Posted by: Torque (roscoethewestie@comcast.net) on Sat Aug 8 21:16:18 2009

> My 9 year-old is always way ahead of the ball, he pulls it too much and hits grounders. I tell him to wait and have him keep his weight on his back foot but he is still ahead of it. He uses a 29/18 bat, he doesn't have great bat speed so I don't know if getting him a heavier bat is a good idea. Any suggestions?

Have him practice hitting line drives up the middle off the tee. Make sure he is barring his lead arm as demonstrated on the batspeed.com videos on youtube. A bent lead arm generates significantly more groundballs than a barred lead arm.