The fix for Hitting down on a teed ball

Fixing a downward strike on a teed ball

What is actually happening

The low point falls before a ball that is sitting above the ground, so the club is still descending at contact. Spin rises, launch drops, and the strike climbs the face toward the crown. It is the single most common reason a driver goes shorter than a three wood.

Target line
Middle of the stance, and the lead heel
Ball for a driver
The other clubs
Middle of the stance

Driver: inside the lead heel

The fix

With an iron from the turf, the club should still be travelling down when it meets the ball. A driver off a tee wants something different. The ball sits above the ground and further forward, and the club should reach it at the bottom of its arc or just after, travelling level or slightly upward. When the club is still descending at contact, the bottom of the arc has not arrived yet, and the club is moving down and under a ball that was teed up to be swept away. This page is written for a right-handed golfer; left-handers mirror the directions.

A descending blow on a teed ball costs distance twice. The ball launches lower and spins more than the same swing would produce with the club level or rising, so the flight climbs late, hangs, and drops out of the air short, and into a wind it balloons. The second cost is where the ball meets the face. A club that is still dropping tends to get under a teed ball, so the strike climbs the face toward the top edge. Far enough under, the crown takes the hit and the ball pops almost straight up. Between them, those two costs are often why a driver goes no further than a three wood.

The evidence is on the tee and the club. After a drive, the tee flies out of the ground, snaps, or leaves a scrape in the turf in front of where it stood, because a club still travelling down carries on into whatever is below the ball. Spray the face with foot powder and the marks sit high, with scuffs on the crown after the worst ones. Film yourself at address from face-on, phone at chest height. If your head is over or ahead of the ball and your shoulders are level, you have set up to hit down.

Then check the irons, because they separate this from its neighbours. If mid-iron divots are shallow strips that start at the ball and point at the target, the delivery is sound and the problem is confined to the tee, which is this page. If the irons dig deep, narrow divots as well, the whole swing is arriving too steeply and that needs fixing first. If raising or lowering the tee moves the marks up or down the face with it, the tee height was wrong rather than the strike.

Most of the fix happens before the swing starts, because an iron setup produces an iron strike. Move the ball forward until it is level with the inside of your lead heel. Widen your stance a little so the middle of your body sits clearly behind the ball, and let slightly more pressure rest on your trail foot than you would with an iron. Tilt your upper body away from the target so your trail shoulder sits lower and your head ends up behind the ball. Tee it so about half the ball shows above the top edge of the face. From there the bottom of the arc sits behind the ball, and the club meets it level or climbing without any effort to hit up. In the swing, the only job is to keep your head behind the ball until it has gone.

The upward strike comes from where the ball sits against the arc, not from the hands. Flicking the club up at the ball moves the bottom of the arc too far back and swaps pop-ups for tops.

The instinctive responses leave the downward blow in place or make it worse. After a skied drive the usual answer is a lower tee, which stops the pop-up by lowering the ball to meet a club that is still descending, and trades it for a low, spinning drive that goes nowhere. After a short drive the usual answer is to swing harder, which tends to throw the upper body toward the target, moving the head over the ball and steepening the blow. Moving the ball back for control only catches it earlier in the descent. Keep a sensible tee height, keep the ball forward, and let the setup change the strike.

Drills

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

Second tee in front
Tee your ball at normal height. Push a second tee into the ground on the target line about a clubhead's length in front of it, so its head sits just above the grass. Hit drives at three-quarter speed and leave the second tee standing. A club still travelling down tends to clip it or tear it out, while a club travelling level or upward passes over it. Hit ten. Success is the second tee untouched on at least eight, with the ball tee staying in or tipping forward. When that holds, hit ten at full speed, then take the second tee away and check the ball tee after every drive.
Needs Tees
Address check on camera
Prop your phone at chest height directly in front of you, facing your chest. Set up to a teed ball: ball level with the inside of your lead heel, stance a little wider than with an iron, trail shoulder slightly lower than the lead, head behind the ball. Lay a club or alignment stick across the front of your shoulders and check on the screen that it tilts up toward the target. Step away and repeat the setup ten times, checking each one. Success is ten setups in a row that match. Then hit five drives, filming the address of each, and carry the same setup to the course.
Needs A phone to film with and an alignment stick or a spare club
Sweep it off a tall tee
Spray the face or colour it with a dry-erase marker. Tee the ball a little higher than normal and make smooth, half-speed swings, trying to sweep the ball away without touching the tee. Check the face and the tee after each one. Hit ten, wiping and re-marking the face as needed. Success is the tee left in the ground on at least eight, with marks in the middle of the face and none on the crown. Once that holds, return the tee to normal height and build up to full speed over the next ten balls, checking the same two things.
Needs Tees, foot powder spray or a dry-erase marker and a towel to wipe the face

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.

Free, and there is no password: you sign in with a link sent to your email, and you come straight back here.

Or turn this fix into a practice plan

With a free account, the drills above become a 14-day plan: the setup checks and the first drill for three days, then the next drill, a rest day every fourth day, and a re-test on the last day that sends you back through the questions. Each day is a short list to tick off at the range, with reminders by email or in your calendar if you want them.

How the 14 days run

Day 1Ten balls as a baseline, then the setup checks and the first drill
Days 2 to 3The first drill again, one checkpoint and one feel a day
Day 4Rest, as are days 8 and 12
Days 5 to 11The next drills in turn, each warmed up by the one before
Day 13Every drill once, then every checkpoint
Day 14Re-test: the baseline again and the questions for your symptom

Checkpoints

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

At address the ball is level with the inside of the lead heel, not back toward the middle of the stance.
Filmed face-on at address, the head sits behind the ball and the lead shoulder is slightly higher than the trail shoulder.
After most drives the tee stays in the ground or tips forward, and the turf in front of it is unmarked.
Strike marks sit in the middle of the face and the crown carries no scuffs.
Drives leave on a steady climb and carry clearly past your three wood.

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 club sweeps the ball forward off the tee, with no sense of hitting down into it.
Your head stays back behind the ball while your arms swing past it toward the target.
Your trail shoulder feels lower than your lead shoulder from address all the way through impact.

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.

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

What this rests on

40+ TrackMan Parameters ExplainedTrackMan, 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.

Say what actually fixed it

Nobody has posted here yet. If you have had this fault, the most useful thing to leave is the specific thing that changed it: the drill that clicked, the feel that finally made sense, or the point where this page did not match your shot. The next golfer with the same miss will read it.

Reading needs nothing. Posting, replying, voting and reporting need an account, which is your email address and a single-use link. There is no password, and the only thing other golfers see is the name you choose.

Loading the discussion