Ball Placement - Forward vs. Variable?

[PiustheDrGolf]

I hear more and more that ball placement should be middle or little forward for all of irons. But when I learned golf (app. 20 years ago), I was taught that ball placement should be vary. (long iron: forward, mid irons: middle of stance, short irons: back of stance).

If we watch Watson or Nicklaus' swings, they moved weight significantly and used variable ball position depends on clubs. Modern swing seems more like not moving weight too much but rotate and place ball in same position. I assume that placing ball in same position will have more time to get there for short irons so will create natural lag (more power) or more rotation.

My question is...Since each iron has different length, isn't 'Variable ball positions' compensate length and remove variables (movement to compensate different length club to hit a ball at same place)?

I do place a ball at middle or little forward for all my irons . But I don't have strong understanding why I am doing that way. Only reason that I can think is to use bounce with short irons to be creative for shotmaking, at least for me.

[MJP]

Driver, heel of front foot
long irons and woods, 3 inch to the right of front heel
and middle and short irons 1 inch to the left of middle
wedges middle

i think its preference really. it depends on your angle of attack if you are already steep you probably don't need it back in your stance.

[kennay92]

ill usually do driver and woods just off of front heel, then all irons under the logo on my shirt, then wedges a little behind that (around middle)

[tshapiro]

With all due respect, you're wrong about Nicklaus. He had his ball off the left heal for all shots. Typically, guys who swing left-sided, like Nicklaus and Bobby Jones, where the left shoulder is the swing center have the ball forward and in the same position for all clubs. People like Hogan and Nick Faldo who thought about the swing impact with their right hand tend to move the ball back in their stance for shorter clubs to accomidate an active right hand. I'm not saying one way is better than another, just, those are the 2 flavors of ball positioning.

[Zeph]

I've been moving the ball more and more forward lately, it just feels natural. Mostly because I'm working on a proper weight shift, and it doesn't feel right having the ball in the middle of my stance, regardless of club.
I don't think about where I place my ball, I just put it wherever it feels natural to me. At the moment, the ball is a ball or two inside the left heel.

[saevel25]

Well the key for Nicklaus was that he shortened and widened his stance depending on the club. So short irons had a short stance. If you keep your ball in one position, lets say over your heart, just a few inches inside your front foot and shorten your stance it makes it easier to feel that you don't have to reach or lunge forward with the short irons.

So either keep the same stance and move the ball forward or backward, or keep it in the same spot and widen or shorten the stance.

[Righty to Lefty]

It all depends on where your swing bottoms out. The low point of your swing for all clubs is the sternum (no matter what other people say the low point of the swing is where your swing transitions from downswing to follow through which is the sternum) your ball placement should be determined by whether or not your swing moves forward toward the target (which it should slightly) or whether you don't have much movement at all. Basically you should take out any club and brush the ground with it and noitce where the club is hittting the ground and place your ball just behind that so that you strike the ball first then turf ( also called hitting down on the ball) with your irons and hybrids and right at that spot for your fairway woods. You'll have to work with your driver ball placement to find the point where you feel most comfortable because the driver is struck on a slightly ascending swingpath. After you figure this out then you will only have to make very slight adjustments to hit lil knock downs and such. The only way that you can have the same ball placement for all your clubs is if they are all the same length.

[Zeph]

It all depends on where your swing bottoms out. The low point of your swing for all clubs is the sternum (no matter what other people say the low point of the swing is where your swing transitions from downswing to follow through which is the sternum) your ball placement should be determined by whether or not your swing moves forward toward the target (which it should slightly) or whether you don't have much movement at all. Basically you should take out any club and brush the ground with it and noitce where the club is hittting the ground and place your ball just behind that so that you strike the ball first then turf ( also called hitting down on the ball) with your irons and hybrids and right at that spot for your fairway woods. You'll have to work with your driver ball placement to find the point where you feel most comfortable because the driver is struck on a slightly ascending swingpath. After you figure this out then you will only have to make very slight adjustments to hit lil knock downs and such. The only way that you can have the same ball placement for all your clubs is if they are all the same length.

Only problem with that approach is if you got the weight far back and flip at the ball. Then your swing will bottom out in the middle of your stance, and nobody would suggest a ball position behind the middle of your stance.

I say move the ball forward and work on getting the hips to push forward to you can strike it well. Having the ball far back can be preventing you from making a good weight shift forward, and leave you hanging back.

