Tour Ball-Striking Drills

If you are struggling with inconsistent contacts, try these Tour Ball-Striking Drills to get yourself back on track!

Rafa Cabrera-Bello – Upper Body Check

Keeping your sternum directly over the ball is one of those fundamentals we hear repeated time and again. Cabrera-Bello uses his putting mirror to check it. Setting your upper body correctly over the ball at address and then returning to this position through impact is the key to consistently sweet strikes.

5 Strange Tour Practice Drills

Martin Kaymer – Alignment and strike drill

As well as checking his clubface alignment before he hits, Martin Martin is also using this drill to focus on a spot just in front of the ball. By doing that he ensures that he strikes the ball first with the ideal, downward angle of attack. Placing a tee in the ground in front of your ball is another way to hone cleaner, sweeter contacts.

Ian Poulter – T-Bar Drill

Ian Poulter uses a simple T-Bar to check both his ball position and alignment. These are the foundations of good ball striking and worth checking regularly yourself.

More 9 Tour Player Practice Drills

Padraig Harrington – Weight Movement Drill

This is a drill that Harrington has actually taken with him onto the course during competition. The theory behind it makes perfect sense. Essentially, he steps into the finish position to create a better, more natural weight shift through the ball. Moving your weight towards the target in the downswing is one of the most basic fundamentals in the swing – get it right and you’ll hit the ball further and straighter.

How Tour Players Practise Putting

Stewart Cink – Start-line Drill

For Tour Ball-Striking Drills, this one is very simple. Stewart Cink places an alignment stick in the ground about 6ft ahead of where he is hitting from, directly on his ball to target line. This illustrates how straight he is starting his shots. It can also help you with your shot-shaping. If hitting a fade, you must start the ball left of the stick. If hitting a draw, the ball should fly off to the right. It’s a simple drill, but a really effective one.

In July 2023, Neil became just the 9th editor in Golf Monthly's 112-year history. Originally working with the best coaches in the UK to produce instruction content, he went on to become a feature writer interviewing many of the biggest names in the game including Tiger Woods, Seve Ballesteros, Rory McIlroy and Arnold Palmer.

A 5-handicap golfer, Neil is a club member who takes a keen interest in the health of the game at grassroots level. You’ll often now find him writing about club-related issues such as WHS, membership retention and how best to bridge the gap between the range and the course.