HOW DO YOU COMPRESS THE GOLF BALL?

Two factors are necessary to compress the golf ball. Delofting the club by getting your hands in front of the ball and your angle of attack, which should be about 3 degrees downward at impact.  You might have heard the expression to hit down on the ball. We want your swing arc or angle of attack to be coming down to three to four degrees. To be clear, we don't want it coming down on the ball so steep that it will chop down on the ball.  Ideally you will create a very shallow divot (the size of a strip of bacon) about 3 to 6 inches in front of the ball. PGA Professional Robin Symes provides a drill to help you learn how your hands should be positioned at impact in your full swing.

One of the most common causes of poor club ball contact is allowing the hands to fall behind the club head at impact. This leads to a wide array of issues including fat and thin shots, but most especially, inconsistency in compressing the ball with a descending swing path and a naturally delofted club. A very simple drill that will force you to maintain proper hand position through impact is to simply close the club face at address and then square it at impact. This requires you to keep your hands in front of the club head. As soon as you gain this proper feeling, revert back to your normal address and start compressing the ball.

COMPRESS THE GOLF BALL DRILLS

Close the Club Face Drill

If you want to get a feel for how to compress the golf ball, use this simple drill. Close the club face quite severely, at address. Then learn to square the club face at impact. To do that you're going to have to keep your hands accelerating for longer. So, your club shaft gets in a position where it's quite severely bent forward at impact squaring the club face. You'll see that will deloft the club a lot, but it will give the feeling of your hands accelerating for longer - keeping your hands in front of the club head. You'll develop awareness in that movement of how to hit the ball solid, how to compress the ball. Once you've got a feel for that, quickly go back to a regular address with a regular club face and try that similar feeling of keeping the hands accelerating for longer, delofting the club so you can compress that ball.

Slow motion hands 

A great drill to learn the correct positioning to compress the golf ball is to start your club just outside your right foot three inches off the ground and then try to keep your hands in front while keeping the club head three inches off the ground until your hands are two feet in front of the ball.  This can be done in slow motion and then gradually increase the speed of movement.

Impact Bag Drill

The impact bag remains and indispensable tool for working on your golf swing.  It's especially valuable for helping you learn the proper body position for compressing the golf ball. You want to strike the impact bag while maintaining your hands in front of the bag and notice how your body and your legs have to move.

DO YOU HAVE TO COMPRESS THE GOLF BALL? 

You do not have to compress the golf ball to enjoy the game of golf.  But as your handicap goes down or as you want it to go down more, all higher skilled players compress the golf ball. If you don't work on learning to compress the golf ball, your club shaft will be leaning away from target, you'll be increasing the loft of the clubs, you'll be getting a high weak ball flight with a loss of distance. You will not be hitting as solid and will probably be dealing with heavy shots and thin shots. What we like to see at impact is where the shaft will lean slightly forward, the hands will be slightly in front of the ball, and we'll reduce the loft of the club slightly, so you get a lower ball flight ensuring a solid contact and reaching your maximum distance.