The Proper Golf Stance

Often times (especially with high handicap) with golfers, right out of the gate I see that they either greatly diminish, or completely eliminate their chances of producing a good golf shot because all they think about is the mechanics of their swing.

Golf swing mechanics are very important and we’ll discuss those in upcoming issues, but in order to consistently hit good shots you have to pay mind to your golf grip (which we covered in the last issue), your golf stance and your alignment (which is this article’s topic).

To emphasize the importance of coming to understand how to properly align yourself, think of it this way; let’s say you have really nice swing mechanics, swing path, proper weight shift, and all the other elements, but you either haven’t learned how (or pay little attention) to properly set up to the target with you golf stance and alignment.

What would happen?

I think you can imagine (and I actually see this quite often with even mid to lower handicap golfers); you would put your usual decent to good swing on the golf ball only to see the ball head in a rather unpleasant direction… good swing – - poor stance and alignment – - undesirable result.

You just can’t get around it can you? All of these darn parts that are immutably linked together with interdependencies that must come together in order to produce the desired result – - a good looking golf shot.

You see… good swing with poor alignment – - undesirable results … or good grip, good setup, and good alignment with poor golf swing mechanics – - undesirable results.

Hey, not to be discouraged it can be done! And you can too.

Let’s continue building the foundation on which you will place your swing, and take a look at your proper golf stance.

You see… often is the case that a great many swing faults occur as your body tries to compensate for an initial bad setup. Improper stance and setup will cause you to attempt to make adjustments during your swing itself… and I think we all know how well that usually works don’t we?

Getting into the habit of properly aligning your feet, hips, and shoulders to the ball and intended target each and every time is an absolute must. This has to be part of your pre-shot routine and before you pull the trigger on your golf shot.

Quite simply, your golf stance should set up the rest of your body to be square to the golf ball and parallel to your target line. Take a quick look at my stance and setup to the right. A good practice drill for this is to lay two clubs down (about two feet apart) that point directly down your target line with your golf ball in the middle. Then set up to the closest club by putting the toes of your feet just about up to the shaft of the nearest club. Once you do this it’s extremely important that your hips and shoulders follow suit by being square to the golf ball and parallel to the target line (or in this case the two clubs on the ground).

Do this drill every time you are on the practice range. It’s not enough just to take a look at your setup a couple of times and say “ok that makes sense now let’s go play.” You have to get to the point where you completely trust in your setup and you know when you step over your golf shot that you are setup at the target.

Golf courses offer all kinds of different visual perceptions that can cause you to misalign your golf stance and setup. This is why it is critical that you work on and understand how to properly set yourself toward your target even though the angles, twists, and turns of the golf course may be visually tempting you to do otherwise.

The positioning of the golf ball within your stance is very important as just a couple of inches one way or the other can have a dramatic effect. As a baseline, start with the ball positioned just a couple of inches inside of your left heel and we want to keep that positioning until you can consistently make good consistent contact.

Down the road there are variations of ball positioning for different shots, but that’s for another article. We want to get you on a good baseline from which to initiate your set up and golf swing.

When you first begin taking a serious look at your golf stance and overall alignment it is a good idea to have someone (such as your teaching professional) stand behind you and give you feedback on your alignment. If you have been playing for a while and developed bad alignment habits, proper alignment is going to feel pretty odd and be an adjustment to get yourself used to. But, don’t allow yourself to creep back to your old poor alignment even though initially it may ‘feel’ more comfortable, but remember, we want to build a solid foundation here; not one of straw.

I wanted to get you bit more on the alignment part of your golf game, but I’m afraid I’ve rambled on a bit and ran out of time. I’ll tell you what… I’ll get my thoughts together a bit better here and send you off a bit more help on improving your alignment in a few days. It’s just too important to skip by and I want to make sure your with me on this.