It’s officially links golf season, folks. For the next few weeks, the golf world turns to the United Kingdomn for the Scottish Open (men’s and women’s) and the Open Championship (men’s, women’s, senior’s). We’re talking about the ball in the air and on the ground. We’re talking about holding shots off into a crosswind and flighting them down into a headwind. Really, we’re talking about controlling trajectory regardless of the vagaries the linksland throws at us.
And our professor for this task? None other than Tommy Fleetwood, born and raised in Southport, on the west coast of England, down the street from Royal Birkdale, host of this year’s Open. We had the pleasure of putting Fleetwood to work in our “Pros Teaching Joes” series, focusing on a simple idea: How does one of the best irons players in the world control the trajectory of his irons shots?
“It always starts with stock,” Fleetwood told me, from one of the hitting bays at the Tommy Fleetwood Academy in Dubai. By which he means, whatever your stock ball-placement is, that’s where your thought processes should begin. To work the ball higher or lower, it’s crucial to first know know where your center-of-stance placement (with your 7-iron, most likely) is, and your standard swing and strike is. That’s your norm. That’s your stock.
In the scenario where I’d like to hit the ball higher than my stock — using the same club selection, mind you — Fleetwood suggests a little thought exercise that can double as a practice drill. You can check in out in the video below, and read on for the rest of the explanation.
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Fleetwood likes to incorporate a 5-ball mentality, where five golf balls are lined up next to one other, parallel with your toes, just outside your hitting area. Your stock setup aligns with the center ball, but to hit the ball a bit higher, position yourself so that the ball you’d be striking is the next ball forward. In other words, move your ball one ball forward in your stance.
“A ball’s worth of difference in setup should make it go a bit higher,” Fleetwood said. Sure enough, my smooth 7-iron was apexing at a height of 110 feet, probably 10 to 15 feet higher than normal, and flying 156 yards — maybe 12 yards shorter than normal. Next, we decided to push this theory for the 2% scenario: What if I have to hit it even higher?
“I do this all the time,” Fleetwood said. “I would call it working around a golf ball in my setup. You might have to hit it over a tree. You might be massively downwind, and the pin might be at the front.”
It doesn’t happen often, of course. But it might be that one time you’ve missed with a tee shot all day, and suddenly need to rescue yourself. Fleetwood’s advice: just move your ball one additional ball forward again. Now we’re two balls forward of stock, swinging the same swing, and if we get our clubhead down to the ball, it should marry up with the upward movement of our swing arc to lift the ball even higher. This time, my 7-iron was hit slightly thin — you are reaching for it a bit, after all — but still apexed at 107 feet.
The nice part about the simplicity of this exercise is the inverse of it works as well. To flight the ball lower, you’re moving the ball backward in your stance from the stock. Not a crazy amount, just one ball — and to go even lower, of course, one additional ball from stock.
This all may seem too easy; your ball-flight would, of course, be expectedly different from these different positions. But take the drill to the range to start understanding what your “stock” is, and even what “stock plus one” looks like from a trajectory perspective. Or “stock minus two.” The final key that Fleetwood holds true for himself is decidedly not changing any element of your stock swing. You’re just trying to deliver the face to the ball in the same manner, but the ball is in a slightly different position.
If anything, when trying to hit a low-striking iron, Fleetwood would maybe try to slow his swing down slightly from stock — where many people mistakenly quicken — just to make sure the movement is methodical and the contact is pure.
“If you feel like a 70-yard pitch where you’ve just had a very long swing and you just dumped the club on it with a short follow-through,” he said.
The result was exactly what we were looking for: an apex 45 feet, carrying 156 yards — basically the same distance the other non-stock shots were flying, but with a completely different feel.
