The main point of tracking the quality of your ball striking is to actually improve your play over time. If you collect this information and do nothing with it, you will have wasted your time. So, once you have figured out what is happening with your ball striking, you’ll want to take that information and find a way to use it to work toward better performance.

There are three basic outcomes possible for each swing, at least in terms of the quality of the strike. You can hit the ball on the sweet spot, you can hit the ball near the toe, or you can hit it near the heel. Of course, if the ball is coming off the sweet spot, no adjustments will be necessary. That is the goal, so if you are achieving it currently, just keeping doing what you are doing. If, however, you are in a pattern of hitting either the toe or the heel, consider the techniques below.

• Making contact toward the toe. There are a variety of swing issues which can cause you to make contact out toward the toe of the club. However, the most common issue is simply coming out of the shot on the way through the ball. In many cases, it comes down to nothing more than pulling your head up out of the shot early. As the club swings down, you need to keep your eyes and head down on the ball in order to make clean contact. If you look up early to see where the shot is going to go, it is likely that your entire upper body is going to be pulled out of the swing. That will move you back from the ball slightly, and impact is probably going to be made closer to the toe than the sweet spot.
• Making contact toward the heel. For many players, the issue of making contact near the heel of the club comes down to nothing more than space. If you stand too close to the ball at address, you may not have enough room to swing the club through while finding the sweet spot at impact. Your hands will need to move too close to the ball just to get past your body in the downswing, and you will impact the heel as a result. As another possibility, it may be that your lower body is not working correctly in the downswing. Even if you are standing in the right place, you could effectively crowd yourself by failing to rotate your lower body through the shot. Get your legs moving on the way down and you will make room for your hands to come through correctly.

There is a lot of information you can learn about your game while playing on the course – or practicing on the range – as long as you are willing to look. The marks that are left on your golf course throughout the course of a round are an excellent example of a way you can pick up valuable info about your swing. We hope this article has helped you to understand this concept, and we hope it helps you in your mission to play better golf. Good luck!