Correct Ball Position With A Golf Driver (Video) - Lesson 9 by PGA Pro Pete Styles
Correct Ball Position With A Golf Driver (Video) - Lesson 9 by PGA Pro Pete Styles

So now if we’re going to start to establish the correct ball position for all the clubs in the bag, it’s important we try and start with one end. So let’s go ahead and start by looking at the driver. Now there’s one little practice aid that might help you when you’re talking about ball position and certainly help you when you’re trying to be consistent in your practice with ball position and that would be to get a spare club or actually just use an alignment cane.

So I’ve got my alignment cane here. So I’m going to try and set it up opposite my golf ball pointing pretty much towards the camera and therefore it makes it little easy for you to identify where my ball position is now with different clubs. So as I set the golf ball hitting down this line here, I can establish my correct ball position. It’s going to be just inside my left foot with my driver. Now most of the time when I encourage golfers to get the ball into this position, it feels strange. They probably spend majority of their time having the ball narrowed to the middle of their stance, some golfers even at the back of their stance. So having the ball this far forward can actually feel a little bit weird. It almost feels like you want to turn to look at it and that can create other issues within your golf swing as well. But try to start with setting the club behind the ball, keeping the shaft pretty much straight up, not too far back, not too far forward with driver. And then, just shuffling to your right so the ball sits in towards your left instead for the right handed golfer. Some golfers establish a way of getting the ball in that position by actually keeping their feet dead together right opposite the golf ball and then only stepping back with their right foot. It creates the same feeling, it has the ball nicely ahead of center. So from that position, that would be my standard driver position. Now as we talked about previously, moving the ball position around within the stance can create a number of different ball flights. You might find having the ball more forwards, hits the ball slightly higher. Having the ball more back, hits the ball slightly lower. But we could also consider how the ball being more forward, more backwards can change the direction of the shot. Particularly, if you’re fading the golf ball too much, you may have the ball too far forwards in your stance. For that, I’m just going to show you that from a different perspective down the line here. So setting up, I want to hit down my white cane this time. Now if I have the ball too far forward in my stance, you might understand that the club would’ve squared up and now it’s going to start sliding to the left as it comes back towards the inside of my arc. So I’m inside to square, to inside. If the ball is hit on the path going inside on the face is still square to target. As a champ that ball is going to slide and fade too much because the path is more left down the face. Likewise the opposite is true. But if the ball is too far back in my stance and I made my normal swing, I’m going to be attacking too much from the inside. The club hasn’t had the chance to square up yet, it’s coming from the inside. The ball is going to get pushed out to the right hand side. Now if the face is aiming straight or at the point of impact, the face is aiming square and the swing path is to the right, that ball is actually going to hook too much. It’s going to draw from that right side, down the left side too aggressively. So moving the ball position around in the stance doesn’t just change the height but it can also change the direction too much draw, too much fade. So investigate if you’ve got an issue with too much shape or too much height, not enough height moving that ball position can have a big correlation to your overall ball flight. 2016-04-19

So now if we’re going to start to establish the correct ball position for all the clubs in the bag, it’s important we try and start with one end. So let’s go ahead and start by looking at the driver. Now there’s one little practice aid that might help you when you’re talking about ball position and certainly help you when you’re trying to be consistent in your practice with ball position and that would be to get a spare club or actually just use an alignment cane.

So I’ve got my alignment cane here. So I’m going to try and set it up opposite my golf ball pointing pretty much towards the camera and therefore it makes it little easy for you to identify where my ball position is now with different clubs. So as I set the golf ball hitting down this line here, I can establish my correct ball position. It’s going to be just inside my left foot with my driver. Now most of the time when I encourage golfers to get the ball into this position, it feels strange.

They probably spend majority of their time having the ball narrowed to the middle of their stance, some golfers even at the back of their stance. So having the ball this far forward can actually feel a little bit weird. It almost feels like you want to turn to look at it and that can create other issues within your golf swing as well. But try to start with setting the club behind the ball, keeping the shaft pretty much straight up, not too far back, not too far forward with driver. And then, just shuffling to your right so the ball sits in towards your left instead for the right handed golfer.

Some golfers establish a way of getting the ball in that position by actually keeping their feet dead together right opposite the golf ball and then only stepping back with their right foot. It creates the same feeling, it has the ball nicely ahead of center. So from that position, that would be my standard driver position. Now as we talked about previously, moving the ball position around within the stance can create a number of different ball flights. You might find having the ball more forwards, hits the ball slightly higher. Having the ball more back, hits the ball slightly lower.

But we could also consider how the ball being more forward, more backwards can change the direction of the shot. Particularly, if you’re fading the golf ball too much, you may have the ball too far forwards in your stance. For that, I’m just going to show you that from a different perspective down the line here. So setting up, I want to hit down my white cane this time. Now if I have the ball too far forward in my stance, you might understand that the club would’ve squared up and now it’s going to start sliding to the left as it comes back towards the inside of my arc. So I’m inside to square, to inside.

If the ball is hit on the path going inside on the face is still square to target. As a champ that ball is going to slide and fade too much because the path is more left down the face. Likewise the opposite is true. But if the ball is too far back in my stance and I made my normal swing, I’m going to be attacking too much from the inside. The club hasn’t had the chance to square up yet, it’s coming from the inside. The ball is going to get pushed out to the right hand side. Now if the face is aiming straight or at the point of impact, the face is aiming square and the swing path is to the right, that ball is actually going to hook too much. It’s going to draw from that right side, down the left side too aggressively.

So moving the ball position around in the stance doesn’t just change the height but it can also change the direction too much draw, too much fade.

So investigate if you’ve got an issue with too much shape or too much height, not enough height moving that ball position can have a big correlation to your overall ball flight.