Clean contact is the name of the game when trying to play good golf.

It is easy to get caught up in the various details of your swing technique and other factors that influence your play, but striking the ball cleanly is at the heart of what you are trying to accomplish. If you teach yourself to hit the ball clean time after time, many of the other obstacles you face in this game will seem modest by comparison. Whether you are trying to blast a 300-yard drive or negotiate a tricky three-foot putt, making great contact should always be a top priority.

One of the ways to improve your quality of contact is simply to keep your eyes on the back of the ball as you swing. This might sound like an awfully simple tip, but it is powerful nonetheless. Many golfers do their best to just watch the ball in general while they swing, but we think you’ll benefit from being a little more specific. By watching the back of the ball, you will be staring at the spot where you are trying to deliver the club. Place the club nicely on the back of the ball and you should see your shots head directly for the target over and over again.

In this article, we are going to offer some advice on how you can train yourself to watch the back of the ball intently while hitting your shots. Although it seems like it should be easy enough to accomplish this task, you’ll find that it is more difficult than you may expect. Specifically, you will probably find that this challenge is pretty modest during practice – and rather significant when on the course. There may be some struggles along the way, but you should eventually be able to watch the back of the ball during your swings without feeling any temptation to look away.

All of the content below is based on a right-handed golfer. If you happen to play left-handed, please take a moment to reverse the directions as necessary.

The Many Distractions

Golf is a game of many distractions. From the outside, you might not think this to be the case. After all, golf is a mostly quiet game, played on beautiful green courses which are frequently surrounding by trees and other natural elements. It looks peaceful, relaxing, and tranquil. As a golfer, however, you know that this image is a little bit misleading. Sure, the golf course will be quiet sometimes, but that is not always the case. And when distractions pop up, it can be difficult to keep your mind focused on the task at hand. If you lose focus, your ability to watch the back of the ball throughout your entire swing may disappear.

So, what kinds of distractions do you need to watch out for as you play a round of golf? The following list is a good place to start.

• Your playing partners. One of the biggest threats to your focus comes directly from those playing in your group. Maybe one of your playing partners likes to keep carrying on a conversation, even as you are getting ready to hit your shot. Or, maybe another player in your group keeps making noise with his or her clubs while you are swinging. Whatever the case, it’s tough to focus when those in your group don’t adhere to basic golf etiquette. But here’s the thing – there isn’t a lot that you can do about this problem, at least in terms of changing the behavior of those in your group. After all, you can’t exactly find new golf buddies every week, and even if you did, the new people would probably do something to annoy you just the same. Rather than sentencing yourself to a lifetime of playing golf alone, the better plan is to learn how to block out these distractions effectively. Don’t let them get the better of you, as you’ll never live up to your potential on the course if you can’t hold your focus. This isn’t going to be easy at first, but you’ll get better at it in time. Immerse yourself in the process of hitting good shots and don’t let minor distractions pull you away. This is going to help you focus your eyes on the back of the ball properly as you swing, and it will also help you perform more consistently from the start of the round on through to the finish.
• Your own thoughts. Sometimes, the biggest distractions you will face on the golf course come from inside your own head. When you think too much as you play, it’s hard to calm the thoughts that keep running back and forth long enough to let you make a relaxed swing. The trick is to strike a balance between thinking too much and not thinking at all. You certainly need to think your way around the golf course, as this is a game which requires plenty of good decision making. At the same time, letting too many thoughts run around in your head will lead to over analysis and struggles in the long run. As it relates to this article, you may find that trying to make swings while in a distracted state results in a struggle to keep your eyes focused on the back of the ball. Getting on the right track on this point is going to start at the driving range. During your practice sessions, work on learning how to use just a single swing thought while hitting your shots. Instead of letting your mind jump around from thought to thought, focus in on one specific thought and don’t let anything else get in your way. This kind of clarity is going to make it easier to watch the ball from start to finish, and you may actually find that you enjoy your rounds more thanks to having a quieter mind.
• Distracted by possibilities. Have you ever wondered why it is so common for golfers to ‘blow it’ late in a round, after they have been playing well all day long? It comes down to expectations, and the possibilities that present themselves as a round unfolds. When you stand on the first tee, you probably have a pretty good idea of what score you will shoot. For a mid-handicap golfer, that might be something in the mid- to high-80s. However, let’s say that same golfer gets out onto the course and is having an incredible day. With only a couple holes to go, the golfer is just two or three over par, and has a chance to set a new personal best. At this point, it becomes very likely that the player is going to become distracted by the possibilities that lay ahead. Instead of staying on track and continuing to make great swings, this player is likely to start guiding the ball, trying to play safe and avoid a big mistake. As part of that pattern, it is possible that the player will begin to look up early, hoping to see that the ball is headed in the right direction. To be honest, learning how to close out rounds and deal with pressure is one of the toughest skills to pick up in golf. The only thing you can do here is to be aware of what is happening, so you can do your best to fight back against unwelcome changes to your game.

