Try this ‘scrape drill’ from a Top 100 Teacher to improve your ball-striking

By: Jeff Warne, Top 100 Teacher May 9, 2021

This drill will improve your ball striking.

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Golfers are often inundated with mechanical advice that often leads to confusion. This simple drill will put all of that confusion to rest by helping you understand the clubhead and how it interacts with the ground.

I call the drill the “scrape drill” and it can be used to help many parts of your game. Here’s how.

Approach shots

Start by staging the ideal impact positions with your irons. Your hands should be slightly ahead of the ball with your shaft leaning forward. From this position, scrape the turf through your impact position on the correct path about two to four inches in front of the ball. You want to make sure you are not digging the leading edge into the ground too much while also not hitting too far behind the ball and bouncing your club into the ball.

This same rehearsal can be done with your wedges to improve contact on chipping and pitching.

Off the tee

This scrape drill will work the same way with the driver, but with this club you want zero turf interaction.

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Set up in your impact position yet again, but this time in the ideal position for a driver. This time though, you want the “scrape” to result in zero turf interaction as you come through the impact area. Instead, you want to be hitting level or even slightly up on the ball. Imagine a tee being in the ground as you sweep the ball off the tee without any interaction with the turf.

Bunker shots

This iteration of the drill will work the exact same way, but this time you want lots of turf interaction. For bunker shots, you want to be hitting behind the ball, so the scraping will occur behind the ball.

Get into the impact position, but now you want your club scraping a couple inches behind the ball with the bottom of the swing arc coming directly beneath the ball. If there were a tee in the ground, you would be cutting it in half with the leading edge of the club.