So, what are the causes of the Shank shot, sometimes it can be quite individual, but there are two main areas that you want to be looking at if you are hitting it out of the heel of the golf club. Now the first reason somehow may be shanking it is when the angle of attack in the swing path becomes a little bit too steep.

So getting setup over the ball and doing the down swing that club comes in an over the top manner to swing over the top is moving from out to that slices swing, because the angle of attack is steep because the club is moving down in this direction the heel of the club often contacts the ball first and that’s why you see firing off to the right hand side. This is often the more difficult one to get out of in many respects because this is a move that lot of golfers make and if they grew that out feeling and they are getting steep finding the centre of that club face can be very, very difficult.

The rare reason why you will be shanking it and it is the pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum is when you are coming too much from the inside and you are pushing your hands too much out towards the ball. So this movement will see the club travel from the inside moving to the out by the club face behind the heel as the heel is shoved towards the ball. Obviously not quite that extreme but generally that’s what you will see happen, but from both those positions the heel of the golf club will make contact with the ball first. Anyway it is a [good] position if it is something that players are getting very, very used to.

It is something which is very hard to break out of. So the first thing to do if you want to stop your shank shot is to really determine which one of the swing path and which one of these angles of attack is your problem. You can do that via video, you can do it via looking at a mirror while you are swinging, but identifying is the first stage before we move on to actually trying to fix what is going on with that shank.