Symptom
Hitting it low on the face
The marks sit below the centre of the face, in the bottom grooves or on the bottom edge, and the shot launches low, spins too much and falls well short of the club's distance.
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
Hitting low on the face
Hitting the ball low on the clubface
Catching it low on the clubface
Striking it out of the bottom of the club
Hitting out the bottom of the driver
- 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
- Mark the face and hit ten shots with the club that does it most. Where do the marks sit?
- Does it happen off a tee, off the turf, or both?
- Hold your finish after one of these shots. Where is your weight?
- Sole your driver behind a ball on the tee you normally use. How much of the ball sits above the top edge of the face?
- Through impact, does the clubhead pass your hands before it reaches the ball?
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 low on the face
Contact below the centre of gravity loses ball speed and, through vertical gear effect, raises spin while lowering launch. That is the least efficient combination there is for distance, and it is why a low strike feels solid and still goes nowhere.
Read the fix
Tee height wrong for the delivery
Teed too high for the way the club is being delivered, contact creeps toward the crown. Teed too low, it drops to the bottom grooves. Either way the strike leaves the middle of the face, and with a driver that is worth more distance than most swing changes.
Read the fix
Casting, or releasing the club too early
The wrist angle is thrown away at the start of the downswing, so the shaft arrives vertical or leaning backwards. That adds loft, moves the low point behind the ball, and widens the arc early, which is why casting costs distance and drops the strike low on the face at the same time.
Read the fix
Flipping or scooping through impact
The lead wrist breaks down so the clubhead passes the hands before the ball and the shaft leans backward at contact. Loft is added, the low point moves back, and the shot comes out high, weak and short of what the club should carry.
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
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.
- Shots balloon and fall shortThe shot climbs far higher than it should, stalls at the top of its flight, and drops almost straight down well short of the target.Shares strike low on the face
- Ball flight is too lowShots leave on a flat line, never climb to a proper height, and land short of what the club should carry, even when the strike feels acceptable.Shares strike low on the face
- Can't compress the ballContact feels soft and glancing instead of crisp, the club sweeps the ball off the turf without leaving a divot after it, and the flight is high, floaty and short for the club in your hands.Shares casting, or releasing the club too early
- The wind wrecks my ball flightInto the wind the ball climbs, stalls and drops well short, and across the wind your usual curve turns into a much bigger one.Shares strike low on the face
- Losing distanceShots carry noticeably shorter than they should with the same club, sometimes even when the strike felt solid, and a shorter club goes as far as a longer one.Shares strike low on the face
- I never know how high to tee the ballYou guess the tee height, or it changes from hole to hole, so teed shots come off the crown, the top edge or the bottom grooves, and the miss changes with the height.Shares tee height wrong for the delivery
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
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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