One of my favorite places to go when I go to a golf tournament is always go straight to the practice ground. I think it’s a great way of watching a little bit more golf. You see more players hitting more shots, you get nice and close to the action and there’s not too many people milling around there either so you really see a lot of quality golf. And the one thing you always see on the practice ground of the major tournaments is this drill. It’s the most fundamentally simple set up drill but it’s something that every golf coach would check with every player when they first watch that swing.

So I’ve got two toe sticks, two alignment sticks laid out in a cross fashion. This first one is pointing parallel to my ball, to target line and my second one is a cross, a T shape exactly opposite that perpendicular to my ball to target line. So this one will help with my foot and body alignment and this one helps indicate ball position. So every time you got to the practice ground this is something you should be checking on. So I set up here, I’ve got a sand wedge here, one of my shortest clubs and I'm going to check that firstly my feet are pointing at my target and I feel comfortable pointing at my target. The next thing is checking my ball position.

Now hitting my shorter irons, I’m going to try and hit everything from the center of my stance. So sound wedge, pitching wedge maybe even nine iron or some dead center in my feet. So I’m just measuring the gaps on either side and I feel like that’s exactly in the middle. And I would go ahead and hit half a dozen shots from that position. The next thing I would change through to one of my mid irons, now here the alignment would be the same so I’d still be pointing in the same direction with this cane but actually my ball position would differ.

I‘d be comfortable playing the ball slightly nearer to my front side here. We might consider the ball position should move about half an inch per club. So as I set up my six iron it’d be two inches further forward that it was with my wedges. So I’d have the ball nicely ahead of center and I go ahead andhit a few shots from that position getting used to the ball not being in the center as it was for the wedges. Moving on again to the biggest club in the bag taking the driver I would now play the ball very, very near to my left in step.

For a right handed golfer we play it right up against the front foot so it sits just on my front inset there, my alignment is still true to the cane pointing at target and I can now go ahead and set up and dispatch a few balls from the front of my stance there. It can often feel quite strange for a golfer particularly if you’re not used to moving your ball position. It can feel strange having the ball so far off center but trust me that’s where you need it. You need to be able to strike down with the steep angle on attack in your short irons and have the ball nearer to your left side for a shallower angle of attack maybe even a slightly ascending angle of attack for your longer clubs and your driver.

So you play the ball much nearer to the center, sorry much nearer to the front of your stance for your driver and much nearer to the center of your stance for your short irons. Copy the professionals, use this T shaped practice set up station every time you go to the driving range and your golf will improve