There are number of drills that you can use if you are shanking the golf ball to try and help stop this horrible shot and one of them very simply is the bottle drill. It doesn’t particularly matter which bottle that you have.
I have Scottish spring water which could have, might not be, but generally just need something of this shape. What are you going to do? Just place the ball down on the fairway, it is a fairway range and this will take a little bit more fating around but if you are on also if it is a whether mat but this is a little easy to setup by taking a bottle and you are placing it either stood up or lengthways just to the side of the ball like this. You don’t want to be leaving a massive amount of room; you only really want to see the toe of the club just on the inside of the bottle. Now if you were to hit a pretty good shot you can still contact this bottle and as I hit this shot I might actually hit it coming through, but the whole point of this is to try and miss it as much as you can.
Try and get this club returning to the ball on the inside of that bottle. If you swing through and if you hit the bottle first then the chances are that the club is moving too far to the outside and you are going to be contacting that heel first. Very simple drill to setup not quite a simple drill to use, I have said this exceptionally close on the hitting well to miss it but here we go. So I need to miss the bottle, if I miss the bottle I won’t hit the heel. Now I am oddly surprised with myself, it is a little bit too easy might accept as I move the club away from that bottle but that’s the key. I towed my bottle, my brain said to my body miss the bottle.
The club moved inwards it missed the bottle and therefore did not present the shank of the club to the ball. Very simple drill to use and it will give you instant feedback. So if you are struggling with that shank give this a go and you never know, it might solve it overnight.