IRON CONTACT / PRACTICE GUIDE
Towel Drill for Fat Iron Shots: Setup, Reps and a Transfer Test
A towel is useful because it gives the miss somewhere to show up. The important part is what happens after you take it away.
Heavy iron contact has been a recurring frustration in my rounds. Going back to familiar drills helped me slow the swing down and give practice a clear task. The towel is one of those tools. It makes contact behind the ball harder to ignore, including on a mat that can make a heavy strike feel more acceptable than it was.
What this drill checks
The goal is to strike the ball without catching a towel placed behind it. That gives feedback on the approach to the ball; it does not diagnose every cause of a fat shot. You can avoid the towel and still blade the ball. Score the quality of contact as well as whether the towel moved.
Set up a small, useful challenge
Take a short iron and choose a target. Fold a towel flat and place it roughly six inches behind the ball. Begin with half swings at a comfortable pace. If the space feels too tight, move the towel farther back. Avoid building a contraption that makes you steer around it.
On grass, look at where the club first touches the ground. On a mat, pay attention to the sound, feel and ball flight as well as the towel. A launch monitor can help document a pattern, but one good number is not the whole result.
The 15-ball session
| Set | What to do | What to record |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Five balls | Small swings with the towel in place. | Clean / heavy / thin, plus towel contact. |
| 2 · Five balls | Reset your stance and target before each shot. | The same contact categories. |
| 3 · Five balls | Remove the towel and play normal controlled shots. | Clean contact without the aid. |
Stop between sets rather than raking another ball into place. The useful comparison is the last set against the first two. If the contact disappears when the towel does, that is a reason to simplify the transfer—not to keep moving the towel closer.
What I want to take from it
My useful cue has been an unhurried backswing and transition. I’m trying to carry that into a normal swing rather than make a perfect-looking drill motion. The earlier Saddleback and Ute Creek recap explains why contact and starting direction became separate priorities.
Your score: clean contact ___ / 10 with the towel; ___ / 5 without it. Heavy ___ · thin ___ · other ___.
Keep the same club for the next session so the comparison means something.
When to move on
Once you can reproduce the contact, change the target or club after each shot. That is closer to the demands of a round. If the drill produces more thin shots or makes you manipulate impact, stop and use the pattern as something to discuss with a qualified coach.
Coaching reference: Tom Patri’s towel-drill demonstration at Titleist. The session structure and scoring above are Fox Bandit practice suggestions, not a claim that one drill cures every contact problem.