The Secret to Compressing Irons – Drill for Forward Shaft Lean and Ball Striking
Struggling to compress the golf ball consistently? You’re not alone — and the reason might be your impact position. In this video, I reveal a simple drill that teaches the “magic move” to create forward shaft lean, proper wrist angles (supination + flexion), and elite-level compression.
✅ In this lesson, you’ll learn:
How to achieve forward shaft lean at impact
What wrist movements actually create compression
Why most golfers “flip” instead of compressing
A feel-based drill that delivers real feedback and results
If you’ve ever wondered why you hit it thin or weak, this video will show you exactly how to fix it — without needing to overhaul your swing.
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The number one reason you can’t compress your irons is because you don’t have enough forward shaftling at impact. If we were to look at a bunch of tour players, you’re going to see at impact, they have their hands in front of the golf ball. Whereas the average player comes through the ball and they try to scoop the ball up in the air. So, in this video, I’m going to show you a quick simple fix you can use to start learning how to lean that shaft forward. Now, before we get too far into just trying to lean the shaft forward, I see a lot of amateurs just, oh, I’m just going to pull my arms down really fast. Well, before we do that, we really need to understand the relationship between shaft lean and club face position. So, as we all know, the club face is going to tell the ball where it’s going to go. And there is a sort of a relationship between shaft lean and the face orientation. So, I want you to watch as I set up here. I’m going to set up with the the shaft straight up and down. And then at impact, of course, we would want the handle to be forward. Can you guys see what the club face is doing as I start to push that handle forward? Obviously, the face is starting to point off to the right. And so shaftling in itself is actually a club face opener. So here’s what I see. Here’s the issue for most amateur golfers. They’ll make their swing and they’ve already got the club face way too open. Whether it be in the back swing or the top of the swing or halfway down, they have no incentive or reason to deliver any shaft lean to this golf ball. If they did, the ball would go way off to the right. So, the first step in learning how to compress the ball here is going to be making sure that club face isn’t spun too open in the back swing, top of the swing, and especially late in the down swing. Again, if the face is too open, the average player will not just try to scoop this ball because they’re not sure what to do, but because the face angle needs to point more to the left, and the more you drag the handle back behind the ball, of course, now the face is square. It’s pointed straight. However, I’ve added a lot of loft. My low point has moved behind the ball. I’m in a lot of trouble from there. I can’t compress the golf ball. So before we just start trying to lean the shaft forward, what we first need to do is make sure that club face is in a good position. So step number one is going to be making sure your grip is rotated to the trail side enough so that for the right-handed player, the V’s are pointed a little bit more to the right shoulder. As you take this club back, we don’t want to fan the club face open. We want to more or less keep it pointed down at the ball. If we can do that, again, that’s giving us all the reason in the world to come into impact and lean that shaft a little bit more forward. So my recommendation is to go ahead and film your swing. If you see the face way too open on the way down, meaning pointed up, back, and behind you at about this position right here on the down swing, that’s no good. You’re going to have really a lot of trouble leaning the shaft forward. From there, again, it’s going to point the face way off to the right. Instead, when you film your swing, try to get that club face pointed a little bit more in this orientation halfway down. If you can do that, again, if you scoop, the ball is going to go to the left now. So, instead of doing that, we’re going to learn how to lean that shaft forward, deliver a square face, compress the golf ball a lot better. So now I’m going to teach you guys a little bit of a drill that’s going to really train how these arms and wrists need to move into impact to avoid that face being too open and then to also make sure the handle is leaning forward. But before I do that, I need to make sure you understand two terms. Okay, one is going to be flexion. Okay, so flexion is the bowing of the lead wrist. Okay, that’s how I’m going to refer to it here. Now, we could bow the wrist or extend the wrist. In this video, I’m going to talk about boweing the wrist. Now, I’m not asking you to be crazy Dustin Johnson at the top. I just want to make sure you understand that term. The other term is going to be called supenation. So supenation is the act of rolling the forearm. Okay? So if you held a bowl of soup, that would be the act of supenating both arms. So in terms of the lead arm, the left arm for the right-handed player, we need to learn how to supenate this arm. But we’re actually going to do both at the same time. We’re going to go flexion and supenation at the same time. So if we look at what that looks like, first of all, if I flex the lead wrist, a that closes the face. However, if I came through and I never twisted my radial bone, which is the bone that sits right on top of your thumb, if I never actually supenated that, well, what would happen is the face would still point way off to the right. So, the flexion helps me get a little bit of that shaft. However, I still need to supenate that arm to get the face angle to point a little bit straight. So, it sounds really complicated, but I got a really simple drill I want you guys to try. So, what I want you to do is take a golf te. You’re going to open up your lead hand, the left hand for the right-handed golfer. You’re gonna put the part that the ball goes on towards your hand and the pointy part is gonna stick up like this. Okay. So now I’ve got this tee in my hand. I’m gonna go ahead and take my left hand grip. I’m just going to demonstrate this with the left hand to start with. Okay. So now from my point of view, what you guys are going to notice is I can see that golf tee very clearly at setup. The goal is going to be to learn to make swings and turn that tee down so that you cannot see it. If you can do that, that means you are flexing and supenating the lead arm an adequate amount. That’s going to teach you how to lean the shaft forward at impact. So once you get the feel for that with just your left hand, go ahead and put both hands on. We’re just going to learn slowly how to turn that tee down so that we can’t see it at impact. Again, that’s the act of twisting the face, flexing the lead wrist, supenating the lead arm. This takes care of both issues. It gets the handle in front of the ball and it closes the club face for us. Now we can start hitting low compressed shots with this tee in our hand. So as with any drill, we don’t want to rush into this, right? We’re going to go ahead and take a few practice swings now with both hands on the club. And again, a little feeling of this goes a long way. We’re going to try and feel like we push that tee down and away from us so that we can’t see it from our point of view. That’s going to help us hit these nice low little chip shots, which is what I would want you guys to start with before we build up any speed. So, I’m just going to hit one here. I want you guys to pay attention to the ball flight. This is an eight iron. And we’re just going to try and turn that tee down. And what you should see if you do this correctly, of course, we’re learning how to close the face and lean the shaft forward. So, some lower maybe drawing shots would be really nice. I’m going to try and do one more here. Again, just trying to feel like I chip this ball and turn that tee down. You can see I’m really actively twisting that tee down and forward, supernating, flexing that lead arm and wrist. And there you can see the ball is very low, flighted, and and drawing a little bit. And then of course once you get comfortable doing this at half speed, it’s okay to start adding a little bit more speed to the whole system. Again, trying to hit these low flighted hooks. And as you can see, that ball is certainly hooking. So I know I’m doing this adequately. So guys, if you can learn how to turn this tee down and away, you can learn how to start flexing the lead wrist, supenating lead arm. Now, I’m not going to take credit for this drill. An awesome instructor named Scott Couts is the one who showed it to me. He’s an excellent instructor. Follow him if you guys haven’t already. Now, if you like this video, if you’d like more videos, please hit the like and subscribe button. We’re going to be posting videos every week. And as always, online lessons are available. Click the link in the description if you’re interested in that. I would love to work with you on your game and take you to the next
