Golf Tips for Improving Golfers – Ball Position Part 2

In my last article I described where you should place the ball in your stance. Many people got in touch with me to explain further where the ball should be in terms of being forward or back in your stance, and on reading the article again, I notice I spent more time on distance from your body as that’s the area I had most problems with.

However, it seems most of you who wrote to me have more problems with the other type of positioning. As I always say – there are many different types of golfers, and this just proves it! I read back through my original notes and have put together this Part 2.

To quickly recap the first part, you should place the ball away from you based on the club you’ve chosen for the shot at hand. With the driver having the longest club shaft, this means the ball will be furthest from you for the driver, and nearest to you for the shorter clubs.

What I learned to do in terms of positioning along the line of the swing, then, was position the ball at different points depending on the club. So not only are we placing the ball at different distances from ourselves dependent on the club selected, we’re also positioning it at different positions along the swing plane, also based on the club we’ve chosen.

Essentially, the longer the shaft of the club, the further forward along the line of the swing the ball should be. Starting with the driver, then, we place it up towards where our front foot would intersect with the line of the swing – that being the left foot for righthanders like me.

Because the driver requires a big looping swing (with it having the longest shaft of any club), we don’t want to hit the ball too early. The ball needs to be positioned forward in the stance, so the club head hits it on the up, rather than on the way down in the swing.

Amateur golfers will only use the driver for the vast majority of the time on a tee shot. The combined effect of placing the ball forward in the swing, and having a high tee which is also recommended for a driver, will see us hitting the ball up from the tee, thus sending it further.

With the other clubs not requiring as big a swing, and also not needing us to hit the ball quite so much on the up, we position the ball further back down the line of the swing, with the shortest clubs having their best ball position in line with your eyes, in the middle of your stance.

Mike Jackson runs an online golf equipment store, where you can buy golf clubs, golf balls, Christmas golf gifts, golf bags etc.