The position of the golf ball actually changes depending on the club you’re using. The reason for this is that we want to slightly change the impact position and the launch conditions so that we get the best ball flight possible for the club in hand.
- Take your correct width of stance and place a club directly in the center, at right angles to the ball-to-target line.
- This central position is the ideal position for the shortest clubs in your bag – lob wedge, sand wedge, gap wedge, pitching wedge etc. It helps us to hit down on the ball creating more backspin.
- For each longer club, the ball position should move roughly half an inch towards your front foot (left foot for right-handed golfers). So a 7 iron for example, would be played a couple of inches off center, towards your front foot.
- The longest club in the bag, the driver, should be played just inside the front foot or opposite the left big toe (again for the right-handed golfer). This allows us to sweep the ball away rather than hitting down on it.
- The golf ball position should also move closer and further away from the body with each club – because each club is a different length.
The diagram doesn’t show how the open-close stance orientation should change with each club. With the driver the ball is positioned where the driver is rising from the bottom of the swing. That means it is also past the point where it is farthest from the body and is starting to move left (for a right hander). To compensate for that the stance should be closed. At the other extreme, on short irons the clubhead is still travelling down at impact. It hasn’t reached the bottom of the swing arc. For that reason it hasn’t reached the point where it is farthest from the body either. It is still travelling away from the body – from the inside. For that reason the stance should be open. To summarize, the driver swing is essentially a pull and a short iron swing is essentially a push with other club swings adjusted as appropriate. The diagram doesn’t show that.