[Righty to Lefty]

I never said that you should hang back and flip at the ball I simply said that you should note where your swing is strikin the ground and place the ball slightly behind that and you will have your ball placement figured out with that particular club. If you use stack and tilt for instance then your ball placement won't move forward toward the target at all but if you are more conventional then your body will move laterally towards the target just a couple of inches. Ball placement doesn't prevent you from having a good weight shift at all because weight shift and ball placement are two completely different things. The only way ball placement can affect your weight shift is if you don't trust it because it doesn't look right to you even though it is and you hang back.

[saevel25]

Most people think, oh my swing bottoms out behind my center thats were the ball should be, thats wrong. Its not the ball position problem.

But, i like to see the ball go back as far as the center fo the stance, thats it. Unless your chipping or pitching it can go back farther. I tend to range from just a bit right of center for wedges to just inside my left foot for driver. I tend to shorten my stance a bit with my wedges as well, not much, bu i also usually have a short driver stance as well, i should widen it.

[bwdial]

Most people think, oh my swing bottoms out behind my center thats were the ball should be, thats wrong. Its not the ball position problem.

True. There have been times when I could have played my long irons off my right toe and still managed to hit them fat.

[Zeph]

I never said that you should hang back and flip at the ball I simply said that you should note where your swing is strikin the ground and place the ball slightly behind that and you will have your ball placement figured out with that particular club.

I never implied that you said that, but you have to turn that equation around. What if someone is hanging back and flipping, causing the bottom of the swing to be even behind the middle of your stance. If this person was to use your advice, he would have to put the ball inside his right foot.

If you use stack and tilt for instance then your ball placement won't move forward toward the target at all but if you are more conventional then your body will move laterally towards the target just a couple of inches.

Now you're just making stuff up.

The lower body (hips) move forward 4-8 inches during the swing. It is one of the key fundamentals in Stack & Tilt. The reason why it is a part of S&T is that they studied every good player out there to see what they had in common. They found that every good player with a forward swing bottom was moving the hips 4-8 inches forward during the swing, most commonly on the downswing.

Ball placement doesn't prevent you from having a good weight shift at all because weight shift and ball placement are two completely different things. The only way ball placement can affect your weight shift is if you don't trust it because it doesn't look right to you even though it is and you hang back.

Weight shift and ball placement are very related.

Weight transfer moves the bottom of your swing forward . If you put the ball too far back , you may risk topping it if you have a forward swing bottom. You might have to stop moving forward or flip to just hit the ball properly.

[PiustheDrGolf]

Weight shift and ball placement are very related.

That's exactly my curiosity comes from. Having a ball in middle of stance, the player will create a lag. It will make the ball go further.

But, for scoring irons (for me, 8-GW), do we want to introduce another variable to deal with?

[James_Black]

I put my driver just past the middle of my stance.
Hybrid-6i in the middle of my stance and the rest of the clubs i play back in my stance. I like to keep the ball low.

[Righty to Lefty]

Zeph my friend I was just reading through this forum for the first time in a long time and was just trying to give someone some general knowledge about how to get an idea of where they should place the ball in their stance to begin to find there proper ball placement and you went to a specific swing FLAW which had nothing to do with then initial question. I guess that you have never read any other posts from me cause you would see that I am not just your regular guy in one of these forums. I am an Exercise and Kinesiology major and have studied the way the body moves during athletic movements since 2000. I also play to a single digit handicap RIGHT and LEFT handed so you are not talkin to someone who just is giving advice that they can't back up. Shall I begin:

1. Regardless of your swing flaw or flaws which I did not even take into account because the question said nothing about that in the first place, if you pay attention to where your club is striking the ground no matter how bad your swing is and place the ball just behind that mark no matter how you have manipulated your swing so long as you make the same mistake over and over then you have found the most reliable place to place your ball in your particular stance with that particular iron or hybrid until you correct your swing flaw, and then you must recalculate.

2. The point of the stack and tilt swing is to eliminate sway ( the object is to remain STACKED over the ball and not sway) so you show me one professional golfer using the stack and tilt with 4-8 inches of sway in their swing I will never post on this forum ever again. Matter a fact if you can find me one pro conventional swing golfer with 4-8 inches of sway in their swing I will never post again on this forum. Please go on youtube and search "bizhub swingvision" so you can see them nice and slow and notice the position of their HEAD,STERNUM, and HIPS during the swing and how stable they are. Hips CLEAR but they do not SWAY 4-8 inches because if they did then the entire swing would have to move in direct proportion and we all know that your head should remain RELATIVELY still during the swing with maybe have an inch or two of lateral movement which shifts your lowpoint of your swing just barely in front of the ball creating a nice downward strike with an iron or hybrid. I have watched them all so you definately have your work cut out for you. You will never be consistent with 4-8 inches of sway in your swing. You will nearly fall down if you have 8 inches of sway because this is nearly outside of your center of gravity.

