Topping the Golf Ball; How to stop Topping your Golf Shots

br> Topping the golf ball occurs when you make contact with the ball at or above the center diameter of the golf ball resulting in a poor or awful shot such as beating the ball into the ground or hitting a “worm burner”.

The top shot occurs due to one of two things, either the bottom of your swing was in the wrong place, forward or behind the golf ball or because you lifted out of your shot by changing your spine angle.

Most golfers will misinterpret the second cause as moving your head when in reality it was the changing of the spine angle and not moving your head which caused the topped shot.

Golf Tip on Topping the Golf Ball

Let us first tackle the problem of topping the golf ball with the bottom of the swing.

When the bottom of your swing is too far in front of the ball due to ball being too far back in your stance, you will make contact with the upper portion of the golf ball creating, at best, a low bladed shot. You could also artificially be putting the ball to far back in your stance if your shoulders at address are pointed too far left. The opposite can also be true if the ball is too far forward and your are on the upswing when making contact.

To correct this you need to ensure in your setup that your feet, hips and shoulders are all parallel with you target line. To check this you can put a club across your shoulders and see where the end of the club points. Do this across your upper thighs and across your feet as well.

Remember that the club should not point at your target put only on a line parallel to your target. The old image always given is one of a railway track with the ball being on the outside rail and your body lines being on the inside rail or rails since your shoulders, hips and feet will likely be pointing all at slightly different points all parallel to target.

The second thing you need to correct the bottom of your swing is ball placement in your stance. For your driver, you should place the ball in line with the instep of your front foot. For long irons and woods, the ball should be placed halfway between the middle of your stance and the instep of your front foot. For mid irons (6-8), the ball placement should be about 1 inch forward of the middle of your stance and for short irons, in the middle of your stance or slightly back.

The correct ball placement for each club length should allow you to bottom out your swing right at the ball or very slight ahead of it so as to take a proper divot just ahead of the ball.

Now we need to tackle the popular problem of topping the golf ball by lifting out of shots which is unfortunately a much tougher task.

Changing of your spine angle or lifting out of your shot is normally caused by over swinging and being anxious to see where your shot went or by your body naturally compensating for you being out of balance during your downswing.

One thing you definitely do not want to do is to focus on keeping your head absolutely still because thinking about it will only make it worse and we want and need a little head movement in order to create the proper shoulder turn and thus create power in our swing.

A few superficial fixes that work for people are as follows:

Embed the pointed end of your umbrella into the ground two inches on the outside of your ball directly within your line of sight. Now focus on the umbrella and hit your shot. It may seem crazy but you are not focusing on the ball but you are creating a focal point which is helping you to maintain your spine angle.

A second thing people swear by but never worked for me is to close your right eye if you swing right handed and left otherwise.  You will automatically try to maintain vision with the ball out of your left (right) eye which will help keep your head behind the ball at contact where it is suppose to be. You should be able to significantly reduce or eliminate the lifting out of shots.

Note how I called these superficial fixes. Not maintaining your spine angle throughout your swing is really a symptom of a flawed swing, be it balance or posture, where your body position will compensate to get back to a natural state.  A balanced position or more natural posture position (maybe you were too hunched over). Make sure you correct your basic swing fundamentals if this is a consistent problem leading to topping the golf ball.

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