Fixing shots from sloping lies

What is actually happening

Tilted ground changes where the face points once the club is soled, and where the turf sits relative to the bottom of the arc. Ball above the feet aims the face left, ball below the feet aims it right, and up or downslopes add or remove loft before the swing has started.

The fix

Drills

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

1. 1

   Pencil on the face

   Sole a wedge on flat ground and press a pencil or a long tee flat against the middle of the face, pointing straight out from it. Raise the toe a few inches and watch where the pencil points, then lower the toe until the heel is raised and watch again. Repeat with a mid-iron and notice the swing of the pencil is smaller. Do this three times with each club. Success is predicting which way the face will point, and by roughly how much, before you tilt it. Once you can, take the next drill onto real slopes.

   Needs A pencil or a long tee

2. 2

   Sidehill aim ladder

   Find a slope with the ball above your feet. With a mid-iron, hit five balls using your normal flat-lie setup aimed straight at a target, and note where they start and finish. Then grip down, stand a little taller, lay an alignment stick along your toes aimed right of the target by about the distance the first group missed, and hit five more. Success is the second group finishing around the target. Repeat with the ball below your feet, aiming left. Switch to a wedge once both work and watch the adjustment grow, then use it on the course.

   Needs An alignment stick and a sloping patch of grass to practise from

3. 3

   Shoulders with the hill

   On an uphill or downhill lie, set your shoulders roughly parallel to the ground and make ten practice swings without a ball, brushing the grass. Watch where each brush mark begins. Place a ball just in front of where the marks start and hit five shots. Success is four of the five struck ball first, with the turf mark beginning at or after where the ball sat. When that holds on both an uphill and a downhill lie, move to full shots on the course.

   Needs A sloping patch of grass to practise from

4. 4

   Hold the finish

   On any slope, hit ten three-quarter shots and hold each finish for a slow count of three without stepping. If you have to step down the slope, that swing was too long for the lie. Success is ten held finishes in a row. Then lengthen the swing a little at a time until balance goes, and settle one step shorter than that. That length is your swing for that slope on the course.

   Needs nothing but a club

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Checkpoints

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

• With the ball above your feet, your hands are lower on the grip than on a flat lie and a stick along your toes points right of the target.
• With the ball below your feet, you have more flex at the knees and hips than on a flat lie, and a stick along your toes points left of the target.
• On an uphill or downhill lie, a line across your shoulders runs roughly parallel to the ground rather than level with the horizon.
• On a downhill lie, the turf mark starts at or after where the ball sat, not behind it.
• You hold a balanced finish on every slope without stepping down the hill.

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 shoulders lean with the hill, as though you were standing square to the ground rather than to the sky.
• Standing taller with the ball above your feet and sitting deeper into your knees with it below, so the arms hang the same length on every lie.
• A shorter, quieter swing that finishes in balance, as if the ground might shift under you.

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.

• Ball above or below your feetOn a sidehill lie the ball starts left when it sits above your feet and right when it sits below them, and the strike slides toward the toe, the heel or the hosel as your balance goes.The usual cause of this
• Uphill and downhill liesWhen the ground rises or falls toward the target, the club digs into the slope or catches the ball thin, and even the clean strikes fly the wrong height and distance.The usual cause of this
• Chips off greenside slopes go wrongChipping from a slope beside the green, the leading edge sticks into the upslope and the ball pops up short, or the club skids off the downslope and the shot races past the hole.The usual cause of this
• Sloping lies in a bunkerThe ball sits on an upslope, a downslope, or above or below your feet in the sand, and the shot that works from a flat bunker lie comes out fat, thin or well off line.The usual cause of this
• Plugged lie or fried egg in the bunkerThe ball has buried itself where it landed, sitting in its own crater with part or all of it below the sand, and your normal bunker shot either leaves it there or sends it out low and hot.
• I can't judge how far a chip will carry and rollThe strike is acceptable, but chips land somewhere other than planned and finish a different distance every time, often running well past the hole.

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.