During the golf swing, your head has an important job to do.
If you can manage to keep your head in the right position, you’ll make the task of striking solid shots quite a bit easier. But what does it mean to have your head in the right position? Where should your head be when the club slams into the back of the ball at the bottom of the swing? We are going to dive into those questions in this article.
The tricky part of this conversation is the fact that you’ll want to position your head in a slightly different position based on the club you have in your hands. For example, the position of your head (relative to the ball) is going to be different with the driver as compared to a wedge. That might sound complicated and a bit confusing now, but as you’ll see later in this article, it’s not as bad as it sounds. You don’t have to completely remake your swing with each club, or anything like that. In fact, by simply creating a setup position that encourages you to find the right positions, you will be well on your way to success.
Ideally, you won’t need to think about the position of your head while playing shots out on the course. This is the kind of work that should be done in advance during your driving range sessions. By establishing solid technique in practice, you can just focus on your targets while on the course, letting the mechanics of your swing take place naturally based on your preparation.
All of the content below is based on a right-handed golfer. If you happen to play left-handed, please take a moment to reverse the directions as necessary.
Understanding the Concept
We’d like to start by taking a step back and thinking about the big picture concept behind the importance of your head position. Few amateur golfers take time to think about what is really going on in the swing, preferring instead to just find a few tips and hope for the best. If you work to educate yourself on how the swing works and the various keys that go into making a good golf swing, you’ll find that it’s much easier to correct your technique when something goes wrong.
Generally speaking, the position of your head is an excellent predictor of the position of the bottom of your swing arc. Put another way, your swing is likely to bottom out directly below the position of your head during the downswing. The golf swing is an arc – it moves down toward the ground and then up and away again. One of the key tasks you have as a golfer is to place the bottom of that arc in the right spot, based on the club you are holding and the type of shot you are trying to hit. Later in the article, we’ll discuss how you can decide where your club should bottom out on each individual swing.
So, the position of your head is going to largely determine the position of the bottom of your swing. That’s great to know, but it doesn’t really help you much unless you take action. After all, trying to force your head into the right position at the very last moment in order to strike a clean shot is not a winning formula. You’ll need to already have your head in the correct position when the downswing begins if you hope to succeed.
How does your head wind up in the right spot swing after swing? Let’s take a look at a few keys.
- Build a great stance. This is where it all starts. If you are going to put your head in the right position to strike the ball cleanly at impact, you need to start by having your head in the right position at address. That might sound like an obvious point, but it’s common for golfers to ignore the important role that the stance plays in the golf swing. It’s not all that much fun to work on improving your stance, so many players just skip it all together in favor of working on other things. Unfortunately, that is a costly mistake and one which is likely to leave you stuck at your current level for the foreseeable future. If you want to play better golf, placing your body in an improved address position is a big step. Not only is this important in terms of your head position, but also in terms of the way your entire body works in the swing. There will be some trial and error involved in building your stance, so don’t get discouraged if it takes some time before you find a position that seems to lead to great outcomes.
- Focus on balance. There is a close connection between the position of your head and the balance of your golf swing. If you are well balanced, there is a good chance that you’ll have your head in a nice position as the swing develops. Should you find that your balance is getting away from you, however, there is no telling where your head may end up. During practice sessions, be sure to place an emphasis on balance and keeping your body under control. Remember, golf is a game that is about control first and foremost. It’s great to hit powerful shots, but those shots are only going to be useful if you know where the ball is going. Always consider balance to be one of the fundamental building blocks of your game. With good balance, proper head position – and many other positive things – will usually follow naturally.
- Control your eyes. The connection between the movement of your head and the movement of your eyes should be obvious. If your eyes move dramatically during the golf swing, it’s almost inevitable that your head will do the same. The most common mistake here is, of course, looking up early at the target. Some golfers just can’t manage to keep their eyes down on the ball long enough to allow their head to stay still through impact. It’s a tricky thing, to be sure, but it’s something that you need to get over if you are going to reach your goals in this game. During practice, pay specific attention to the way your eyes work as you hit shots. If you notice that your eyes have a tendency to leave the ball before you’ve actually made contact, work on breaking that habit as soon as possible. The urge to look up early will be even stronger on the course than it is on the range, so make sure you have this point taken care of in practice before you expect to see improvement during your rounds.
Quite simply, the position of your head during the golf swing is extremely important. Your club is almost sure to bottom out directly below your head, so work to place your head in the right spot time after time.
