Problems Caused by Poor Ball Position
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Having the ball in the wrong position will not only cost you accuracy, but as this video teaches you, distance as well.
- Most golfers tend to make the mistake of moving the ball too far back in their stance
- This causes you to stop shifting your weight, which is one of the number one problems for amateur golfers
- Typically, most students need to move the ball UP in their stance to correct numerous swing faults.
In this video, I'm gonna talk about common setup problems based on ball position, and swing faults that are derived from having the ball in the wrong position, and how to simply make these changes to not only hit the ball more cleanly and more crisply and get better launch angle, but in the second part of the video I'm gonna talk about how it's gonna help you pick up more club head speed.
So, first what I want to talk about is the number one flaw that we see in all the lessons I've ever given. Thousands and thousands of lessons. Hands down the most common fault that we see at setup with the ball position is having it too far back in your stance. This happens out of the subconscious fear to make sure that we can make the contact. If you hit a couple fat ones, you start moving the ball further and further back, and then what you end up in is this never ending cycle that as you hit a fat shot, you move the ball further back in your stance. It makes your swing faults worse, you shift your weight less, because if you shifted your weight properly, you'd top the ball and your divot would start out out here. You'd miss the ball completely.
So what happens is you start, all of a sudden, making these changes because you're hitting the ball fat and trying to fix the wrong thing. Moving the ball position up in your stance is actually the solution when you're hitting the ball fat, a lot of time. Not all of the time. But in most amateur golfer cases, when they start moving the ball further and further back, they start hanging further off their right leg, start doing this kind of motion, and then it just leads into a million faults that you can't fix without getting your weight shift corrected.
You can't fix your weight shift without having the ball in the correct position. Because as I said earlier, you'd literally completely miss the ball. So the number one thing that you need to check ... And you need to do this daily. Every time you go to the range, throw a shaft down and then throw another shaft down so that you can see where the ball is at in your setup. And if the ball looks like this when you're setup perpendicular to another shaft going down the target line, it's too far back in your stance. And you're gonna have all kinds of issues with your swing, because weight shift is one of the most important fundamentals in your swing. You have to have it for power and consistency.
And so when the ball is this far back in your stance, you're gonna have to hit it off your back foot, which is gonna lead to a multitude of problems. Okay? So number one problem, just make sure the ball is up off the logo of your shirt, off the left side of your left ear, for right handed golfers of course. And now you'll be able to turn back behind it, and as you shift forward you won't be getting out in front of it. You'll be shifting back to the ball, and then you can make good contact and release the club. So that's the number one problem.
Number two. And this is a different one that you probably haven't heard before. I want to talk about how from down the line having the ball at the right distance actually helps you pick up club head speed. So, let's look at this fault.
Number one fault that we see kinda goes back to the first one where the ball is too far back in your stance, because you hit a couple fat shots, you're not hitting it solid. Instinctively our minds say, "Put the ball back in our stance." Well, the second thing that you're gonna tend to do is setup really close to the ball, because again, we have this subconscious fear that the further we are from the ball, the harder it's gonna be to hit. So we want to get really close to the ball, and what this is gonna tend to do is make us have a really steep swing plane and a really steep angle of attack. You can pull that off with your wedges, but when you get to your five, six iron, your four iron, your three iron, your three wood off the deck, and you can't get enough height on it, the trick ... apart from making sure the ball is up in your stance properly ... is making sure that you are setup far enough away from the ball that it won't steepen your angle of attack.
Because what's gonna happen here ... I'm gonna really exaggerate this for a moment to make this point very clear. If I stood really far away from the ball, and this is a seven iron ... So exaggeratedly far from the ball, I'd have a really hard time hitting down on it very steeply, compared to if I stood really close to the ball, I can get a really steep angle of attack and dig a big trench here.
So as I start moving the ball further away from my stance, what it's going to allow me to do is release the club properly, but it's more importantly gonna help me pick up speed. Why does it help pick up speed? The reason is, the longer I can effectively make this club, the shaft, the faster it's going to move. For every half inch that you go up in a club ... So for instance, all of your irons tend to be a half inch longer than the next. So your seven iron's a half inch longer than your eight iron. The reason for that is it help you pick up about 2 miles an hour of club head speed of every half inch that you go up.
So, effectively, when you setup really close to the ball, you've taken that golf club and you've made it really short. Kinda like what I talked about in the Vijay video, where I'm talking about using the pinky instead of trying to push with your right hand and make the club work around this point, we're letting it work around this point. We're effectively making that club longer.
Well, the same is true of course in your setup. So if I setup really close to the ball, and I come into impact, the radius of my swing is gonna be very narrow. Versus here. Now I've just turned my seven iron into a four iron. So as I get a proper setup at distance from the ball, now I have a lot longer effective club. And it's gonna help you pick up a tremendous amount of speed with no more effort on your part. It's just proper fundamentals.
So how far do we setup from the ball? Well, we covered that in the old setup videos, right? So we don't need to worry about that here. But just make certain that you're not setting up the ball too far back in your stance and too close to the ball. Especially if you struggle picking up speed with the longer clubs and getting the ball up in the air. With a three iron, this is gonna make the club move faster and it's going to shallow out your angle of attack, because your swing plane can't be so steep compared to when you're setting up close to the ball. It's gonna allow the club to come in shallower, clip the ball off the turf, get the ball up in the air, and you can start hitting those long irons again.
So, those two things are the two most common swing faults that we see with the bad ball position. Make sure the ball is in the right spot, and good things will happen in your swing.
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