Symptom
Hitting it off the heel
The 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.
Where the ball meets the face changes both how it launches and how it curves, so two shots that look alike from behind can come from different strikes. The questions work back from what the face and the flight show you.
Common ways golfers describe this
Heel marks on the face
Heel contact off the tee
Why do I hit the heel?
Why do I keep hitting the heel of the club?
Ball off the inside of the face
- Target line
- Your flight
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
- Where exactly do the heel marks land on the face?
- What does the ball do on the shots you catch off the heel?
- When you take a divot with an iron, which way does it point?
- At address, how much room is there between the end of the grip and your thighs?
- Take your posture with your seat just touching a wall. What happens to it as you rehearse the swing through impact?
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.
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
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.
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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
Contact on the hosel
The ball meets the rounded hosel instead of the face, so it leaves at an extreme angle with almost none of the speed the swing produced. Whatever move caused it, the fault itself is purely a question of where the club met the ball.
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.
- 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
- 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.Shares standing too close to 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 early extension
- 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.Shares standing too close to the ball
- Ball above or below your feetOn a sidehill lie the ball starts left when it sits above your feet and right when it sits below them, and the strike slides toward the toe, the heel or the hosel as your balance goes.Shares strike toward the heel
- 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
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
- 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 GolfTheodore P. Jorgensen, University of Nebraska, 1999, second edition; Springer reprint 2013
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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