Meeting the Needs of Each Club
By now, we’ve established that in order to hit good shots, you want to have your head directly over the spot where you would like your swing to bottom out. However, that spot is not going to be the same for every club in your bag, so it’ll be necessary to customize your approach to each shot based on the club you are holding.
Does that mean you are going to need to have 14 different stances? No – not really. You should be able to group your clubs and use the same basic stance within those groups. For example, you can setup to your driver and fairway woods with the same stance across the board, other than a slight adjustment to your ball position. Likewise, all of your wedges can be played out of the same stance, and you don’t even need to change your ball position as you switch between clubs in that group.
When trying to decide where to stand relative to the ball, as well as how to stand, you need to think first about whether you are trying to hit up or down through impact. When playing a driver off of a tee, you should be hitting up just slightly through the hitting area. The same goes for when you are hitting a fairway wood off the tee, and maybe even a long iron (although that last one is debatable). On the other hand, if you are hitting a wedge from the fairway, or any kind of iron shot from the fairway, for that matter, you’ll want to be hitting down into the turf. It is incredibly important that you understand the distinction between hitting down and hitting up, so you can place your head in the right spot for each kind of shot.
Let’s focus for a minute on the driver, since it is the club that gets most of the attention in terms of hitting up. If you are going to hit up on your driver, the bottom of your swing arc needs to take place before you reach the ball. Even if you have never thought about your swing this way previously, it makes sense – the club must bottom out in order to be heading back up by the moment of impact. If the bottom of your swing arc is past the ball, you are going to be hitting down by definition.
Now, let’s move back to what we have been talking about with regard to head position in order to bring everything together. If you need to your swing to bottom out before you reach the ball, and if your swing is going to bottom out under the location of your head, that means your head needs to be behind the ball in order to hit up on your driver. By keeping your head at least slightly behind the ball, it is almost automatic that you’ll be able to hit up nicely through impact.
To flip that around to the other end of the spectrum in your golf bag, you need to have your head just slightly in front of the ball at impact in order to hit down on your wedges. Again, this all comes back to finding the bottom of your swing arc. With your head in front of the ball, your swing will bottom out after it reaches the ball, meaning you will be hitting down nicely. It is important to note that you don’t want to go too far with this point. Yes, hitting down on your wedges (and other irons) is a good thing, but placing your head too far in front of the ball will lead to a steep downswing and an exceptionally deep divot.
The final note we would like to make in this section is to say that you will want to set up with your head exactly where you want it to be at impact. So, when playing a driver from the tee, set up with your body in a position that leaves your head just a bit behind the ball. As long as your swing develops properly, your head should be in that same place when impact rolls around. Just the same, you can set up with your head a little in front of the ball when preparing to hit a wedge shot. With solid fundamentals, you can again keep your head still, and you should have no trouble hitting down nicely.
Avoiding Common Errors
When reading these instructions, it all sounds pretty easy. Set up with your head in a good spot based on the club you are hitting, keep your head steady during the swing, and look forward to good results. It can be easy when you execute properly, but there are also plenty of chances for things to go wrong. There are some common mistakes which relate to head position that are seen in the amateur game, and we are going to go over those mistakes in the points below.
- Sliding away from the target in the takeaway. This is almost certainly the biggest mistake to be seen with regard to head position. At address, you may be in a good spot, and prepare to make a solid swing. However, if you let your head – and the rest of your body, by extension – slide away from the target in the backswing, plenty of problems are sure to come your way. The golf swing is supposed to be a rotational action, and too much lateral movement is inevitably going to mean trouble. At the very beginning of the swing, make a focused effort to turn your shoulders away from the target, rather than sliding laterally to your right. You’ll know if you are sliding to the right because more and more of your body weight will begin to stack up on your right leg. So, not only will you be pulling your head out of position, but you’ll also be ruining the balance that you had established at address. If you can learn to start your swing with a turn instead of a slide, you are going to be on the path to much better golf.
- Turning too far. If you are making this mistake in your golf swing currently, know that you aren’t alone. In a quest to find as much distance as possible, you may force yourself to make a huge backswing turn. While trying to turn as far back as you can, it’s possible that your weight will begin to shift toward the target. That means your upper body will be leaning to the left while your backswing is still carrying on. This is a problem for a couple of reasons. First, again, you’ll be harming your balance when you make this mistake. Also, your head is going to move to the left along with your upper body, meaning it will now be out of position. Eventually, most golfers come to realize that a long backswing actually does more harm than good. Sure, you want to make a full turn to develop speed, but forcing yourself to go extremely far back is a recipe for trouble.
