Before Hitting Your Irons, Do This for 5 Seconds

There are few feelings in golf better than hitting an iron shot perfectly.

You strike the ball first. The club enters the turf just after impact. And the golf ball seems to jump off the face with almost no effort.

Then there are the other shots.

The chunks. The thin shots. The frustrating iron that comes up 20 yards short even though you felt like you made a pretty good swing.

When golfers struggle with inconsistent iron contact, they often assume something is wrong with their golf swing.

But before you start changing your backswing, takeaway, or downswing, there's something much simpler you should check.

In fact, it takes about five seconds before every iron shot.

If you want to make more consistent ball-first contact, start with these three fundamentals.

What Does Ball-First Contact Actually Mean?

Before we get into the setup, it's important to understand what we're trying to accomplish.

With an iron, you want the golf club to strike the ball first and the ground second.

That means the bottom—or low point—of your golf swing needs to occur slightly in front of the golf ball.

This is where many amateur golfers get into trouble.

If the bottom of your swing occurs behind the ball, you'll hit the ground first and chunk the shot.

If you're constantly trying to avoid the ground altogether, you're more likely to catch the ball thin.

Good iron players aren't trying to "pick" the golf ball perfectly off the turf.

They're controlling where the golf swing bottoms out.

And there's a remarkably simple way to understand where that low point wants to occur.

The "Buttons on Your Shirt" Rule for Better Iron Contact

Here's one of my favorite golden nuggets for iron play:

The bottom of your golf swing tends to correspond with the buttons on your golf shirt.

Think about that for a moment.

If your shirt buttons are positioned behind the golf ball at impact, where is the bottom of your swing likely to be?

Behind the ball.

That's when you start seeing those heavy, chunky iron shots.

But when your body is positioned correctly and your low point moves forward, it becomes much easier to strike the ball before the turf.

This simple concept also helps explain why your setup matters so much.

You can make a pretty good golf swing and still struggle with your irons if you've put the golf ball in the wrong place before you ever move the club.

1. Check Your Ball Position

The first part of our five-second check is ball position.

It's one of the simplest fundamentals in golf—and one of the easiest to overlook.

For the iron setup demonstrated in the video, start with the golf ball in the middle of your heels.

From there, take equal steps toward and away from the target to build your stance.

This gives you a repeatable reference point instead of simply looking down and guessing whether the ball is in the correct position.

Why does that matter?

Remember our shirt-button rule.

Your ball position and the location of your body's center work together to determine where the golf club reaches the bottom of its arc.

Get the ball too far forward and you may reach the bottom of the swing before you ever get to the golf ball.

That's a recipe for hitting behind it.

2. Make Sure the Clubface Is Actually Square

Here's another detail that's easy to overlook:

Is your clubface really square at address?

You might be surprised.

Golf clubs aren't always as easy to align as they appear when you're standing over the ball.

And if you unknowingly start with the clubface open or closed, you're already making the golf swing more complicated than it needs to be.

There's a simple check I like.

Bring the club up to eye level and hold it in your lead hand.

Look at the leading edge of the clubface and make sure it's straight.

Then place the club behind the golf ball.

It's a quick way to train your eyes to recognize what a truly square clubface looks like.

Before worrying about fixing a fade, hook, or other ball-flight problem with your swing, make sure you're not accidentally creating the problem at address.

3. Start With 60% of Your Weight Forward

The third part of the five-second check may be the most important for golfers who consistently hit behind the ball.

At setup, I want approximately:

60% of your pressure on the lead foot and 40% on the trail foot.

We call this our 60/40 setup.

Why start slightly forward?

Go back to our low-point concept.

If you set up correctly but allow your body to move backward and stay there, the bottom of your golf swing can move backward too.

Now the ground gets in the way before the club reaches the ball.

Starting 60/40 helps establish the proper position, but you still need to move correctly during the swing so that your low point works forward rather than backward.

That's a major part of creating consistent ball-first contact.

The 5-Second Iron Check

You don't need a dozen swing thoughts standing over the golf ball.

Instead, make these three things part of your pre-shot routine:

Ball position: Is the golf ball where it belongs?
Clubface: Is the face actually square?
Weight: Do you feel approximately 60% on your lead side?

That's it.

Five seconds.

Then make your golf swing.

The purpose isn't to make golf robotic. It's actually the opposite.

When you've taken care of the fundamentals before the swing begins, you can stop thinking about them while you're swinging.

Stop Trying to Fix Everything With Your Golf Swing

This is one of the biggest lessons I want experienced golfers to understand.

Not every bad golf shot requires a swing change.

Sometimes the solution is much simpler.

If you're constantly hitting behind the ball, don't immediately start rebuilding your downswing.

First, understand where your golf swing is bottoming out—and why.

Check your ball position.

Check your clubface.

Check your weight.

Those three things can put you in a much better position to make the crisp, ball-first contact you're looking for.

And when you start controlling the low point consistently, iron play becomes a whole lot easier.

Want to Make Ball-First Contact More Consistently?

If this concept makes sense to you, it's also the foundation behind our Pure Ball First Contact Series.

After more than 30 years of coaching golfers, I've found that most players don't need more complicated swing instruction.

They need to understand one simple objective:

How do I get the golf club to strike the ball first and the ground second?

That's what Pure Ball First Contact is designed to teach.

We've taken a body-friendly approach to iron contact and broken it down into simple adjustments and drills you can actually understand and practice.

No chasing perfect swing positions.

No spending hours beating golf balls on the range.

The entire series takes about an hour to go through and is designed to help you understand how to control your low point so you can eliminate more of those frustrating chunks, thin shots, and inconsistent strikes.

Because you've probably already hit that one iron shot that felt so pure you barely felt the ball.

The goal is to make that shot a whole lot less accidental.

Learn More About the Pure Ball First Contact Series →