How to Avoid Topping the Ball on the Tee Shot

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I’ve been reading a lot lately from Don Trahan over at www.peakperformancegolfswing.com. Don and Co. have a lot of good tips for beginners and more advanced golfers. Recently he talked about something that had been plaguing my golf game, topping the ball, especially on the tee shot. How many times have you skulled the ball on the tee shot and had the ball about 25 yards in front of you (if you were lucky)? If you’re anything like me, a lot.

Got a question on the blog from Gaetan. He says, “I’m having a problem topping the ball on my downswing. Not so much with my irons, but in the tee box. Any solution of what I may be doing wrong? Thank you.”

Since you’re doing it with the ball teed up rather than off the ground, I have to suspect, for starters, we might want to look at ball position. It may be too far forward. Consequently, since you’re trying to hit up, you’re hitting it late and you’re catching the top of the ball.

Another problem could be that with the driver or any ball teed up, if you’re aiming too far to the right, you have to pull out of the shot a little quicker, and trying to swing up, if you’re caught kind of centered in the stance or reverse weight shifting, that is going to have you coming out of the shot too fast and you’ll be topping it.

Those could be the two biggest issues. A third one could be maybe turning too much in the backswing,, possibly swinging it too long, so you have to turn harder to pull the club back out in front of you. That actually sends the club coming outside to in. Pulling to the left could cause a reverse weight shift which could have you coming over the ball and topping it.

On the other hand, if you had the ball a little too far back, you’d actually have to pull out of the shot to try and hit it because the ball’s too far back and you’re pounding down on it, but you’re trying to come up, so you get pulled out of the shot.

So we have a ball position issue here and, I think there is a high probability of over turning and over swinging, causing you to have to pull out of the shot. Plus, you could be pulling across the ball, causing reverse weight shift, making you pull out of the shot.

Always go back to fundamentals. Check your ball position, check your swing, and make sure that you’re staying 3/4, limited turn. I think if you get back to the limited turn and correct ball position, you should start hitting any shorts with any club out of the tee box very well.

View the original article here