I asked for Tommy Fleetwood's advice on flying an instrument. This is what he told me

It's officially closing golf season, folks. In the next few weeks, the golf world turns to the United Kingdomn for the Scottish Open (men and women) and the Open Championship (men, women, seniors). We are talking about football in the air again On the ground. We are talking about holding guns in a whirlwind and throwing them into the air. Really, we're talking about controlling the trajectory regardless of which way the linksland is throwing us.

And our professor for this job? None other than Tommy Fleetwood, born and raised in Southport, on the west coast of England, just down the road from Royal Birkdale, is hosting this year's Open. We've had the pleasure of putting Fleetwood to work in our “Pros Teaching Joes” series, focusing on a simple idea: How does one of the world's best iron players manage the trajectory of his iron shots?

“It's always stock first,” Fleetwood told me, coming out of one of the batting booths at the Tommy Fleetwood Academy in Dubai. You mean, whatever your stock ball placement is, that's where your thought processes should start. In order to make the ball higher or lower, it's important to first know where you're putting it (with a 7-iron, most likely), as well as your normal swing and strike. That is your custom. That's your stock.

In the event that I'd like to hit the ball higher than my stock – using the same club selection, mind you – Fleetwood suggests a little exercise thought that can double as practice. You can check out the video below, and read on for an explanation.

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Fleetwood likes to incorporate the five-ball stance, where five golf balls are lined up next to each other, parallel to your toes, just outside your hitting area. Your stock setup is aligned with the ball in the middle, but to hit the ball a little higher, position yourself so that the ball you are going to hit is The next one ball forward. In other words, move your ball one ball forward in your position.

“The difference in football is in the setup it should make it a little higher,” Fleetwood said. Sure enough, my smooth 7-iron was 110 feet, about 10 to 15 feet higher than normal, and it flew 156 yards — maybe 12 yards shorter than normal. Next, we decided to push this theory to find a 2% scenario: What if I hit more?

“I do this all the time,” Fleetwood said. “I would call it working around the golf ball in my system. You might have to hit it over a tree. You might have too much wind, and the pin might be ahead.”

It doesn't happen often, of course. But sometimes you miss a tee shot all day, and suddenly you need to redeem yourself. Fleetwood's advice: just move your ball to one additional ball forward again. Now we're two balls ahead of the stock, we're swinging the same swing, and when we lower our clubhead on the ball, it should line up with the top of our swing arc to lift the ball higher. This time, my 7-iron was hit a little thin — you're reaching it a little, after all — but it still stood at 107 yards.

The good part about the simplicity of this exercise is that the opposite is also effective. To lower the ball, you return the ball back to its stock position. Not a crazy amount, just one ball – and going under even more, of course, one additional ball in stock.

All this may seem very simple; Your ball flight will, of course, be expectedly different in these different areas. But take the drill to the range to begin to understand what your “stock” is, and what “stock plus one” looks like from a trajectory perspective. Or “stock minus two.” The final key that Fleetwood holds for itself is determined not change any part of your stock. You're just trying to bring the face to the ball in the same way, but the ball is in a slightly different position.

If anything, when you're trying to hit the bell, Fleetwood might as well try slowly his slow descent into the stock – where many people make a mistake – to make sure that the movement is correct and the connection is clean.

“If you feel like it's a 70-yard fairway you've just had a really long swing and you just drop the club on it after a while,” he said.

The result was exactly what we were looking for: an apex of 45 feet, carrying 156 yards – basically the same distance other non-stock guns fly, but with a completely different feel.