Each week USA TODAY will roll out a new product from the world of golf. This week's offering the Tour Striker. Here's a training aid that will help your game — even if its sweet spot is similar in size to the sweet spot on an old 1-iron. The Tour Striker, designed by teaching pro Martin Chuck, helps golfers of all handicap indexes find the proper impact position in the golf swing — a downward strike with the shaft leaning forward.
This motion helps all golfers increase lag and clubhead speed. And the design of the Tour Striker, which has little clubface below the sweet spot like a traditional club, can only produce good shots by hitting downward with the shaft leaning forward.
"Basically in golf there is one conundrum," said Gary McCord, a former PGA Tour player, a winner and occasional player on the Champions Tour, and a golf analyst for CBS Sports. "And it is that the guys I watch on the PGA Tour and play with on the Champions Tour, when they are hitting the golf ball, their shaft leans toward the target at impact. And all my buddies when I go back home, when they hit a golf ball, their shafts lean away from the target at impact.
"If you want to get down to the simplest terms of why the guys on the tours are so good and why my buddies at home are bad it's because of that."While the vast majority of golfers like to put the ball on the tee or find their ball sitting up in the rough so they can hit under the ball to elevate it, this thought and resulting swing leads to an unreliable swing motion. The truth is that all great ball strikers hit down on the ball, regardless of their swings. Whether it's Tiger Woods or Jim Furyk or Lee Trevino or Greg Norman, the game's best players all end up in the proper position at impact.
"The only way you can get the ball in the air with the Tour Striker is to lean the shaft forward at impact," McCord said. "From my friends at home, it's counter intuitive for them to hit down on something and make the ball go in the air. That's the mindset of most every amateur golfer in the world. He or she doesn't get that. They all want to lift it and help the ball go up. "And when they use the Tour Striker and start leaning forward and seeing the ball go in the air, they go, 'Wait a minute, I don't get it. But I'm going to keep doing this.'"
The iron training club is cast with 433 stainless steel and comes with a light weight regular flex steel shaft. The lie angle and shaft length may be modified for a nominal additional fee.