Symptom
Chicken wing through impact
The 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.
Fat, thin and topped shots are one problem seen from different sides: the lowest point of the swing arc is not where the ball is. Where it sits instead, and why, is what separates the causes below.
- Swing arc
- Lowest point
Narrow it to one cause
Each question is here because golfers answer it differently, and that difference is what rules a cause out. Nothing is generated while you answer: every question, cause and fix was written and checked in advance.
A few questions · no account needed
What you will be asked
- What does the ball do on the swings where your lead arm folds?
- Hold your finish for a count of three. Where does your chest point and where is your weight?
- Swing to waist height past the ball and stop there. What is the club doing?
- At address with a mid iron, how much gap is there between the grip end and your thighs?
- Which way do your iron divots point compared with your target line?
- Set up with your backside just touching a chair back or a wall, then swing slowly down to impact. Does the contact hold?
Where this can come from
These are the causes this symptom resolves to, in the order they turn up most often. That order is not a diagnosis and it is not your answer: two of them can produce a shot that looks identical from behind. Each has a fix you can read now, whether or not you answer anything.
Body rotation stalls through impact
The chest and hips stop turning before the ball, so the arms and club are left to catch up on their own. Whatever the hands then do decides the shot: held off, the face arrives open and the ball leaks right; thrown at it, the face turns over and the ball dives left. It is a different fault from a slide, where the body keeps moving but travels instead of turning.
Read the fix
Out-to-in swing path
The club is travelling left of the target line through impact for a right-handed golfer. Curvature is produced by the difference between face and path, so a path moving left with a face that lags behind it opens the face relative to the path and bends the ball right. The same path with a face square to it produces a straight pull instead.
Read the fix
Standing too close to the ball
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.
Read the fix
Early extension
The hips push toward the ball through the downswing and the body stands up out of its address posture. The hands and club are forced up and away with it, which moves the low point of the swing arc backwards and upwards. The result is a club that is still rising when it reaches the ball, which is why the strike catches the ball above its equator.
Read the fix
Weight hanging on the trail foot
Pressure stays on the trail foot through impact instead of moving toward the target. The low point of the arc sits behind the ball, so the club either bottoms out early and takes turf first, or is travelling upward by the time it arrives. Both misses come from the same cause, which is why fat and thin so often alternate.
Read the fix
Trying to lift the ball into the air
An instinct to scoop the ball upward adds loft through impact and moves the low point behind the ball. Height comes from the loft already built into the club and from a descending strike, so the attempt to help the ball up produces the opposite: a thin or topped shot that never climbs.
Read the fix
Related symptoms
These are not here because they sound similar. Each one can come from a cause on the list above, which is why fixing one sometimes quietly fixes another. The closest matches are first.
- Divots pointing left or right of the targetThe divot after the ball angles clearly left or right instead of running along the target line, which is the plainest record on the ground of which way the club was travelling.Shares out-to-in swing path
- Getting stuckOn the way down the club drops too far behind you and the arms feel trapped, so the shot either blocks straight right or flips hard left.Shares body rotation stalls through impact
- 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.Shares standing too close to the ball
- Slicing the ballThe ball curves hard to the right and finishes well right of where you aimed.Shares out-to-in swing path
- I can't hit a drawYou set up to curve the ball from right to left and it fades anyway, or it starts right and never turns back, so the draw is never there when you want it.Shares out-to-in swing path
- Coming over the topSomeone has told you, or the camera has shown you, that the club swings out and across the ball from the top, and your shots pull left, slice right, or do both.Shares out-to-in swing path
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
- 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
If something here contradicts what a launch monitor tells you, say so. Corrections change the page.
Discussion
Golfers who have had this shot, on what it turned out to be and what sorted it. Read it as experience rather than diagnosis: the questions above are what narrow it to a cause.
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