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The fix for Face angle varies shot to shot

Fixing a clubface that changes from shot to shot

What is actually happening

The face arrives open on some swings and closed on others, so shots scatter to both sides while the path stays roughly the same. This is variance rather than bias, which is why aiming further right or left never helps: there is no single miss to aim away from. It is the fault behind most two-way misses.

Two knuckles showing on the top hand, seen from aboveTwo hands on a golf club handle, seen from above as the golfer sees them looking down at address. The chin, collar and both shoulders are laid in pale across the top of the picture. The top hand wears a white glove with a strap at the wrist, its fingers wrapping round the far side of the handle and its thumb lying down the handle. The lower hand is bare, its four fingers wrapping the handle from the trail side and its thumb lying down the near side. The handle is a dark rubber grip. Two knuckles, the forefinger's and the middle finger's, stand out as raised domes on the back of the glove. The V between thumb and forefinger is drawn on the top hand, and a dashed line from its point runs up to the chin. The handle stands close to upright, so the hands sit level with the clubhead. The figure moves. The top hand turns slowly on the handle through all three grips and comes back to the one described, and the knuckles appear and disappear as the hand turns rather than being counted onto it, so the count is seen as the consequence of the turn that it is. The V swings with the hand: one knuckle showing carries it toward the front shoulder, three carries it out to the back one.
  • Chin and shoulders
  • Knuckles showing: 2
  • V points at the chin
Same two knuckles every shot

The fix

Some swings deliver the clubface open and others deliver it closed, while the path the club travels on stays much the same. For a right-handed golfer that means one ball starts right and fades, the next starts left and draws, and the misses refuse to settle on a side. Left-handers should mirror the directions on this page. The problem is spread rather than direction, so treating it as an open face or a closed face will cure one half and make the other worse.

Where the face points at impact mostly decides where the ball starts. The gap between face and path decides the curve. So when the path holds steady near the target line and the face moves, start line and curve change together and in the same direction: a face pointing right starts the ball right and bends it right, and a face pointing left starts it left and bends it left. The further apart those two misses finish, the more the face is changing from one swing to the next.

That pairing separates this fault from its neighbours. An open face gives one miss, right and then further right, and a closed face gives the mirror of it. A path that swings between in-to-out and out-to-in changes the divots as well, pointing left on some swings and right on others. When the face is the moving part, the divots keep pointing the same way while the start line wanders. With a driver or fairway wood, check strike location before blaming the face. Through gear effect, a toe strike tends to curve the ball right to left and a heel strike left to right, so a scattered strike can produce a two-way miss with the face behaving perfectly well. A light spray of foot powder on the face answers that in five balls.

To confirm it, hit twenty balls with a mid-iron at one target and write down where each started: left, on line or right. Watch only the first few metres, before the curve. A rough split between left and right, with the curve following the start line each time, points here. Check the divots from the same session: if they point the same way shot after shot, the path is stable and the face is what varies. Then film your address from behind on five shots in a row and freeze each frame before the takeaway. If the face aim or the grip looks different between them, the variation begins before the swing does, and the setup routine page is where to start.

A face repeats when the things that set it are the same every time, and most of them are settled before the club moves. Build the grip in the same order on every shot and count the knuckles on the top hand rather than trusting the feel. Hold the club firmly enough to control it and no tighter, because tension in the hands and forearms makes the delivered face less repeatable, and pressure on the course adds tension. Then, in the swing, make the face look the same at hip height going back and at hip height coming through, with the toe roughly up at both. A face that is square at those two points has far less left to do in the fraction of a second around impact.

The instinctive fix is to correct the last shot. After a ball that goes right you close the face a touch on purpose, hit one left, hold the face open to stop that, and send the next one right again. Every correction adds another variable to a fault that is already made of too many. Aiming does not help either, because there is no single miss to aim away from: allowing for the fade simply sends the draws further left. For the next few sessions, stop judging single shots. Judge the spread of ten, and count the session as progress when the spread narrows, even if no individual shot was any straighter.

Drills

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

  1. Build the grip twenty times

    Without a ball, sole a mid-iron behind a tee with the face square to your target. Put the lead hand on, look down and count the knuckles, then add the trail hand. Take both hands off and repeat twenty times, counting every time. Photograph your hands from above on the first and last reps and compare the two. Success is the same knuckle count and the same V direction between thumb and forefinger on all twenty. Once it holds, build the grip this way before every ball in your next practice session, then carry it onto the course.

    Needs A tee and a phone camera

  2. Nine-ball face control

    With a mid-iron and half swings, hit three balls trying to start them slightly right, three trying to start them slightly left, and three at the target, in that order. Change only the face: hold it a touch open through the strike for the first three and let it turn over a little more for the next three. Repeat the nine-ball set three times. Success is not straight shots but start lines that arrive in the order you asked for, because moving the face on purpose is what teaches you where square is. Go to full swings once two sets in a row come out in order.

    Needs nothing but a club

  3. Matching checkpoints on camera

    Prop a phone behind you, looking down the target line. Make half swings with a mid-iron that stop at hip height going back and at hip height coming through, and look at the toe at each stop: it should point roughly at the sky both times. Film ten reps and play them back. Success is ten reps where the toe matches at both stops. Then hit ten balls with the same half swing, filming again, and move to three-quarter swings once the checkpoints still match with a ball in the way.

    Needs A phone camera

  4. Ten-ball spread test

    Push two alignment sticks upright about ten paces ahead, either side of your target line and two paces apart. Hit ten balls with a mid-iron at normal speed and write down how many start left of the gap, through it, and right of it. That is your baseline. Repeat the test at the end of every session with the same club. Success is both the left and the right counts shrinking over the sessions, rather than one side disappearing while the other grows. When eight of ten start through the gap, narrow it by half a pace or move to a longer club.

    Needs Two alignment sticks

Browse every drill on the site

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.

  • Address photos from behind, taken on five shots in a row, show the leading edge aimed the same way each time.
  • Looking down at address, the knuckle count on your top hand is the same on every shot of a session.
  • Filmed from behind, the toe points roughly up at hip height on both the backswing and the follow-through, rep after rep.
  • Divots from one session point in the same direction, which confirms the path is steady while you work on the face.
  • Over ten balls, the shots starting left and the shots starting right both become fewer, rather than one side vanishing and the other growing.

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 pressure in your hands stays the same from address to the finish, with no squeeze as the club comes down.
  • Your hands feel quiet through the ball, carried by the body rather than turning the club on their own.
  • The face does the same small, dull thing on every swing.

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.

Show every symptom that leads here

If this is not it: causes that produce the same shots

What this rests on

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.

One email a week: a fault, its cause, and a drill. Nothing else, and one click to leave. What arrives.

Discussion

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

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