When we first play golf, there are a lot of things going on around us. What clubs to use. What clothes to wear on the course. How to control the club. Now it’s time for another one – a golfer needs good putting. Why? What does how we stand matter? The answer is that it is very important because if it is not done correctly, we will not have a chance to send a file golf ball in the direction we want.
Better golf stance = better performance
Think of standing over the ball as a golfer’s performance area and it’s easy to understand. Look at the actor as he gets on stage. Look at the dancer stepping on the floor. What’s the first thing we notice before they start their show? their position. One of the first things an actor learns about their craft is how to stand. Back straight, shoulders up, head up. This gives them the prestige to make their voices loud and clear to the audience. They don’t slack off or back down. And why are they taught this early? Even by the time they become seasoned professionals it has become second nature and this is exactly the same for golf.
Every professional golfer has their own unique swing, but what do they all have in common? When they are standing over the ball, they are all in correct golf stance.
Keys to good posture:
Tired of hitting bad shots? As we all know, there are many ways to hit a bad golf swing! We can hit the ball a short distance, we can make it low and fast or we can make it high and not too far. The common denominator among these three basic errors is poor communication. The likelihood is that we’ll make the mistake before we start swinging our back, which means we haven’t given ourselves any chance to land a good shot. Why? Because we don’t have the right posture.
It only takes a few seconds, but making sure you have the correct golf putting is vital. If it’s good enough for the multi-million dollar gaming pro, it’s good enough – and necessary – for us.
Three steps to a good posture:
1) Take club And hold it in front of us. Make sure our hands are above the waistline and keep our elbows bent. We don’t want our arms to be stiff and rigid. Stand up straight with our chest lifted and our shoulders back. Check that our club face is square. If we keep it too open or too closed at this point, we’re setting ourselves up for a slide or a hook—exactly what we don’t want.
2) Now we need to tilt our body forward, but only at the hips. The lower back and spine should remain straight, not rounded. We also need to feel like we’re pushing the bottom out. This allows us to keep our weight down and not think that we will lose our balance when we swing the club.
3) The final step involves lowering the club to touch the ground behind the ball. At this point, we need to gently bend our knees. Correct posture requires the knees to be slightly bent as this gives us the right mix of flexibility and balance. The danger is not bending our knees too much. We’re getting ready to hit the golf ball, don’t do some forgetful dancing!
Posture and position of the ball:
Another key component to achieving good positioning is making sure the ball is in the correct position in our stance, when we are handling the ball.
For irons, we generally want the ball in the middle of our putt. Let’s start with our feet together. Put the ball in line with the point where our feet meet. We now need to take an even step with our left and right foot to be roughly in line with our shoulders – our stance in golf parlance should be shoulder width apart. If we are in the right position, we should be able to draw an imaginary T on the ground, with the ball and our feet covering the three end points.
For the driver, the stance should be a little different because we want the ball towards our front foot in the heading position. This is because the ball is filled upwards and the driver has a tight angle of loft and we want to catch the ball at the point of impact (and send it high and away) when our swing is on the way to the ball.
To achieve this, start again with our feet together and bring the ball in line with the point where our feet come together. But this time, we need to take a small step with our front foot (which is closer to the hole) and a bigger step with our back foot. Again, we want to create the position where our stance is approximately shoulder-width apart.
Situations to avoid:
Extremely stiff: Swinging the golf club requires movement and fluidity in our bodies. Therefore, we must avoid standing too straight and becoming rigid because this is not the correct posture. This creates tension and will not allow us to swing properly. Remember, Frankenstein does not play golf!
Too Slope: Now we quickly learned that we must keep our head above the ball at the point of impact. But the danger is in going so far the other way and sticking our head so far over the ball that we stoop. That wouldn’t allow us the room to fully swing and everything would get very tight.
Practice our stance:
For anyone new to golf, shall we tell them a little secret? Things don’t happen by magic. If we see Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy doing something that looks “magical” on the golf course, it is not magic per se, but hard work and practice.
Golf is the game of the three rupees – repeat, repeat, repeat. It’s about doing something so often that it becomes second nature. Once we find the right position for our body and our swing, muscle memory will kick in and anything that deviates even a little bit from this ‘norm’ will look weird. We want our position and address to be grounded, balanced and flexible.
The best thing about our situation and situation is that we can practice these things away from the golf course. If we have a quiet five or ten minutes at home, get a club and find enough space to be able to keep the club out before we put it down. If necessary, place marker lines on the ground to mark where to place our feet and club, and then perform the exercises to work on improving our golf putting. Having it in our mind at home will give us more success hitting great putts when we hit the track.
About the author
Adam Lanegan – Golf Writer
Adam is a freelance news and sports journalist who has written for the BBC, The Sunday Post, The Eye, The Times, The Telegraph and more. He has been writing about golf for nearly two decades and has covered 13 Open Championships and two Ryder Cups. Not only does Adam cover golf, he has been playing golf for as long as he can. He was a member of Northenden Golf Club for about 25 years until his children arrived and his last official handicap was 11, although on any given day his form fluctuates between eight and 18.