3. I will give you a lil bit of credit on your third point because your weight shift during your swing will help to determine where you place the ball in your stance but isn't that what I said in my first lil innocent post to this person askin for some friendly advice about BALL POSITION until you decieded to give this person an unmentioned swing flaw? If I really have to break it down should I have just said it like this then " Hey man take a full swing with no ball on the ground and notice where you took your divot. Now if you place your ball exactly where that divot started then you have found the optimal ball placement for that club so long as it isn't a fairway wood, a driver, or a putter to provide a ball first strike, and then turf! Proceed to the next iron/hybrid and repeat. For your fairway woods the ball should be struck almost exactly where the club bottoms out and for your driver you'll have to find your most comfortable ball through trial and error to find your optimal launch conditions"

Man I got injured and and for a year I would just go out to the range at my course and film people from max handicap players to the club pros hit balls and so I could know why a good swing is good and where a bad swing needed work because swings are different but impact for any well struck golf balll is the same for everyone. Please find these pro golfers with 4-8 inches of sway in anything in their head, sternum, or hips so that I may never post on here again....I have a feeling I'll be still posting on here for a long time to come!!

[James_Black]

2. The point of the stack and tilt swing is to eliminate sway ( the object is to remain STACKED over the ball and not sway) so you show me one professional golfer using the stack and tilt with 4-8 inches of sway in their swing I will never post on this forum ever again. Matter a fact if you can find me one pro conventional swing golfer with 4-8 inches of sway in their swing I will never post again on this forum. Please go on youtube and search "bizhub swingvision" so you can see them nice and slow and notice the position of their HEAD,STERNUM, and HIPS during the swing and how stable they are. Hips CLEAR but they do not SWAY 4-8 inches because if they did then the entire swing would have to move in direct proportion and we all know that your head should remain RELATIVELY still during the swing with maybe have an inch or two of lateral movement which shifts your lowpoint of your swing just barely in front of the ball creating a nice downward strike with an iron or hybrid. I have watched them all so you definately have your work cut out for you. You will never be consistent with 4-8 inches of sway in your swing. You will nearly fall down if you have 8 inches of sway because this is nearly outside of your center of gravity.

there's a difference between sway and driving the hips.

A sway is moving from one side to the other. Look at tiger's swing, his hips move a lot to the left on the follow through. Please don't talk to members, especially members who've been here a long time like they are 5.

[iacas]

The low point of your swing for all clubs is the sternum (no matter what other people say the low point of the swing is where your swing transitions from downswing to follow through which is the sternum)

Quite simply, that's wrong. I can make a swing bottom out just about anywhere I'd like, within reason. We have an incredible number of levers and things in the golf swing, but the two primary determinants of where the swing bottoms out is how far forward our weight is and what we're doing with the flying wedge - throwing it out (lengthens the swing radius, prematurely) or keeping it in (shortens swing radius, low point further forwards).

The low point is not the sternum. It would be if we just swung in a radius around our spine and nothing ever moved laterally, and our arms formed an equal angle with the clubhead and shaft. Instead, we see good impact coming with a straight left arm - we can draw a line from the left shoulder down to the clubhead - which is why the swing arc is forward or roughly off the left armpit. You can't just say "you have two arms, they're both attached to the club, so the center of the swing is right between them. It doesn't work that way.

Basically you should take out any club and brush the ground with it and noitce where the club is hittting the ground and place your ball just behind that so that you strike the ball first then turf ( also called hitting down on the ball) with your irons and hybrids and right at that spot for your fairway woods.

No, you should put the ball in the correct spot (or close to it) and work on getting your low point forward. You're taking the cause and trying to adapt the effect to it instead of the other way around.

If you use stack and tilt for instance then your ball placement won't move forward toward the target at all but if you are more conventional then your body will move laterally towards the target just a couple of inches.

With all due respect, no. Zeph's already talked about this though so I'll let it go here...

