Why Do I Flip the Club at Impact?

The short answer: you flip because your body stops turning and your pressure stays on your trail foot, so the bottom of your swing moves behind the ball and your hands have to throw the clubhead past them to make contact. Trying to help the ball into the air makes it worse. Get your pressure into your lead foot and keep your chest rotating through impact, and the flip no longer has a job to do.

What a flip actually is

A flip, or a scoop, is when your lead wrist breaks down through impact and the clubhead overtakes your hands before it reaches the ball. The shaft leans back instead of forward, loft gets added, and the club is often already travelling upwards when it meets the ball.

The symptoms are easy to spot:

• Thin and fat shots in the same session, sometimes on the same hole.
• High, weak iron shots that balloon and come up short.
• Little or no divot, or a divot that starts behind the ball.
• A bunched-up finish, with the trail hand under the club and the lead arm folding.
• Irons that all go a similar distance, because you're adding loft to every one of them.

The flip is a reaction, not the cause

Here's what most golfers miss. Nobody flips on purpose. A flip is your brain saving the strike.

If your body is out of sequence, say your arms are stuck behind you and your body has stalled, your hands are the only thing left that can get the club to the ball. Your hand-eye coordination takes over and throws the clubhead at it. That's a clever reaction, but it's not repeatable.

So telling yourself "don't flip" or "keep your wrists firm" rarely works. You have to remove the reason your hands need to save you.

Cause 1: your pressure stays back

A good player makes a fairly centred turn to the top, shifts pressure forward in the downswing, and arrives at impact with roughly 80 per cent of their pressure on the lead foot. That moves the bottom of the swing in front of the ball, which is where it needs to be for an iron. Good iron players have their low point about four inches in front of the ball.

If your pressure is still on your trail foot at impact, your low point is at the ball or behind it. The only way to make contact from there is to flip.

An important distinction: shifting pressure is not the same as shifting your body. Pressure is the force you push into the ground, and you can't see it. Golfers who sway their whole body off the ball in the backswing usually struggle to get back in front of it, so they end up hanging back and flipping. Stay more centred going back, then move through.

Cause 2: your body stops rotating

The second cause is the body stalling. The hips and chest stop turning, the arms keep going, and the club passes the hands.

With higher-level players I often see a version of this where they drop the club under late, stall the body, and flip, usually with the trail leg kicking out through impact. With newer golfers it's often an arm swing with very little turn.

Either way, the fix is the same: the chest and hips need to keep rotating towards the target through impact, so the hands stay in front of the body and the lead arm and shaft can form one line.

Cause 3: you're trying to lift the ball

If you believe you need to help the ball into the air, your body will try to get under it. The trail shoulder drops, the pressure hangs back and the wrists scoop.

The loft on the club gets the ball airborne. Your job with an iron is to hit down on it. It's okay to hit the ground, that's why it's there. A divot after the ball is a sign you're doing it right.

One note on the driver: with a tee peg you want to hit slightly up, and staying behind the ball is correct. I explain that in how high you should tee up your driver. Off the ground with an iron, your pressure has to get forward.

Drill: the forward ball drill

This drill makes it almost impossible to flip and still hit the ball.

1. Set up to an imaginary ball in your normal iron position.
2. Move the real ball about a grip length in front of where it would normally be.
3. Keep your head where it was at address, over the imaginary ball.
4. Make very slow swings, feeling your hips move forward and rotate, your pressure move into your lead foot, and your arms extend to reach the forward ball.
5. Hit small shots. Start with half swings and build up slowly.

If you flip, you'll miss the ball or catch it thin. That's the feedback. To reach it cleanly, your arms have to get long and your body has to keep turning, which is exactly the impact structure you see from good players.

Finish check: after every shot, hold your finish for three seconds. Nearly all your pressure should be on your lead foot, your trail foot up on its toe, and your chest facing the target. If you can't hold it, your pressure didn't get forward.

Release is not the same as flipping

Don't overcorrect. The club still needs to release, meaning the face rotates closed through impact. The difference is what drives it.

When the body, arms and club are moving in sequence, the release looks passive. The arms aren't breaking down and the hands aren't throwing the club, because the body has delivered everything into the right place. The more efficient your sequence, the less you'll see the hands doing.

Common mistakes I see

• Locking the wrists to "hold lag" through impact, which tends to leave the face open.
• Pushing the hands forward without rotating. You get shaft lean at address and a flip at impact anyway.
• Swaying off the ball in the backswing and never getting back.
• Ball too far forward with the irons, so the ball sits past your low point.
• Fear of the ground. Taking a divot is part of a good iron strike.

Want to stop flipping for good?

My Iron Play Blueprint takes you through pressure shift, rotation and impact step by step, so your low point moves in front of the ball and you start compressing your irons. Start at perform.golf.

Kerrod Gray is a PGA of Australia Professional, Advanced in Coaching, and the founder of Perform Golf.