Without a doubt, impact tape is my favorite golf practice aid. What? You don’t use impact tape? You could be missing out on the excellent feedback that it provides.
There is no question that a player will never reach full potential without the ability to strike the ball consistently on the sweet spot of the club.
No player hits the sweet spot every time, even Tour pros (though, their misses are much smaller and less frequent). Miss the sweet spot by just a little bit and you begin losing distance and accuracy. The more you miss by, the worse the shot result.
Many players can tell when a shot was poorly struck. But where did it miss? Toward the heel? The toe? High on the face? Low on the face?
This is where impact tape comes in. It’s nothing more than a little sticker that you affix to the club face. It is made of paper/ink that is pressure sensitive. When the club face strikes the ball, the tape shows a dark circle, telling you precisely where the ball and club face met.
So how do you use this information?
The player that gets the most benefit from impact tape, in my opinion, is the player that doesn’t even know what a solidly struck shot feels like. There are players out there that have grooved toe or heel hits for so long that those shots feel “normal”. This is especially true with the big, forgiving, modern drivers.
The best solution is to work with a pro to iron out swing issues, but if you find that you tend to hit the ball off center, then the only thing you can do is – stop doing it! It’s as simple as that. If you’re striking the ball on the toe, then set up to the ball and try to hit the ball on the heel while analyzing successive shots with the tape. Tiny differences will feel huge, but eventually you’ll get into the zone and start hitting pure shots.
The things you learn from this exercise pay dividends into the future. When you take the time to study the quality of contact, you’re not just making an immediate correction. You’re learning exactly what a toe-hit feels like. Or a heel hit. Or a thin shot. As you file this information into your brain, you’ll find that when you hit the course, you’ll have a fine tuned awareness as to where you’re tending to miss shots on the club face.
You can’t make minor corrections without knowing which way to correct.
I’m getting near the point now that I can tell how much I missed by feel alone. I still use impact tape occasionally during practice sessions, though, especially at a time like this when I’ve been taking lessons and making swing changes where I’m in the “it gets worse before it gets better” rut. It’s always good to tape up once in a while and make sure your contact with the golf ball is what you think it is.
I’ll share a little secret, too. Impact tape can be kind of expensive, so as a cheap alternative, masking tape works wonders. Just tape up the club face and go at it. You’ll be able to analyze each shot the exact same way.
Impact tape is yet another way to make the most of practice time. Give it a shot and see what you find out.
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How quickly I have forgotten about impact tape. When I worked at a golf store, with almost every golf fitting we did, we used impact tape to be able to give our customer instant feedback in regards to his/her swing, and to analyze where we could better help them to find the right fit. Good tip on using masking tape. It’s cheap and you get the same results.
Don’t forget, you can also use it on your putter as well!
another option, however it will apply to females more than males, is using baby or talcum powder. Sprinkle a little on the club face and it will also show where impact occurs on the face.