Zeph my friend I was just reading through this forum for the first time in a long time and was just trying to give someone some general knowledge about how to get an idea of where they should place the ball in their stance to begin to find there proper ball placement

Yes, but you did so incorrectly, as I've said above. You don't adapt the effect to the cause, you try to fix the cause and maintain a "neutral" (i.e. forward of center) ball position. A ball position too far back can cause problems, particularly for the people who don't get their weight forward enough (nearly everyone - 95% of amateurs or so)... and won't do much to help anyone. For any stock shot, the ball being in the middle of the stance is as far back as it should go.

I am an Exercise and Kinesiology major and have studied the way the body moves during athletic movements since 2000. I also play to a single digit handicap RIGHT and LEFT handed so you are not talkin to someone who just is giving advice that they can't back up.

With all due respect, you've not seemed to have thought it through entirely with the golf swing, most specifically regarding the center of the swing bottom.

The point of the stack and tilt swing is to eliminate sway ( the object is to remain STACKED over the ball and not sway) so you show me one professional golfer using the stack and tilt with 4-8 inches of sway in their swing I will never post on this forum ever again.

Again, Zeph already posted this pretty well, but here you go:

Troy Matteson, Charlie Wi. Note also Charlie's 7I ball position. You're completely wrong about "the point of the stack and tilt swing." The first fundamental is to hit the ball first, and then the ground, and a BIG part of how that's accomplished is to get the weight left at impact, and that's accomplished by sliding the hips laterally to the left on the downswing.

Matter a fact if you can find me one pro conventional swing golfer with 4-8 inches of sway in their swing I will never post again on this forum.

I do hope you stay on the forum, though. Just because you're wrong once doesn't mean you're not welcome to continue to share your thoughts and to continue to educate others and to gain some education yourself. I have the feeling you're going to tell me that this isn't "sway" or that you define it differently, but all measurable parts of these golfers move forward, and many significantly - the tailbone, the left hip, the right hip, the belt buckle, the left knee, the right knee...

Hips CLEAR but they do not SWAY 4-8 inches because if they did then the entire swing would have to move in direct proportion and we all know that your head should remain RELATIVELY still during the swing with maybe have an inch or two of lateral movement which shifts your lowpoint of your swing just barely in front of the ball creating a nice downward strike with an iron or hybrid.

I guarantee you that I can not only push my hips eight inches forward (that might be more than we teach, as I'm only 5'10") and maintain my balance and keep my head relatively still.

I will give you a lil bit of credit on your third point because your weight shift during your swing will help to determine where you place the ball in your stance but isn't that what I said in my first lil innocent post to this person askin for some friendly advice about BALL POSITION until you decieded to give this person an unmentioned swing flaw?

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the conversation thus far, but if you say "put your ball just behind the middle of your swing" and some duffer is leaving his weight back and flipping at the ball to get his club to the ground, by taking your advice he'd put the ball off his right pinkie toe, and that's all Zeph is pointing out, again if I've understood this all correctly.

If I really have to break it down should I have just said it like this then " Hey man take a full swing with no ball on the ground and notice where you took your divot. Now if you place your ball exactly where that divot started then you have found the optimal ball placement for that club so long as it isn't a fairway wood, a driver, or a putter to provide a ball first strike, and then turf! Proceed to the next iron/hybrid and repeat.

You do realize that the average amateur strikes the ground anywhere from 18 inches behind the ball (even with a driver) to not striking the ground at all, and as consistent as their swings look, they're not going to have any real consistency in where they strike the ground for the same club let alone throughout their set, right?

[Righty to Lefty]

there's a difference between sway and driving the hips.

That is an illusion also because if his head doesn't move then his hips are rotating around his center of gravity or his spine unless he has a rubber spine. For your center of gravity to move everything on that axis must move proportionally. Also I never talked to anyone like they are five years old at all. I responded accordingly after he proceeded to attempte to nitpick at my prior post. Just because someone has been a member for one month longer than me doesn't give them any more knowledge than someone new to the forum. It amazes me how when someone is spreading misinformation that the one who calls him/her on it is the bad guy.

Hey I'm just a nobody.....Shawn Clement who is a top 25 golf instructor breaks it down in one of his 200 or so youtube videos in the video called the "Great Driver Tip" which basically helps you figure out ball placement. He is very through yet extremely easy to understand so please check it out and let him explain it. I have watched the all and even he has a video about just about any thing you can think of on a golf course. Tiger also mentions in his book that he uses his sternum to monitor the center of his swing also. I will just keep readin and watchin and learnin and I hope that we all find what we are looking for in this great game....If we weren't arguing or should I say debating about things like ball placement with people that we don't even know then that would show lack of passion for the game right! I love a good debate every now and then though!