The fix for Strike high on the face

Fixing a strike high on the face

What is actually happening

Contact above the centre of gravity reduces spin and raises launch, which off a tee can be useful. Off the turf it usually means the club has slid under a ball sitting up in the grass. Ball speed drops either way, so the shot climbs higher than it should and still comes up short.

Your strike
Face centre
Offset from centre
Centred strike

Bring the mark down to centre

The fix

The ball is meeting the face above its sweet spot, the point on the face that lines up with the club's centre of gravity. The clubhead is passing lower relative to the ball than it should. With a driver, the head travels too far beneath the middle of a teed ball. With an iron, the leading edge slides under a ball sitting up in the grass, or the whole club arrives lower than it was at address. The mark sits in the upper half of the face, below the top edge, shot after shot.

Strike location is the relationship at work, and it costs you twice. Contact away from the sweet spot passes less of the club's speed to the ball, so the same swing sends a slower ball. With a driver or a wood, the head also tips backwards around its centre of gravity at impact, which raises launch and cuts backspin, and the face is curved from top to bottom, so its upper half carries more loft than the middle. That is why a strike just above centre can suit a driver off a tee. Move it further up and the lost speed outweighs the gain: the ball climbs steeply, lands soft and comes up short. An iron struck this high flies higher and shorter than that club should.

You can confirm it in five balls. Spray the face with foot powder or scribble across it with a dry-erase marker, hit five shots, and read the marks. A cluster in the upper half of the face, below the edge, is this fault. With the driver, look at the tee as well: it usually stays in the ground or tips forward, and the grass in front is untouched. A tee that flies out, a scuff on the crown or a ball that pops almost straight up points at a club still travelling downward, which has its own page. Then prop a phone face-on at chest height and compare the top of your head at address with the same point at impact. A head that has dropped has taken the whole arc down with it.

This page is for a strike that misses in one direction, upward, every time. Marks that land high on one swing, on the toe the next and low after that are a scattered strike, which is trained differently. A ball that comes off the rounded neck of the club and shoots right is hosel contact, which grows out of heel strikes, not high ones. A thin shot is not this fault either: thin contact sits low on the face, on the bottom grooves or the leading edge. Left-handers mirror every direction on this page. And if the marks follow the tee up and down as you change its height, the tee was the cause.

Strike height is set by how high the clubhead is travelling as it reaches the ball, which depends on where the bottom of the arc falls and whether your body keeps its height on the way down. The body comes first, because a chest that sinks toward the ball takes the arc down with it, however good the setup was. Then give the swing a better reference at address. Hovering the driver with the ball opposite the middle of the face gives the club that height to return to, rather than the turf below the ball. With an iron, when the ball sits up, grip down an inch and hover the club level with the bottom of the ball, so the head has no room to slide beneath it.

The instinctive fixes push the mark higher still. Keeping your head down tends to push the chest lower through impact, and a lower body lowers the arc. Hitting down harder with an iron sends the leading edge further under the ball. Teeing the driver right down does drop the mark, but a big change swaps a high strike for a low one, and a low strike brings more spin and less launch, the least efficient pairing there is for distance. Change the tee in small steps, keep your height, and judge every change on five marks rather than one shot.

Drills

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

Hovered driver, marked face
Spray the driver face with foot powder or colour it with a dry-erase marker, and tee a ball at your usual height. At address, hover the club so the ball sits opposite the middle of the face instead of soling it on the grass. Hit ten balls at three-quarter speed, reading the mark and wiping the face after each one. Success is seven of the ten marks inside a circle the size of a coin in the middle of the face, with the tee still in the ground. Then hit ten full drives the same way, and take the hover to the course once full swings give the same result in two sessions running.
Needs Foot powder spray or a dry-erase marker, tees and a towel to wipe the face
Head-height film
Prop a phone on your bag face-on to you, lens at chest height, and film five swings with a mid-iron. On playback, pause at address and note where the top of your head sits against something fixed in the background, then step through to impact. Success is the head at the same height or higher at impact on all five. If it drops, make ten slow rehearsal swings with the feeling that your head hangs from a string, film five more, and only go back to full-speed shots when all five pass.
Needs A phone to film with
Grip-down pair from a ball sitting up
Find a ball sitting up in light rough, or tee one a finger's width above the grass. Mark the face of a mid-iron. Hit five at full grip length with the club soled behind the ball, reading each mark. Then grip down an inch, hover the club level with the bottom of the ball, and hit five more. Success is the second group sitting clearly lower than the first, in the middle of the face, with a normal flight for that club. Repeat the pair three times, then use the grip-down routine on every ball that sits up on the course.
Needs Foot powder spray or a dry-erase marker and a tee

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.

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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.

Strike marks on a sprayed or marked face sit in the middle, not stacked in the upper half below the top edge.
On face-on film, the top of your head is no lower at impact than it was at address.
With the driver hovered at address, the ball sits opposite the middle of the face rather than above it.
Drives climb to a normal peak and run on landing instead of rising steeply and dropping short.
When the ball sits up, the hovered clubhead is level with the bottom of the ball rather than soled in the grass beneath it.

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 head hangs from a string fixed above you, so nothing drops as the club comes through.
The driver brushes the ball off the tee just above the grass, as though the turf were wet paint.
When the ball sits up, you pick it off the top of the grass rather than dig it out from beneath.

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

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
40+ TrackMan Parameters ExplainedTrackMan, accessed 2026

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