Learn to nail your iron shots and hit down and through the ball. A trademark of great ball strikers is their ability to hit the ball first and take a divot after the ball. This confuses many people when I give lessons. I ask the average person where they think the bottom of the swing should be and they respond: “before the ball or just at the ball.” In fact the bottom of the well played iron shot should several inches past the golf ball.

Fundamentals needed to hit “crisp” iron shots.

• Start with your weight more onto your front foot and into your lead hip at address. If you are too centered with your weight, you may have a tendency to drift or slide back too much in your backswing.
  
  

• Pivot and coil around your back leg. It is important to learn to coil and store energy in the legs and body during the backswing. Too many players allow their hips to shift or slide away from the target in the backswing. This much lateral movement of the hips causes inconsistency with getting back to the same place at contact.
  
  

• Learn to lean the club shaft towards the target at impact. This helps create a descending blow to the back of the ball. When the shaft leans towards the target at impact, the club is delofted by the amount of lean of the shaft. Leaning the shaft enables you to properly compress the golf ball in the center of the clubface. This helps create driven shots with penetrating ball flights. Learning to hit the ball more in the center of the clubface helps you control your launch angle, spin and ultimately gain control of the distances that your iron shots will fly.
  
  

• Find your lead hip into impact. This again enables you to hit down, forward and through the shot.
  
  

• Rotate your backside shoulder through the shot. Too many people “fall back” or “hang back” on their shots. If a player reverse pivots they fall back and if a player slides into the ball they will drop their back shoulder and “hang back.” If the player hangs back on their shot

As a general rule, understand that iron shots are for position and placement of your shots around the flag. Hit enough club into your targets. It’s not necessary to be the longest iron player in the game, but it is important to become more accurate with you distance control. Hole high shots score the best in the game.