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Proper Golf Ball Position
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The answer to whether the ball position should be a constant or moved from club to club.
- No matter what you swing, the bottom of the swing arc (and divot) is always below the left shoulder
- For maximum consistency the ball should be placed off the left ear for ball-first contact with every club in the bag
- For a consistent swing with the driver, use this same ball position
- To bomb your driver, place the ball off the inside of the left foot then close your stance to compensate
- Use the left ear ball position for irons - placing it too far back leads to chunks, blocks & hooks
One of my favorite questions I get asked all the time is whether or not the ball position should change based on the club that you're swinging.
It's a great question because, again, a lot of conflicting information out there about ball position and unfortunately it's one of those things.
If you get it wrong, the rest of your swing is gonna have a tendency to fall apart.
It's so important, the balls in the right spot, every time, with the right club or with every club.
And so one of the common things that's taught is that the ball position should change based on the club that you have.
And I look at it and say, Well, why is that?
Why would the ball position change?
What is the ball position based on in your golf swing?
Well ball position is based on primarily your body setup and the physics of the golf swing.
When we look at the physics, we know at this point you start to understand the rotary swing, this push versus pull concept.
How critical it is to understanding the physics that are at work in the golf swing.
And that it's primarily lead side dominant because that's the only pulling motion that you can create, which keeps the club stable throughout the whole golf swing.
So because of that because it's primarily lead side dominant the ball position tends to be just in front or just excuse me just behind the bottom of the swing arc which is going to tend to be pretty far up in this in the swing close to the underneath the lead arm shoulder socket so your left arm shoulder socket because that's the point of maximum extension from the club when I'm swinging from this pivot point my left shoulder as my left as the club keeps moving you notice now the clubs no longer hitting the ground now it's hit the ground as it's coming back it's moving back so you can see if I was just swing with my left arm the bottom of my swing arc would be directly underneath my shoulder socket the clubs at maximum extension there so if I set up with the ball here and I have a proper rotary swing stance with here the bottom of my swing arc would be right there so I'd want to set the ball just slightly behind it so I make sure that I catch the ball first before I hit the earth so that I don't hit it fat so the ball position would be just behind this lead shoulder now the reality is it's not just a hundred percent lead our lead arm dominant your right arm is also involved in the swing of course it's attached to the club so that's gonna kind of balance these two out and move the bottom of your swing arc because the right arm still attached to the club it moves the swing are the bottom of the swing arc a little bit further back not a ton because still primarily lead side dominant but it moves it back a little bit so now this pendulum motion where the clubs brushing the grass directly underneath my shoulder socket is now going to get moved back a little bit and that's going to move the ball that necessitate moving the ball back in my stance a little bit so now that's how we end up with about the logo of your shirt or lead arm because the right arm is attached to it so now that's what the physics that are involved and the mechanics of your body that determine ball position okay so based on very simple physics now does that change when you pick up a four iron versus a pitching wedge well did your body change did your position of your lead shoulder change the pivot points that you've got in your swing did any of those change no of course not just because you pick up a four iron doesn't mean you're gonna all of a sudden use more right arm and move the swing arc further back the bottom of the swing arc so why would the ball position change if the ball position isn't based on preference or what you feel you want to do in your swing it's based on mechanics so just like a grandfather clock the grandfather clock never misses the bottom of a swing arc right always gonna be in the same spot same thing is true in your swing because you're not you're trying to kind of be like a grandfather clock and have some really simple pivot points in the swing which in this case is your shoulders that doesn't change the width of your shoulders doesn't change when you pick up a different club so the ball position is constant it's always in the exact same spot you don't want to try and learn different bottoms of the swing arc for each club the golf swings hard enough without you trying to learn 14 different golf swings that's crazy it's fixed it's always the same up off your left ear now that doesn't mean you can't change it based on some specialty shots if you want to hit one a little bit lower change the path when the clubs approaching the ball you can move the ball back to hit a draw or whatever but in general the bottom line is the rotary swing ball position always in the same spot now are there exceptions to this other than hitting a specialty shot yes when you hit a specialty club when you hit a driver that is a specialty club it is the the only club in the bag that you want to hit a little bit on the upswing every other club in the bag is going to have a slightly descending blow about four degrees on average across the bag but with the driver you want to try to be one two maybe even three degrees up because of that no other club in the bag you do that with it's a specialty club so that can predicate and change that the ball position can now actually move forward a little bit because you want to not only hit it on the upswing but you want to hit it higher on the face so the ball tee ball position is going to be teed up right obviously you're going to use a tee with your driver and then moving the ball up in your stance allows you to create a little bit more shallow angle of attack as the club is approaching the ball so that's the only exception otherwise ball position it's always in the same spot about where your left ear is draw a straight line the ball should always be up there it should never ever be behind that that's the worst thing that you can do when you start seeing and I see this every single day guys are set up like this when they come to go to our golf academy and got a lot of forward shaft lean I know we got all kinds of problems to start fixing because they're going to be very right side dominant they're going to pick the club up they're going to have this really narrow swing going back and this steep hacking motion coming over it in order to get them to shallow out the ball position being up in their stance it feels like they can't even get the club back to the ball it feels so far forward you'll have to get used to that it takes a little bit to get used to getting the club in the right spot but all of a sudden all of these other great fundamentals of being able to release the club properly and transfer my weight and all these things start falling into place so ball position it's always in the same spot it's based on mechanics and there's no way around that so get your ball off your left ear and all of a sudden you'll start being able to shift your weight you better release the club and start hitting the ball cleaner and more crisply than ever before as you keep working through these RSD
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