Symptom
Cramped over the ball, or reaching for it
At 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.
This usually traces to something already true before the club moves: grip, aim, posture, or where the ball sits in your stance. All of those are checkable standing still, which is why the questions ask you to look rather than to guess.
Common ways golfers describe this
Am I standing too close to the ball?
My arms feel stuck at setup
My hands are too close to my body at address
How far to stand from the ball with a driver?
- Feet, in the footprints: square to the line
- Hips, cross ticks: square to the line
- Shoulders, round ends: square to the line
- Target line
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
- Over the ball with a mid-iron, which describes it better?
- At address, take your trail hand off the club and let that arm hang loose. Where does the hand fall compared with the grip?
- Mark the face and hit five balls with a mid-iron. Where do most of the marks land?
- Hold your address for five seconds. Where is the weight in your feet?
- In a photo from behind you, or side-on in a mirror, how does your upper body look at address?
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.
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
Standing too far from the ball
Reaching for the ball moves balance toward the toes and pulls the strike toward the toe of the face, which costs ball speed and adds draw-side spin through gear effect. Posture usually collapses as the swing tries to find the ball.
Read the fix
Strike toward the heel
Contact inside the centre of the face costs ball speed, and on a large head it twists the face closed around its centre of gravity, adding fade-side spin through gear effect. A heel strike and a shank are the same fault at different severities.
Read the fix
Strike toward the toe
Contact out toward the end of the face produces the dead, hollow feel golfers describe, and twists the head open around its centre of gravity, adding draw-side spin. Distance loss is larger than the miss looks.
Read the fix
Posture that cannot be held
Bending from the middle of the back, standing too upright, or sinking into too much knee bend produces a position the body has to leave during the swing. Any change in height between address and impact moves the low point, and the strike moves with it.
Read the fix
No repeatable setup or routine
Aim, ball position, stance width and grip get rebuilt slightly differently on every shot, so face angle, low point and strike location all vary with them. Address is the reference the whole swing is measured from, and a reference that moves explains misses that seem to have no pattern.
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.
- 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.Shares standing too close to the ball
- 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
- Shanking the ballThe ball meets the hosel instead of the face and squirts away low and almost sideways, sharply right of where you aimed.Shares standing too close to the ball
- Hitting it off the toeThe ball comes off the end of the face with a dead, hollow feel, flies shorter than it should, and off a driver or wood it often curves left.Shares standing too far from the ball
- 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.Shares standing too close to the ball
- Toe shanksThe ball comes off the very end of the face and shoots low and sharply right, or simply squirts away weak and short, and the mark is out on the toe rather than on the neck of the club.Shares standing too far from the ball
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
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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