How to Stop Trying to Lift the Golf Ball

Trying to help the golf ball into the air is one of the most natural, most common, and most destructive instincts in golf. If you’re tired of thinning your irons across the green or topping your fairway woods a frustrating fifty yards, you’ve come to the right place. Breaking this single habit is the gateway to hitting pure, compressed golf shots that fly high and land soft. This article will show you exactly why you subconsciously try to lift the ball and, more importantly, give you a clear, step-by-step plan with actionable drills to stop doing it for good.

Why Our Brain Wants Us to Lift the Ball

First, let’s get one thing straight: if you try to scoop or lift the golf ball, you’re not alone. It’s a perfectly logical instinct. In nearly every other sport involving an object and a target, you propel the object directly toward that target. To throw a baseball to a cutoff man, you release it on an upward arc. To serve a volleyball over the net, you strike it on an upward trajectory. Your brain has spent a lifetime learning that to make something go up, you have to move it… up.

Golf flips this logic on its head. The goal is to get the ball airborne, so your brain says, “Okay, easy. We just need to get the clubhead under the ball and lift it.” This leads to a “scooping” motion, where your weight hangs back, your wrists flip, and you try to act as a human launch ramp. Unfortunately, this counterproductive motion is the root cause of the two most dreaded miss-hits: the thin shot and the fat shot.

• The Thin Shot: When you try to scoop, the lowest point of your swing often happens just behind the ball. As the club starts traveling back up, it catches the ball on its equator, sending a low screamer across the ground.
• The Fat Shot: The exact same scooping motion can also cause you to hit the ground first. Your club digs into the turf behind the ball, losing all its energy and resulting in a shot that goes nowhere.

The only way to break this cycle is to override that faulty instinct with a fundamental truth of the golf swing: to make the ball go up, you have to hit down.

Your Clubs Are Designed to Do the Work

Before we get into the technique, you need to fully buy into one simple concept: you do not need to help the ball get into the air. Ever. You have up to 14 clubs in your bag, and every single one, from your lob wedge to your 3-wood, has an engine built right into its face designed to launch the ball for you. That engine is called loft.

Understanding Loft: The Built-in Ramp

Look at the face of any iron in your bag. You’ll notice it’s not perfectly vertical, it’s angled back. That angle is the club's loft. Think of it as a small, high-speed ramp. When you make contact, the clubface traps the ball against the turf for a split-second, and the loft of the club dictates the angle at which the ball shoots off that ramp.

A 9-iron, with its significant loft (around 41-43 degrees), is like a steep ramp. It’s designed to send the ball high into the air on a shorter flight. A 5-iron, with less loft (around 24-26 degrees), is a shallower ramp, designed for a lower, more penetrating flight that travels farther. The driver has the lowest loft of all, creating a launch angle optimized for maximum distance.

Your job as the golfer is not to create your own ramp by scooping. Your sole purpose is to deliver the clubhead’s built-in ramp to back of the ball effectively. Trust that the club's design will handle the rest. This shift in mindset is half the battle won.

Hitting Down to Make It Go Up

So, if we aren’t lifting, what should we be doing? The proper golf swing with an iron strikes the golf ball with a downward angle of attack. This creates what golfers call “compression,” and it's the feeling we all chase - that pure, soft-yet-solid sensation of a perfectly struck iron shot.

The Magic of "Ball-Then-Turf" Contact

Imagine your club swinging on a giant arc around your body. For a proper iron shot, the lowest point of that arc should happen just in front of the golf ball, taking a divot of turf on the target side of where the ball was resting. This is what we call "ball-then-turf" contact.

When you achieve this, you are striking the ball first with a descending blow. The club "compresses" the ball into the ground, and the loft sends it launching upward with optimal spin. Visually, it looks like this:

1. Your hands lead the clubhead into the impact zone.
2. The club makes initial contact with the back of the golf ball.
3. The clubhead continues on its downward path.
4. The clubhead bottoms out, taking a divot from the ground *after* the ball has already been struck.

The lifting or scooping impulse does the exact opposite. It causes your swing to bottom out *behind* the ball, leading to all the inconsistent strikes we discussed earlier. Your goal is simple: learn to move the low point of your swing forward.

Actionable Drills to Stop Lifting Forever

Understanding the theory is great, but changing a deep-seated physical habit requires practice. The following drills are designed to retrain your body and mind to strike down on the ball, shift your weight correctly, and let the club do its job.

Drill 1: The Towel Behind the Ball

This is a classic for a reason - it provides immediate and undeniable feedback. It forces you to create a steeper angle of attack and prevents the club from bottoming out early.

• How to do it: Go to the driving range or a practice area. Place a golf towel (or a headcover) on the ground about 6-8 inches directly behind your golf ball.
• The Goal: Your only objective is to hit the golf ball without touching the towel on your downswing.
• What it teaches: If you are scooping or your swing bottoms out too early, you will hit the towel before you reach the ball. To avoid the towel, you have no choice but to create a more downward "ball-then-turf" strike path. Start with small, slow swings and gradually build up your speed as you get the feel for it.

Drill 2: The Forward Weight Transfer Drill

Lifting is almost always accompanied by a poor weight shift, where the player hangs back on their trail foot (right foot for a right-handed player) through impact. This drill drills a proper forward weight transfer into your swing.

• How to do it: Set up to the ball as you normally would. Before you start your swing, take your trail foot and place it behind you, so just your toes are on the ground for balance, like a kickstand. The vast majority of your weight should be on your lead foot.
• The Goal: Hit 30- to 50-yard shots with a short iron (like a wedge or 9-iron) from this position.
• What it teaches: You physically cannot hang back and scoop the ball from this setup. It forces you to stay centered over your lead foot and rotate through the shot. You'll feel what it’s like for your body's center of gravity to be ahead of the ball at impact, which is essential for pure strikes.

Drill 3: The Low Point Line Drill

This drill gives you a clear visual for moving your swing’s low point forward. All you need is a can of athletic foot spray or a line of chalk.

• How to do it: On the grass, spray a straight line perpendicular to your target line. Place a ball directly on that line.
• The Goal: Hit the shot, paying close attention to where your divot starts. Your mission is to have the divot start *on* the line or, even better, just *in front* of the line (on the target side).
• What it teaches: A divot that starts behind the line is a clear sign that your swing is bottoming out too early. This drill provides a stark visual for a "ball-then-turf" strike. Continuously working to move your divot forward on the line will re-wire your swing to have the correct low point.

Final Thoughts

To finally stop trying to lift the golf ball, you must replace your old, flawed instinct with a new one through understanding and repetition. Recognize that the club’s loft will do the lifting for you, and your job is to deliver that club on a downward angle by shifting your weight forward and making contact with the ball first, then the turf.

Of course, transferring great practice-range feelings to the golf course can be a big challenge. When you're standing over a tough shot from the rough, that old instinct to lift can creep back in. That's exactly what we designed to help with. When unsure, you can open Caddie AI, snap a photo of your ball's lie, and get immediate, objective advice on the proper shot to play. It's like having a dedicated coach in your pocket to reinforce solid thinking and help you build the confidence to trust your new swing.