The fix for No repeatable setup or routine

Fixing a setup that changes every shot

What is actually happening

Aim, ball position, stance width and grip get rebuilt slightly differently on every shot, so face angle, low point and strike location all vary with them. Address is the reference the whole swing is measured from, and a reference that moves explains misses that seem to have no pattern.

Feet, in the footprints: square to the line
Hips, cross ticks: square to the line
Shoulders, round ends: square to the line
Target line

Same three lines, every shot

The fix

Nothing has to be wrong with the swing for this fault to ruin a round. The problem is where the swing starts. Aim, ball position, stance width, distance from the ball and grip are rebuilt from nothing before every shot, and each comes out slightly different. By impact those small differences have become a face pointing somewhere slightly new, a low point landing slightly earlier or later against the ball, and a strike that wanders around the face.

Each setup piece feeds a different part of the flight. Where the face points at impact sets, for the most part, where the ball starts, and a face soled off line tends to arrive off line unless the swing makes a correction. Ball position moves the ball against the bottom of the arc, so the swing that clips the ball cleanly from one spot takes turf first, or catches the ball on the way up, from a spot slightly further forward. Standing a fraction closer or further away moves contact toward the heel or the toe, which costs distance and, with a driver or wood, adds curve through gear effect. For a right-handed golfer, toe strikes tend to curve right to left and heel strikes left to right. Left-handers mirror that.

The fingerprint is a spread of misses with no shape. A swing fault usually repeats itself. This produces a pull, then a thin one, then a toe strike, and a bucket of balls that looks as though three different golfers hit it. To confirm it, prop a phone at hip height directly in front of you and film ten shots, walking away and setting up afresh for each. Pause every clip on the last frame before the club moves and compare the ball against your lead heel, the width of your stance and the gap between your hands and thighs. Then film from behind, down the target line, and compare where the feet and clubface point. If the frames do not line up, your setup is moving.

Two related faults look similar. If the misses only appear off the tee, with strike marks stacked high or low on the face, the tee height is wrong for your swing. If they only appear on uneven ground and lean the same way for the same slope, the lie is changing the face and loft before you swing. And if your frames match and the shots still scatter both ways, the setup is not the cause: the face is varying during the swing itself.

The fix is a routine: the same steps, in the same order, taking the same time, on every full shot. Stand behind the ball and pick a spot on the target line a short way in front of it. Complete your grip before the club touches the ground, because a grip finished after the face is set tends to twist it. Walk in and set the clubface behind the ball, aimed at that spot. Only then place your feet, parallel to the line through the ball and the spot. Check the ball against your lead heel, let the arms hang, take the same number of looks at the target, and go. All of it happens before the club moves, which makes it the one part of golf with no time pressure at all.

The instinct after a bad shot is to change something in answer to the last miss. Aim further left because the last one went right. Move the ball back because the last one was fat. Here that is the worst response available, since the next miss was never going to repeat the last. Each correction adds a variable to a setup that already had too many, and a swing change made on a moving setup cannot be judged, because there is no telling whether a shot improved through the swing or because the ball happened to sit somewhere kinder. Leave the swing alone until the setup stops moving. The misses that remain will start to group, and a group is something that can be fixed.

Drills

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

The two-stick station
Lay one alignment stick on the ground just beyond the ball, pointing at the target, and a second at right angles to it, pointing at the ball from between your feet. Hit twenty balls with a mid-iron, stepping back behind the ball and running the full routine for every one. The rule is that nothing moves once the club is soled: no shuffling the feet, no re-gripping. Success is twenty shots in a row without an adjustment after the club is down. Then remove the sticks one at a time. Move to full shots on the course once ten setups in a row, checked by laying a stick along your toes afterwards, land parallel to the target line without either stick in place.
Needs Two alignment sticks
Freeze-frame address
Prop a phone at hip height directly in front of you and hit ten shots with the same club, walking away and restarting the routine each time. Afterwards, pause each clip on the last frame before the club moves and flick between them. Look at three things only: the ball against your lead heel, the width of your stance, and where your hands sit against your thighs. Success is ten frames that are hard to tell apart. Repeat from behind, down the target line, checking where the feet and the clubface point. Take the routine to the course when both sets of frames match in two sessions running.
Needs A phone and a bag or something similar to prop the phone against
Routine against the clock
Write your routine down as five or six steps, then time it with a stopwatch from the moment you step behind the ball to the moment the club starts back. Hit ten balls, saying each step quietly as you do it and keeping the waggles and the looks at the target to a fixed count. Success is ten routines that finish within a couple of seconds of each other. Watch the routine after a poor shot most closely, because that is the one that stretches. Once the timings hold without saying the steps aloud, take the routine onto the course unchanged.
Needs A phone or watch with a stopwatch
Change club, change target
On the range, change club and target on every ball, the way the course makes you. Hit fifteen balls like this, running the full routine from behind the ball each time. A routine that only holds when the same club is aimed at the same flag has not been learned yet. Success is fifteen shots with no re-aiming after the club is soled. When that holds, finish each session by playing the last nine balls as the opening holes of a course you know, routine and all.
Needs nothing but a club

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.

Address frames filmed from the same spot line up shot after shot: the ball against the lead heel, the stance width and the hands all in the same place.
The clubface is set behind the ball before the feet are placed, not after.
The grip is complete before the club is soled, so the hands do not turn the face once it is aimed.
An alignment stick laid along your toes after you set up runs parallel to the target line on every shot, not most of them.
Your misses begin to group on one side instead of spraying in every direction.

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 shot is half decided before you walk in, because every choice was made standing behind the ball.
Your feet walk into footprints that were already waiting for them.
The routine feels a little boring, the same few beats in the same rhythm every time.

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

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

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