When practicing at the driving range, you may find that you hit the ball really well and straight, but that this eludes you when out on the golf course.

One of the reasons for this is that at the driving range you will stand with your body aligned to all the straight lines around you such as the range mats and the bay dividers. You align your body to these lines and hit the ball straight out of the bay. However, once out on the golf course these straight lines disappear and when they are there, such as the cut of the grass on the tee, if you align to these lines you will hit straight to them, but they usually have been designed to point at hazards or trees! Learn to swing with your body alignment rather than in line with your surroundings.

You stand parallel to the target line you want to hit the ball down. To swing with your body’s alignment, as you swing the club head away from the ball, the shaft of the club should be parallel to your toe line. You can check this by placing an alignment pole on the floor in line with your toes but to your right. As you swing the club away from the ball, the club should become parallel to this line before crossing it. Continue your movement to the top of the backswing and the shaft of the club should once again become parallel to your toe line. Then swing down, strike the golf ball and on your follow through, again the shaft should become parallel to your toe line, this time on your left side.

To work on swinging with your body’s alignment, make some waist high swings, backswing to follow through and make sure that the shaft of the club becomes parallel to your toe line.

Once you feel you are confident with these two parallel positions, extend your movement into a full backswing and full follow through and you should see that you are hitting the ball parallel to your toe line and that you can now hit much more accurately at your target, rather than swinging with your surroundings that are designed to catch you out and get you into trouble when out on the golf course.