The ability to block out distractions is a powerful thing in the game of golf. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you struggle with this task in the short term – it’s quite difficult to learn how to keep the distractions out of your mind. Over time, through experience and by paying attention to what is happening, you should get better and better at keeping your mind on the task at hand -and your eyes on the ball.

How You’ll Benefit

Is it actually that important to keep your eyes on the ball as you swing? And does it really help to watch the back of the ball, specifically? We are going to work toward some answers to those two questions in this section. Once you see how you stand to gain from working on this part of your technique, you’ll be far more likely to stick with it for the long run, both on the practice range and on the course.

• Improved quality of contact. We talked about this in the introduction to the article, but it is worth mentioning again here. Hitting the ball cleanly is one of the most important things you can do as a golfer, since solid contact is going to help you both in terms of hitting the ball the right distance, as well as keeping it on line. Making your way around the course is always going to be a challenge when you aren’t able to place the sweet spot of the club on the back of the ball with any degree of consistency. Watching the back of the ball is certainly not the only thing you need to do in order to improve your ball striking, but it is a great start.
• A steadying influence. The way your eyes and head behave during the golf swing determine so much of your success or failure on the links. When your eyes stay still and focused on the ball during the swing, it’s likely that your head will stay mostly still, as well. From there, the rest of your body should be pretty well under control since your head isn’t moving around unnecessarily as you swing the club. Basically, we are talking about a chain reaction, that can either work for or against you. When your eyes stay still, the chain reaction is a good one, in that everything else stays pretty still. On the other hand, if your eyes move away from the ball, your head will likely move too, as well as your body, and all sorts of problems will result. Don’t let that happen. Train yourself to watch the back of the ball throughout your swing and you’ll almost certainly be happy with the progress you make.
• Consistency boost. If there is a ‘secret’ in golf that will allow you to play at a much higher level than you have previously, it can be summed up in one word – consistency. Okay – so it’s probably not much of a secret that you need to be consistent in order to play good golf, but the value of this trait is overlooked by many players. Too many amateur golfers are focused on dramatically improving their ball flight or distance, when really all they need to do is repeat the same shots over and over again. If you can accurately predict how far your ball is going to fly, and in which direction it is going to fly, you can play great golf. The ability to hit high, towering shots which seem to hang in the air forever is great, but not required. If you can simply find consistency, you’ll be able to reach most – if not all – of your goals. By watching the back of the ball as you swing, it will be possible to pick up a nice boost in the consistency department. Your technique should be more reliable and repeatable, meaning your shots will fly in a similar pattern time after time. Perfection is not an option in this game but working toward improved consistency should be high on ever players priority list.

It's only worth investing time and effort to learn a new skill in golf if that skill is actually going to help you shoot lower scores. That is likely to be the case here, as learning how to watch the back of the ball as you swing can significantly improve your performance, and lower scores may not be far behind.

Try This Quick Drill

For a helpful drill to work on improving your ability to watch the back of the ball, we are going to ask you to stop by the putting green during your next practice session. The only equipment you will need for this drill is a putter and a few golf balls. Find a relatively flat section of the practice green where there is a hole you can use. Set your golf balls down a few feet from the hole and follow the instructions below to work through the drill.

• Take your stance and prepare to hit your first putt just as you would normally. Make sure to aim the putter face accurately at the target and put your body in a square position in order to promote a solid stroke. While this drill is focused on helping you watch the back of the ball, there is no reason you can’t work on improving your other fundamentals at the same time.
• As you get ready to hit the first putt, everything is going to be just as it would be for any other putt. However, you are going to make one key change right before starting your stroke. With the putter head resting behind the ball and your body ready to make the stroke, you are going to close your left eye. Once your left eye is closed, and your right eye is watching the back of the ball, go ahead and hit the putt.
• Hitting putts this way might seem a little awkward or uncomfortable at first, but you should feel like you are improving as the drill goes on. Feel free to hit as many putts as you would like with your left eye closed before returning to normal practice putting.

The idea behind this drill is pretty simple. When you have your left eye closed during the stroke, you aren’t really going to be able to see the hole, or even much of the green to the left of the ball. That being the case, the temptation to look up and away from the ball prematurely will hopefully be reduced. Rather than feeling like you want to steal a peek up at the hole before you strike the ball, you may be able to relax and just let the putter swing.

