Fixing a body aimed right of the target

What is actually happening

Feet, hips or shoulders point right of the ball-to-target line. Right-handed golfers do this far more often than they believe: a square stance runs parallel to the target line, so the feet point at a spot left of the flag, which looks wrong from address. Turning until the feet point at the flag aims the body right. Shots either go right with it or require a compensating move across the ball.

The fix

Drills

Work through them in order. Each one says what it needs before you start.

1. 1

   Railway tracks

   Lay one alignment stick just outside the ball pointing at your target, and a second parallel to it along your toes, and check from behind that they run the same way. Hit ten half shots with a mid-iron from between them. Before each one, look up at the target and notice that the toe stick points left of the flag: that picture is square. Then take the toe stick away, hit five full shots, and after each one lay it back along your toes without moving your feet. Success is the toe stick matching the target stick on four of those five. Once it does, move to longer clubs with only the target stick down.

   Needs Two alignment sticks, or two spare clubs

2. 2

   Square, then at the flag, then square

   Set up to a ball with an alignment stick along your toes, square to the target line. Turn your head, look at the flag, and register how far left of it the stick seems to point. Now swivel your feet until they point at the flag and look again, then go back to square. Repeat the pair five times, always finishing square, and hit one full shot from the square position after each pair. The swing does not matter in this drill. It exists to make the square picture familiar, so the view that used to look wrong starts to look normal. Move on when you can set up without the stick and a club laid along your toes confirms square three times in a row.

   Needs An alignment stick

3. 3

   Shoulders on camera

   Lay a stick on the ground along the target line, then prop your phone a few paces behind you at hand height, pointing the same way as the stick. Take your address with a mid-iron, bring the club up across the front of your shoulders without letting them move, and hold still for two seconds. Do five setups and look at the footage. The club across your shoulders should run the same way as the stick. If it points right, feel the trail shoulder come forward toward the ball line until it matches, then film again. Hit a full shot after every setup that passes, and stop filming once five pass in a row.

   Needs An alignment stick and a phone camera

4. 4

   Pick a near mark

   At the end of a range session, hit twenty balls with a full routine and no sticks. For each one, stand behind the ball, choose a mark on the target line a foot or two in front of it, aim the clubface at the mark, then set your feet parallel to the line from ball to mark. After every fifth ball, lay a club along your toes before moving and check it from behind. Success is all four checks showing square. When that holds for two sessions in a row, use the same routine on the course.

   Needs nothing but a club

Browse every drill on the site

Checkpoints

What to look for to know whether the change has taken.

• A club laid along your toes after a shot runs parallel to the target line and points left of the flag, not at it.
• Filmed from behind, a club held across the front of your shoulders runs the same way as a stick on the target line.
• Feet, hips and shoulders all point the same way. A club held against the front of your thighs shows where the hips are aimed.
• Divots point at the target rather than right of it.
• Shots that used to start right now start on or near the target line.

Feels

A feel is not a description of what the club does. It is whatever gets your body to do it, and a correct change usually feels exaggerated long before it looks correct.

• Your feet feel as though they are aimed well left of the flag.
• You need less turn of the head to see the target than you are used to.
• The trail shoulder feels pushed forward, almost out over the ball.

Symptoms that lead here

Each of these can resolve to this cause. If the page above does not match what you are seeing, start from the symptom instead and let the questions narrow it.

• I don't aim where I think I doThe strike feels fine but the ball finishes offline, because your feet, shoulders or clubface point somewhere other than where you think they do.The usual cause of this
• Everything is going rightYour misses all finish right of the target, some flying dead straight on a line right of it and some bending further right as they go.
• I keep taking on shots I can't pull offThe big numbers come from decisions rather than swings: going for greens out of range, threading gaps through trees and firing at every flag.
• My setup is different every timeThere is no set sequence before your shots, so aim, ball position, stance and grip drift from one swing to the next, and you often arrive over the ball still unsure of the shot.
• Hooking the ballThe ball turns hard left and runs a long way after landing, whether it starts left and dives further left or starts right and crosses back over the target.
• Great on the range, lost on the courseYou strike it well ball after ball on the range, then the same swing starts topping and chunking it, or sending it sideways, as soon as the round begins.

What this rests on

• Search for the Perfect Swing: The Proven Scientific Approach to Fundamentally Improving Your GameAlastair Cochran and John Stobbs, for the Golf Society of Great Britain, 2005 reissue, originally 1968
• 40+ TrackMan Parameters ExplainedTrackMan, accessed 2026

Discussion

Golfers who have worked on this fault, on what helped and what did not. Read it as experience rather than evidence.