The fix for Trying to lift the ball into the air

Fixing the urge to lift the ball into the air

What is actually happening

An instinct to scoop the ball upward adds loft through impact and moves the low point behind the ball. Height comes from the loft already built into the club and from a descending strike, so the attempt to help the ball up produces the opposite: a thin or topped shot that never climbs.

Swing arc
Lowest point

Still descending at the ball

The fix

The club reaches the ball with the bottom of its arc behind it and more loft on the face than the club was built with. It gets there because you are trying to help the ball into the air. Coming down, the wrists throw the clubhead past the hands, the trail shoulder drops (the right one for a right-handed golfer; left-handers mirror this page), and the weight hangs back so the club can get underneath. Any one of those is enough to move the strike, and they tend to arrive together.

It feels logical and it is backwards. Height comes from the loft already built into the face. An iron that meets the ball while still travelling down, with the bottom of its arc just past the ball, squeezes the ball against that loft and sends it up. A scooping club reaches the bottom of its arc before the ball and is climbing when it gets there. The leading edge meets the ball low on the face, and the shot comes out thin and running, or topped along the ground. When the arc runs a fraction deeper, the club bumps the turf first and skids into the ball instead: a shallow fat shot that goes nowhere either. The attempt to add height is what takes it away.

The fault is loudest with the longest clubs you play from the grass. Long irons, hybrids and fairway woods carry the least loft, so the ball looks least likely to get up and the urge to help it is strongest. Off a tee the same swing often gets away with it, because a raised ball can still be met on the middle of the face by a club that has started to rise. Fine off a tee and hopeless off the fairway with the same club is a strong clue.

Start with what you are trying to do on the way down. If the honest answer is to get under the ball, you have the cause before any camera comes out. After a thin one, the grass where the ball sat is untouched or brushed just behind it, and face tape puts the mark on the bottom groove or the leading edge. Film face-on at hip height and freeze at impact: the clubhead has overtaken the hands and the shaft leans away from the target, where it should be level with the hands or leaning slightly toward the target.

Neighbouring causes leave similar marks from a different root. Weight stuck on the trail foot with no wish to lift anything is hanging back. Fat and thin in roughly equal numbers, with the turf marked in a different place each time, is a wandering low point. Lifting leans toward thin and topped, and it has a motive you can name. Flipping through impact is the wrist action on its own; when wanting the ball up is what drives the flip, the intention has to change too, or the wrists keep finding a way to scoop.

The fix is a different job for the club: strike the ball, then the ground in front of it. With irons and hybrids the bottom of the arc belongs on the target side of the ball, so the club is still descending at contact and the turf is taken after the ball has gone. A fairway wood sweeps rather than digs, but its bottom still belongs at the ball or just past it, never behind. The change happens through impact. Pressure moves onto the lead foot, the chest keeps turning toward the target instead of tilting back, and the hands arrive level with or slightly ahead of the clubhead. Leave the lifting to the loft.

Every thin shot makes the instinct louder. The ball stayed low, so the next swing tries harder to get under it and the low point moves further back. Moving the ball forward in the stance to help it up does the same damage from the other side: the ball now sits further past the bottom of the arc, so the club is climbing more steeply when it arrives. Teeing the ball up or taking more loft hides the problem without changing it.

Drills

Work through them in order. Each one says what it needs before you start.

Send the coin
On grass, set a coin down about a ball's width in front of the ball, on the target side. Hit half shots with an eight-iron with one job: strike the ball, then send the coin flying. A club that is scooping reaches the ball on the rise and passes over the coin. Hit ten. Success is the coin moving on at least seven of them with the ball struck first. Then hit ten at three-quarter length and ten at full length, and repeat the whole ladder with a longer club once the full swings pass.
Needs A coin
Stop just past the ball
With a mid-iron, make slow half swings and stop the club a short way past where the ball would sit, well before it reaches hip height. Hold it and look. The hands should still be level with or slightly ahead of the clubhead, the lead wrist flat rather than bent back, and the leading edge close to the ground with the face looking forward rather than up at the sky. Make ten rehearsals, then hit five balls stopping in the same place. Move on to full swings when the stopped position with a ball looks the same as it did without one.
Needs nothing but a club
The loft ladder
Take a wedge, a mid-iron and the longest club you hit from the fairway. Hit five half shots with the wedge doing nothing to help the ball up: strike it, then the grass, and watch how high it climbs on loft alone. Then hit five with the mid-iron with the same intention, then five with the long club. If any shot comes out thin or topped, drop back one club and hit five more before moving up again. Success is five clean strikes in a row with the long club from the grass, launching at a normal height. Then repeat the ladder with full swings, starting again at the wedge.
Needs nothing but a club

Browse every drill on the site

Practice plan and log

Practise this fix, day by day

Keep a dated log of every session against this fix, so in a few weeks you can read back whether the change has taken instead of trying to remember.

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Or turn this fix into a practice plan

With a free account, the drills above become a 14-day plan: the setup checks and the first drill for three days, then the next drill, a rest day every fourth day, and a re-test on the last day that sends you back through the questions. Each day is a short list to tick off at the range, with reminders by email or in your calendar if you want them.

How the 14 days run

Day 1Ten balls as a baseline, then the setup checks and the first drill
Days 2 to 3The first drill again, one checkpoint and one feel a day
Day 4Rest, as are days 8 and 12
Days 5 to 11The next drills in turn, each warmed up by the one before
Day 13Every drill once, then every checkpoint
Day 14Re-test: the baseline again and the questions for your symptom

Checkpoints

What to look for to know whether the change has taken.

On a face-on video frozen at impact, the hands are level with or slightly ahead of the clubhead, and the shaft is not leaning away from the target.
After an iron from the fairway, the grass is brushed or taken on the target side of where the ball sat, not behind it and not left untouched.
Face tape shows the strike around the middle of the face, not on the bottom groove or the leading edge.
Long irons, hybrids and fairway woods from the grass launch at a similar height to the same clubs hit off a low tee.
In the finish the chest faces the target and the weight is on the lead foot, rather than leaning back away from it.

Feels

A feel is not a description of what the club does. It is whatever gets your body to do it, and a correct change usually feels exaggerated long before it looks correct.

You are trapping the ball against the ground, not scooping it off it.
The ball is simply in the way of a swing aimed at the grass in front of it.
The handle leads through the ball and the clubhead follows it.

Symptoms that lead here

Each of these can resolve to this cause. If the page above does not match what you are seeing, start from the symptom instead and let the questions narrow it.

If this is not it: causes that produce the same shots

What this rests on

Search for the Perfect Swing: The Proven Scientific Approach to Fundamentally Improving Your GameAlastair Cochran and John Stobbs, for the Golf Society of Great Britain, 2005 reissue, originally 1968
The Physics of GolfTheodore P. Jorgensen, University of Nebraska, 1999, second edition; Springer reprint 2013
40+ TrackMan Parameters ExplainedTrackMan, accessed 2026

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