This is not a drill that applies nicely to the full swing, as it really wouldn’t help to try hitting full shots with your left eye closed. With that said, you should be able to take the basic lesson here and apply it throughout your game. When you go back to hitting shots on the range, remember what you learned during your practice putting session and try to watch the back of the ball more consistently as you hit shots.

Keeping Score

It’s important to monitor your progress anytime you are attempting to make an improvement in your golf game. If you don’t keep track of how you are doing, you’ll never manage to make any meaningful progress. In this last section, we would like to outline a simple method you can use to see how you are faring with regard to keeping your eyes on the back of the ball.

The idea here is to keep score of how you are doing as each round goes by. After each shot is played, assess your performance with regard to where your eyes were looking during the swing. Did you look away from the ball at some point during the swing? Or, were you successful in keeping your eyes on the back of the ball until it was struck? It should only take a moment to decide whether or not you have succeeded on this point.

Since there are so many shots played within a single round of golf, it will be difficult to keep track of your performance in your head. Therefore, we recommend using part of your scorecard for this job. There is no need to write down how you did on every single shot, as that would get rather tedious. Rather, you should only make a mark on your card when you fail. It’s likely that you’ll be able to keep your eyes on the ball for most of your shots, so only take the time to mark your card when you move your eyes prematurely. Then, at the end of the round, you can subtract the number of marks from the total number of shots you played, and you’ll be able to see how you’ve done.

The data that you collect in a single round isn’t going to tell you very much, since you won’t have anything to compare it to. However, if you get into a habit of tracking your performance in this area round after round, you can watch for patterns and hopefully see that you are getting better in this area. There is another benefit as well – by keeping track of this during your rounds, it will be near the top of your mind and you won’t forget to focus on watching the ball as one of your fundamentals. It’s easy to let this key slip from your mind while thinking about so many other things on the course. Simply by adding a line to your scorecard to track how you’re doing, you’ll be reminded of the importance of this fundamental.

Being told that you need to keep your eyes on the ball while swinging is a rite of passage for nearly every golfer. You probably picked up this tip early on in your golf experience, and you may not have thought about it in years. Despite its simplicity, this is a valuable tip, especially when you go a step further and teach yourself to focus specifically on the back of the golf ball. We hope the information in this article has been helpful, and we encourage you to work on this part of your game during upcoming practice sessions. With your eyes trained on the back of the ball, striking clean shots may be a little bit easier. Good luck!

Now if you’ve ever played any ball sports in the past, any coach or anyone that’s ever tried to help you playing a ball sport, even your parents when you were a kid would have undoubtedly told you, keep your eye on the golf ball. And it’s a fundamental principle in most ball sports.

I mean golf is a bit different because that ball doesn’t move, so surely I’ll be able to hit a ball without looking at it. It’s been there for me. It’s been there for 20 years. That ball has never once moved in 20 years of playing the game, it’s always been there. But you try closing your eyes and hitting that and it’s almost impossible. You lose your perception of where the ball is. You lose whether you’ve moved up or down or left or right.

So, even in golf, even though the golf ball doesn’t move, it’s still vitally important that you keep your eyes right down on the golf ball. That doesn’t mean keeping your head down stuck down like this. Still stand up nice and tall, create good posture. It’s actually a bit better as well if you can look at the back of the golf ball because to all intents and purposes, that’s the bit you’re going to hit. So we want you to hit down at the right point at the back of the golf ball.

One of the faults I often see with club golfers is they look at the ball but they look at the top of the ball because that’s the nearest bit to them, that’s the bit you could see. But you don’t want to hit the top of the ball. You want to hit kind of the back side or maybe slightly under the golf ball. You can’t see under the ball so we picked the next best fit, the furthest point on this right hand or back side of the golf ball that I can see.

Now quite a good way of checking this and making sure you can practice this is actually to mark the ball or position something at the right point. So if I just simply take a letter off this, I’m going to take the A off the writing on my golf ball here, position the A right at the back of the golf ball so I can still see it, then set myself up and then go ahead and make my swing staring at the A the whole time until it’s disappeared. That’s the bit of the golf ball I’m trying to hit and I know that way is going to keep my eyes nice and level, nicely down on the golf ball the whole time.

So as I take my setup, I’m staring at the A. I’m going to keep looking at that the whole time, keeps my eyes down low at the back of the golf ball. That’s the bit I’m trying to hit. That will improve my consistency and my stroke.