Fixing standing too close to the ball

What is actually happening

The hands start nearer the body than the swing needs, so the arms have no room to pass and the club works out away from the golfer through impact. Strike drifts toward the heel, and the heel is the same continuum that ends at the hosel.

The fix

Drills

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

1. 1

   Build the distance from hanging arms

   Take a mid-iron and stand tall, holding the club out in front of you at waist height. Tilt forward from the hips until the sole touches the ground, let your arms hang, and soften your knees. Now take your trail hand off the club and lay it flat, palm down, in the gap between the butt of the grip and your lead thigh: it should just fit. Walk away and rebuild the setup from standing ten times. Success is the hand fitting the gap all ten times without shuffling your feet to make it fit. Then hit twenty balls at three-quarter speed, rebuilding from standing before each one, and move to full swings once the strike sits in the centre of the face.

   Needs nothing but a club

2. 2

   Headcover beyond the toe

   Set up to a ball with a mid-iron and lay a headcover on the ground on the far side of it, parallel to the target line and about an inch beyond the toe of the club. Hit ten balls with half swings. If the arms are pushed out through impact, the club clips the headcover, and there is nothing to interpret. Success is ten in a row without touching it. Then do the same with three-quarter swings, and move to full swings once those also clear it ten times in a row.

   Needs A headcover or a rolled towel

3. 3

   Marker on the face, before and after

   Scribble a whiteboard marker across the face of a mid-iron. Hit five balls from your usual setup at three-quarter speed and note where the marks sit, then wipe the face clean. Rebuild your address from hanging arms, check the gap with a flat hand, and hit five more. Repeat the pair three times. Success is the marks from the rebuilt setup sitting in the centre while the marks from your old one sit toward the heel. If both sets sit on the heel, standing too close was not the cause, and the next step is filming your downswing. Once three sessions in a row show centred marks, take the rebuilt setup to full shots and then to the course.

   Needs A whiteboard marker or face tape

Browse every drill on the site

Checkpoints

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

• On down-the-line film at address, the arms hang close to straight down from the shoulders rather than angling back toward the body.
• With a mid-iron, the gap between the butt of the grip and the lead thigh is about the width of a hand laid flat.
• Weight at address sits over the middle of the feet, not back in the heels.
• Strike marks sit in the centre of the face rather than clustering toward the heel.
• On downswing film, the hands pass the lead thigh with space to spare instead of the arms being pushed out toward the ball.

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 arms hang from your shoulders like two lengths of rope, with nothing in their way.
• There is room to swing the handle past your lead pocket.
• The ball feels a touch further away than usual, yet your weight still sits in the middle of your feet.

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.

• Cramped over the ball, or reaching for itAt address you feel crowded with no room for your arms, or stretched out reaching for the ball, and the strike marks drift toward the heel or the toe of the face.The usual cause of this
• Shanking the ballThe ball meets the hosel instead of the face and squirts away low and almost sideways, sharply right of where you aimed.
• Posture at address looks wrongYour address looks hunched, too tall or sat down into the knees, and contact swings between fat and thin because the body cannot hold that shape once the swing starts.
• Hitting it off the heelThe ball comes off the inside of the face near the hosel with a clunky feel and less distance, and off a driver it tends to curve right.
• Losing posture: standing up or dipping in the swingYour body does not finish the swing at the height it started it: you rise up out of your address posture, or sink down toward the ball, and the strike moves between thin, topped, heeled and fat as the bottom of the arc moves with you.
• Chicken wing through impactThe lead elbow bends and pulls up and away through impact instead of extending, so the club rises early and shots come out thin, weak and often curving right.

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
• The physics of golf: The convex face of a driverA. Raymond Penner, 2001
• Experimental study of the gear effect in ball collisionsRod Cross, University of Sydney, and Alan M. Nathan, University of Illinois, 2007
• What is Smash Factor in Golf?TrackMan, accessed 2026
• The Physics of GolfTheodore P. Jorgensen, University of Nebraska, 1999, second edition; Springer reprint 2013

Discussion

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