The fix for Delivery too steep

Fixing a delivery that is too steep

What is actually happening

The club descends sharply into the hitting area, so the margin between fat and thin narrows and any low point error produces a bigger miss. Divots are deep and narrow, and the same steepness usually travels with a path working left.

Target line
Your divot

Shallow strip, after the ball

The fix

The club is dropping sharply as it comes into the ball. An iron struck from the turf should still be travelling down at impact, with the bottom of its arc just past the ball. A steep delivery gets that much right and overdoes it: the club comes in on a narrow V instead of a shallow U and keeps going down into the ground after the ball, leaving a deep, narrow gouge rather than a strip. This page is written for a right-handed golfer; left-handers mirror the directions.

Where the bottom of the arc sits relative to the ball decides fat or thin, and the angle of approach decides how much a small error in that spot costs you. On a shallow arc the club stays close to turf height for a long stretch, so bottoming out a fraction early still catches mostly ball. On a steep arc the club's height changes quickly with every bit of ground it covers. Bottom out a fraction early and the leading edge buries itself behind the ball. Bottom out a fraction late and the club is still too high when it arrives, so the leading edge meets the middle of the ball and the shot comes off thin. That narrow margin is why a steep swing can produce three good irons and then a chunk with nothing apparently different. A steeper blow also tends to add spin, so even clean strikes can climb and stall into a wind. Off a tee, the same line sends the club under the ball and pops it up.

Start with the turf: hit ten mid-irons off grass and read the divots. Steep ones are deep and narrow and often point left of the target, because the move that steepens the club usually sends it across the ball as well. Off the tee, look for scuffs on the crown and a tee thrown out of the ground with scraped turf in front of it. Then film a swing from directly behind, phone at hand height and pointing down the target line, and draw a line up the shaft at address. If the shaft sits above that line when your hands come back down to hip height, the club is arriving from above the plane it started on.

Separate this from its neighbours. If only the driver misbehaves and your iron divots are shallow strips, the problem is where the bottom of the arc sits relative to a teed ball. If the heavy shots come on chips, where the club slows before the ball and the finish is shorter than the backswing, that is deceleration. A steep delivery happens at full speed, right through the bag.

The steepness is created in the first move down from the top. When the shoulders and arms throw the club outward and downward before the lower body has started toward the target, the only way left to reach the ball is down on top of it. The change is in the order. Let pressure shift into your lead foot and your hips begin turning while your arms are still near the top, so the hands drop and the clubhead stays behind them rather than out over them. The trail elbow points at the ground and stays in front of the trail hip. Keep the chest turning through impact so the arms are never left to chop down on their own. Check ball position too: a ball set back toward the trail foot meets the club earlier in its descent and makes any steepness worse.

The instinctive answer to a deep divot is to take less turf, and the usual way is hanging back and lifting the club through impact. That moves the bottom of the arc behind the ball, so the digging stops and the thin shots and tops begin, with the steep angle still there underneath. The other instinct is to hit down harder, because good iron players are said to hit down. They do, on a far shallower line. A harder chop only makes the angle steeper. Leave the bottom of the arc where it belongs, just past the ball, and change the line the club takes to get there.

Drills

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

Pump to hip height
Take a mid-iron to the top. Start down by shifting pressure into your lead foot and turning your hips, and let your hands drop until they reach hip height with the clubhead behind them. Swing back up to the top and repeat, three pumps in all, then swing through and hit the ball on the fourth move. Film the first few from directly behind to check the shaft is on or below its address line at the pump position. Hit ten balls this way. Success is a shallow divot starting just after the ball on at least seven of the ten. Once that holds for two sessions, drop to one pump, then none, and hit full shots at normal speed.
Needs A phone to film from behind
Level swings down to the turf
Check you have a clear club's length of space around you. Stand tall holding a mid-iron out in front of you at waist height and make three smooth swings level with the ground, like a baseball swing. Bend forward so the club travels at knee height and make three more with the same round, level feel. Bend again until the club brushes the grass and make three more. Then hit a ball from that posture without changing the feel. Repeat the whole cycle five times. Success is the club brushing or lightly clipping the turf after the ball instead of digging, with the ball flying at the normal height for the club. When five balls in a row come off that way, hit ten full shots with no rehearsal and read the divots.
Needs nothing but a club
Clip it off a low tee
With a mid-iron, tee a ball so it sits just above the grass, no higher than a very good fairway lie. Hit it without snapping the tee or taking a deep divot. A steep club breaks the tee or rips it out and gouges the turf beneath. Hit ten. Success is at least eight tees left in the ground or tipped forward, solid contact, and no more than a light scrape of grass. Then push the tee down until the ball sits on the grass, hit ten more, and look for shallow strips pointing at the target before going back to full shots from the turf.
Needs Tees

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.

Mid-iron divots are shallow strips that start at or just after the ball, not deep, narrow gouges.
Divots point at the target rather than left of it.
Filmed from directly behind, the shaft is on or below its address line when the hands come back down to hip height.
With a mid-iron the ball sits just ahead of the middle of the stance, not back toward the trail foot.
Off the tee, the crown carries no scuff marks and the tee is not snapped or thrown out of the ground on a normal drive.

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 hands drop straight down from the top while the hips start turning, as if the arms are only along for the ride.
The club approaches the ball low and from behind, brushing the grass like a broom rather than chopping like an axe.
Your chest is still turning toward the target as the ball leaves, so there is never a moment where the arms hit down on their own.

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

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