Steepen your Angle of Attack

Set two alignment rods into the pathpal through the ground holes — Pat uses the 45-degree and 60-degree positions — creating a path tunnel with the rods lying along the ground. Position the ball reasonably close to the pathpal itself — the closer the ball is to the device, the harder the drill becomes because the corridor is tighter and the swing must be more precise. The goal is to swing the club through the gap between the two rods with a descending angle of attack targeting approximately 10 degrees. The ball proximity to the pathpal is the difficulty dial: closer increases the demand for precision, farther reduces it.

A descending angle of attack in the short game produces ball-first contact, compresses the ball against the face, and creates the spin and trajectory control that precise short game play requires. When the angle of attack is too shallow — the most common recreational fault — the club approaches the ball on a flatter arc, the leading edge catches the equator of the ball or the ground behind it, and the result is either a thin shot that rockets past the hole or a fat shot that goes nowhere. Pat targets approximately 10 degrees of descent as the ideal for a small chip shot — steep enough to produce clean contact but not so steep that the club digs aggressively. The TrackMan confirmation of 11.5 degrees in the video validates the drill's precision.

A single barrier can catch one type of path error — too inside or too outside. The two-rod tunnel constrains the path on both sides simultaneously, ensuring the club travels straight back and through along the correct line while also being forced into the descending angle that the ball proximity demands. For short game shots where the margin for path error is extremely small — a chip is only a few feet of swing — both a path constraint and a height constraint are necessary. The inside rod prevents the typical chipping inside takeaway that David Potts identifies in his Train Tracks drill, and the outside rod prevents an outside-in path. Together they define a complete short game swing corridor.

Ball proximity acts as a precision dial because it changes the effective height of the corridor the club must pass through at the ball position. When the ball is close to the pathpal, the rod is right next to the swing path — any approach that is too shallow or too flat will catch the device immediately. When the ball is farther away, the rod is a less demanding reference because the club has more room to clear it even with a shallow approach. Pat recommends starting with a moderate distance and progressively moving the ball closer as the steeper angle of attack becomes more consistent — building from a confidence-building setup to a precision-demanding one as the motor pattern develops.

Both drills target angle of attack and ball-first contact — but for different shot types and fault patterns. Eric's Ball-First drill uses a perpendicular ground rod behind a full swing iron shot to catch an early low point. Pat's Steepen AoA drill uses a two-rod tunnel for short game shots specifically, targeting the shallow delivery that causes thin and flippy chip shots rather than fat shots. The complementary nature is significant: Eric's drill addresses the full swing fault of bottoming out behind the ball, while Pat's drill addresses the short game fault of not steepening enough to produce ball-first contact from tight lies. Together they provide complete angle-of-attack training for both the full game and the short game.