The fix for Casting, or releasing the club too early
Fixing casting and an early release
What is actually happening
The wrist angle is thrown away at the start of the downswing, so the shaft arrives vertical or leaning backwards. That adds loft, moves the low point behind the ball, and widens the arc early, which is why casting costs distance and drops the strike low on the face at the same time.
- Backswing, head path
- Downswing, head path
- Hand path
- Halfway down
- The other positions
The fix
At the top of the backswing your wrists have hinged, leaving an angle between your lead arm and the shaft. Casting is throwing that angle away as the downswing starts, with the hands still high. The clubhead swings out and down early, catches up with your hands long before the ball, and arrives with the shaft vertical or leaning back toward you. This page is written for a right-handed golfer, so the lead arm is the left one, and left-handers should mirror every direction.
Three things follow at impact. The face carries more loft than the club was built with, so the ball launches higher and spins more. The bottom of the arc has moved behind the ball, because a club released early also bottoms out early. And the arc has widened too soon, so the clubhead reaches its top speed before it reaches the ball. A low point behind the ball takes turf first while the club is still coming down, or catches the ball low on the face once it has started to climb, and a low strike costs ball speed on top of the speed already spent. That is why a caster tends to hit it high, short and heavy with most clubs in the bag.
You can confirm it without a launch monitor. Turn a club upside down, hold it just below the head and make three full swings with no ball. If the swish is loudest behind you, well before where the ball would sit, the speed is being spent early. Look at the turf after a few iron shots: casting leaves a shallow scrape that starts behind the ball, or barely a mark at all. Colour the face with a dry-erase marker and the marks gather on the bottom grooves. Then film a swing face on, phone at hip height, and pause it where your lead arm is parallel to the ground on the way down. The shaft should still point up. If it already points out at the ball or down at the turf, the angle has gone.
Casting is easily confused with flipping, and the two often travel together, but they happen at different moments. Casting is early: the angle is gone in the first part of the downswing. A flip is late: the angle can survive to hip height and still collapse at the ball as the lead wrist bends back. If your video shows the shaft pointing up at halfway down and the clubhead only overtaking your hands in the last moment, the page on flipping through impact fits you better. Hanging back on the trail foot also puts the low point behind the ball, but a caster usually finishes balanced on the lead foot and still hits it heavy.
The change belongs to the first move down from the top. Let the lower body start the downswing while the wrists stay hinged, so the hands fall toward your trail thigh with the clubhead still well behind them. Nothing has to be held on purpose past that point. If the angle is still there when the hands reach hip height, it releases through the ball without any help, and the speed arrives where the ball is rather than behind it. The job is to stop starting the downswing with your hands.
The instinctive fixes make it worse. Casting usually begins as an effort to hit hard, because the hands are where a golfer feels speed, so the natural response to lost distance is more effort from the hands at the top, which is more casting. The response to heavy contact is to stand taller through the strike, which trades the fat shot for a thin one. And trying to hold the angle with stiff wrists all the way down rarely survives full speed. The throw simply moves later and turns into a flip at the ball. The drills below build the angle into the start of the downswing rather than asking the wrists to hold on.
Drills
Work through them in order. Each one says what it needs before you start.
Pump drill
Take a mid-iron and swing to the top. Start down with your lower body and let your hands drop to hip height, where the shaft should still point up rather than out toward the ball, then swing back to the top. Do that pump twice, and on the third move down swing through and hit the ball without stopping. Hit ten balls this way. Success is a divot that starts at or just past the ball on seven of the ten. When that holds, drop to one pump per ball for ten more, then hit full shots with no pump and check that the divots stay where they were.
Needs nothing but a club
Upside-down swish
Turn a club over and hold it just below the head with your normal grip. Make full swings with no ball and listen for where the swish peaks. Start at three-quarter speed and let the lower body pull the hands down before the club is allowed to make any noise. Success is three swings in a row where the sound peaks at or just past where the ball would sit, rather than behind you. Then hit five balls with your normal club copying that timing, and go back to three swishes between every five balls for the rest of the session.
Needs nothing but a club
Nine to three with a marked face
Colour the face of a mid-iron with a dry-erase marker. Swing back only until your lead arm is parallel to the ground, with the wrists fully hinged so the shaft points up, and swing through to the mirror position where your trail arm is parallel to the ground. Keep the hinge until your hands reach your trail thigh and let the club release from there. Hit twenty balls, marking the face again after every five. Success is fifteen strikes in the middle of the face rather than on the bottom grooves, with divots starting at the ball. Then lengthen to three-quarter swings for ten balls before going to full shots.
Needs A dry-erase marker or foot powder spray
Practice plan and log
Practise this fix, day by day
Keep a dated log of every session against this fix, so in a few weeks you can read back whether the change has taken instead of trying to remember.
Checkpoints
What to look for to know whether the change has taken.
- Filmed face on and paused with the lead arm parallel to the ground on the way down, the shaft still points up rather than out at the ball.
- A club swung upside down swishes loudest at or just past where the ball would sit, not behind you.
- Iron divots start at the ball or just after it, never behind it.
- Strike marks sit in the middle of the face rather than on the bottom grooves.
- Each club flies at the height you would expect for its loft instead of climbing high and dropping short.
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.
- The hands and the club fall from the top together, with the clubhead left behind you.
- The lower body starts down while the club still feels as though it is going back.
- The swing is slow at the top and only gets fast after 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.
- My swing feels rushed and too quickThe swing snatches from the top with no rhythm to it, and the smooth practice swing you made a moment earlier turns quick and jerky once there is a ball in front of you.The usual cause of this
- Hitting it fatThe club hits the ground before the ball and takes turf first, so the shot comes out heavy, weak and well short of the target.
- Can't compress the ballContact feels soft and glancing instead of crisp, the club sweeps the ball off the turf without leaving a divot after it, and the flight is high, floaty and short for the club in your hands.
- Shots balloon and fall shortThe shot climbs far higher than it should, stalls at the top of its flight, and drops almost straight down well short of the target.
- Good off mats, bad off real grass, or the reverseContact that looks fine off a range mat, a home mat or a simulator turns fat or thin off real turf, or a golfer who strikes it well off grass cannot hit off mats at all.
- Perfect practice swing, bad real swingThe practice swing brushes the turf in the right place and finishes balanced, but with a ball in front of you the strike turns fat, thin or topped.
If this is not it: causes that produce the same shots
What this rests on
- 40+ TrackMan Parameters ExplainedTrackMan, accessed 2026
- What is Smash Factor in Golf?TrackMan, accessed 2026
- The Physics of GolfTheodore P. Jorgensen, University of Nebraska, 1999, second edition; Springer reprint 2013
- 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
Did this help?
One answer, and nothing is published from it. A fix that keeps getting a no is a fix that is wrong, and this is the only way that shows up.
If something here is wrong, or contradicts what a launch monitor tells you, say so. Corrections change the page.
The weekly fix
One fault a week, written the same way this page is.
Discussion
Golfers who have worked on this fault, on what helped and what did not. Read it as experience rather than evidence.
Loading the discussion