When we’re setting up to the golf ball it’s really important that we focus on three key areas initially when we set up to the ball, but we also have an understanding of how they might vary slightly when we use different clubs. So, the club I’ve got initially here is a six iron and this is how I’m going to set up to the ball with this club. So, facing onto the camera here, as I take my address position I want to check that my stance is the correct width. I don’t want to be too narrow, but likewise I don’t want to be too wide. The first thing I would consider here is try and stand with the instep of your feet the same width as your shoulders.

So, you take the outside measurement of your shoulders and you make that the inside measurement of your feet, quite an easy way to do that to measure that using a golf club. So, you take one side of the club to the other side and pinch it and then drop that down and that should form the inside position of your feet. That’s a great way of checking how wide apart you should be. Now generally speaking people with wider shoulders are going to need a bigger platform to make their swing and likewise people with narrow shoulders can make a narrow width stance to keep their swinging control.

So, that works really well depending on whether you’re wide shoulder, narrow shoulder it should work fine. The next consideration would be how far away from the golf ball do you need to stand? So, for those I’m just going to move side up, take a narrow dress position here, I would feel on a correct distance away from the golf ball when the club lowers down and lands just above my left knee cap that gives me a good distance away from the golf ball. Could also feel it from here my right hand can swing back and through inside this space and also my hands and arms are naturally sitting out in front of me. So, if I bring the club to here tilt forwards at my hips the club will sit in that position.

If I was too far back away from the ball and I bent forwards to here I then feel like I have to reach back out again. So, try and get yourself in that nice comfortable position. Now one of the considerations might be that the different lengths of golf club would change the distance you stand away from the golf ball. So, if I take a wedge I’m going to want to feel a little bit nearer to the ball so I measure my distance, it lands the same position above my knee. If I took a six iron I’d now feel like I was too close.

This club long is too high for my liking; I’m going to feel a bit squashed in with this club. So, that’s going to be a good distance of or a good way of checking my distance away from the golf ball. One last check point I could look for here is going to be my ball position. I’m simply going to take a cane here club right opposite the golf ball so the cane and the club ran between my feet, and I can see then how I would change my ball position for different clubs. Centre of my stance is going to be a great position for my short times and my wedges, gradually moving forwards as I go through my longer irons and positioning right up against my left side here for three wood and dry wood position.

And it’s a rough alteration of around about half an inch per club throughout your set. It isn’t all the irons all the woods, I’d rather you have a gradual sliding scale centered for the wedges half an inch as we go through the bag 8-7-6-5-4 across to the driver, drive up against that left instep position. So if you can check the width of stance, the distance away from the golf ball and the ball position that’s three great check points for a good set up.