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Symptom

My setup is different every time

There is no set sequence before your shots, so aim, ball position, stance and grip drift from one swing to the next, and you often arrive over the ball still unsure of the shot.

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

  • My setup is different every single time
  • I set up differently every time
  • My setup is great one day and awful the next
  • I stand over the ball too long
  • Between clubs every time
Feet, hips and shoulders all square, seen from aboveA golfer at address seen from directly above, with the target at the top of the picture and the golfer standing to the left of the ball. A dashed line runs from the ball straight up the page to a pin: the target line. Three lines cross the body, drawn one behind another. The nearest to the ball runs through two footprints and is the feet, square to the target line. The middle line, dashed with a cross tick at each end, is the hips, square to the target line. The furthest line, dash-and-dot with an open circle at each end, is the shoulders, square to the target line. The figure moves. The three lines are laid down one at a time in the order a golfer checks them, feet first, then hips, then shoulders, and each arrives square to the target line before turning to the aim it is drawn at. A line that is aimed off the target is therefore seen turning away from square rather than only being reported as off it.
  • Feet, in the footprints: square to the line
  • Hips, cross ticks: square to the line
  • Shoulders, round ends: square to the line
  • Target line
Aim is three lines rather than one, and they can disagree without a golfer feeling it. They are drawn square here, which is the position the questions ask you to check yours against.

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.

Start the questions

A few questions · no account needed

What you will be asked

  1. From taking a club out of the bag to starting the swing, what do you actually do?
  2. Set up to the same target five times, walking away in between. Each time, lay a club along your toes and look at it from behind the ball. What do you see?
  3. With a mid iron, check where the ball sits in your stance at the start of a session and again near the end. What has happened?
  4. When do you settle on the club and the exact spot you are aiming at?
  5. On the shots you strike out of the middle of the face, where does the ball start?
  6. What happens to your setup when you are nervous, in a hurry, or playing with people you do not know?

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.

  1. 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

  2. Clubface aimed off at address

    The face is soled pointing somewhere other than the intended start line before the swing begins. It usually happens when the stance is taken first and the face is squared to the body rather than the target, or when the grip is completed after the club is already on the ground. Everything the swing does afterwards is a correction for a starting error.

    Read the fix

  3. Body aimed right of target

    Feet, hips or shoulders point right of the ball-to-target line. Right-handed golfers do this far more often than they believe: a square stance runs parallel to the target line, so the feet point at a spot left of the flag, which looks wrong from address. Turning until the feet point at the flag aims the body right. Shots either go right with it or require a compensating move across the ball.

    Read the fix

  4. Ball too far forward in the stance

    The ball sits ahead of where the swing arc reaches its lowest point. With an iron off turf this means the club is already climbing at contact. It also encourages the shoulders to aim left at address, which pulls the path further left and adds curve to the miss.

    Read the fix

  5. Body aimed left of target

    Feet, hips or shoulders point left of the ball-to-target line. It usually starts when the shoulders swivel open to follow the eyes toward the target, or when a golfer aims left on purpose to allow for a slice. The path tends to follow the body, so aiming further left to allow for a slice reliably makes the slice worse.

    Read the fix

  6. Low point that does not repeat

    The bottom of the arc lands in a different place relative to the ball on each swing, so fat and thin alternate instead of one miss repeating. Treating it as two faults and correcting each in turn is what keeps the golfer oscillating between them.

    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.

What this rests on

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.

Loading the discussion