ball, simultaneously popping the ball up more than propelling it forward, because of the higher loft, and reducing the spin-induced lift that increases carry distance, due to poor contact.
Then Lee, bless his heart, gets it all wrong, again:
“What happens is people put what we call an overspin on it and the ball never gets in the air,” Trevino says. “Every shot you hit, your first intention is to compress the ball in the ground.”
So-called “overspin”, or top spin, is not unknown in club-to-ball interactions, but while it is very common in that other country-club game, tennis, it is very difficult to produce in golf. It is accomplished in tennis by tilting the top edge of the racket forward and hitting up on the ball while simultaneously rolling the wrist in the direction of the swing. Creating top spin in golf would require the club face to contact the ball above the ball’s equator with negative loft. Even in the case of the common duffer’s mistake of hitting the turf behind the ball and then catching the ball on the upswing of the club’s arc, the resulting poor contact results only in reduced spin and ball speed, not top spin. The result that Lee is referring to is generally the result of a combination of chunking the ball (hitting the ground behind the ball) and scooping the club.
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If I were being kind I would give both Lee and the author of the cited article the benefit of the doubt and say that when they say “hit down on the ball” and “compress the ball into the ground” what they mean is “catch the ball before the low point of the swing”, but when the same mistaken characterization is repeated throughout an article, I wonder if they don’t actually believe exactly what they are saying. In any event, it is appalling to me that a leading golf publication would promulgate what is at best a poor description of the required action, and at worst a totally incorrect description of the proper way to hit a golf ball, and it is a disservice to the golfing public to present such misinformation.
Golf is hard enough, guys…
[1] Longtime readers of my work may be aware of the thinly-veiled contempt in which I hold the Journo and English Lit majors who write about technical aspects of the game of golf which they are ill-prepared to understand, let alone explain to their audience. I will name no names in this column— but his name is on the article, so…