- Letting your head drop in the downswing. This is an error that is probably not as common as the first two, but it still deserves attention. The issue is this – if you crouch down into your downswing as a way of building power, your head will drop, and you will almost certainly hit the shot fat. Even if you don’t move laterally, the action of moving your head closer to the ground will bring everything closer to the turf – including the club. It will be almost impossible to reach the ball before you hit the ground, and an ugly shot is the likely result. Do your best to maintain a level height throughout your swing so the club can move through the hitting area consistently time after time.
Getting the address position right is a big part of having your head in the right position at impact. That is not the end of the battle, however, as we have proven with this list of common errors. Take some time during practice to make sure that none of these three mistakes are present in your game. And, if one or more of these issues is giving you trouble, work to correct the problem immediately.
Head Position in the Short Game
Let’s wrap up this article by talking about how your head should be positioned when playing short game shots. The short game doesn’t include the same dynamics as the long game, so you might be tempted to think that you can slack off on some of the details. That is not true. It’s important to be precise with your technique in the short game, as only precise shots are actually going to end up in the bottom of the cup.
When putting, you can position your head directly over the ball, or just slightly behind the ball. You don’t want to hit down significantly on your putts, so avoid making the mistake of placing your head to the left of the ball at impact. Some golfers like to hit their putts when the putter has reached the bottom of its arc, while others would prefer making contact on the upswing. If you are a player who wants to hit up on the ball while putting, make sure to setup with your head just a bit to the right of the ball at address.
For chip shots, things get a little more complicated. The precise positioning of your head for a chip shot will depend on what type of chip shot you wish to hit. If you are going to hit down on the ball in the hopes of producing some spin, place your head to the left of the ball at address. Want to hit a bump-and-run shot where the ball bounces and rolls out across the green? Try placing your head directly over the ball. Lastly, if you are trying to hit a high lob or flop shot, place your head just slightly behind the ball in an effort to hit up through impact. It should be noted that this is an extremely difficult shot to play, and it is one that should only be attempted after you have built solid skills in the rest of the short game. Also, you need to have the right lie to play such a shot, as hitting up through impact when the ball is resting on a tight fairway lie is not really an option.
We’ve covered a lot of ground in this article, and hopefully you now have a clear picture of what you are trying to do with your head during the golf swing. If you can consistently place your head in a good spot over the ball when impact arrives, your game will likely move in the right direction. Good luck!
Where should my head be at impact in relation to the golf ball with different golf clubs? Now the head position in the golf swing is very, very important because it often denotes where your swinging center will be. Now the swing center is somewhere kind of in the middle of the chest around the sternum but it’s very hard to get the sternum moving in a different direction than the head. So your head position doesn’t often relate to the center of your swing. Now that’s important because it kind of denotes and it helps to kind of, kind of make sure that the angle of attack in the swing arc into the ball is correct.
Now the easiest way to summarize where the head position should be in relation to the ball with each club, is exactly the same place as you’ve set it at address. Now I’ve got here first of all a sand wedge and I’m going to hit a little bit of a chip shot and a little bit of pit shot here, the ball just in the middle of my stance, the weight slightly and my head, pretty much banged over the ball. If you can keep the head in this position through out the swing, the swing arc will be at the bottom I’ll just tap the ball a lot easier and it’s going to be able to hit a lot easier consistent golf shots. So keeping the head nice and steady in relation to the ball as it is at address.
Now as I move on to an iron, I just got a seven iron here, the ball just moves slightly forward of center, my stance is a little bit wider and you can see here my head is just gone slightly behind the ball by only an inch or two, but when I’m swinging again, I want to try and keep my head in exactly the same position. And then, that’s going to help achieve the correct impact factors that I want. Now as I move on to the drivers and the woods, this ball is going to go towards the front of my stance, my swing center is going to move behind, and you can see that now my head is quite a long way back from the ball but yes again, I just want to be keeping the same position.
So, I don’t want to be moving it forwards, I don’t want to be drifting it back, I just want to be keeping it in the same position throughout the swing. And if I can keep it in the same position until after impact, so after you hit the ball, you can rise up and you can go pretty much wherever you want but make sure that your head and your body is set up in the correct position as addressed then just try and maintain that head position throughout the swing and that’s the best way to hit the most consistent shots.