Stance

I think people lose sight of the fact that golf is an athletic endeavour, the same as tennis, squash, cricket, whatever. You don’t do anything athletic from a static position!

So, when you are setting up over the golf ball you should be placing your body in a position from where it can move freely, and that is with your weight tending toward the front part of your feet. You cannot move from your heels!

I encourage people to stand erect and relaxed, holding the club in front of them with the head just off the ground. I then ask them to tilt their upper body forward from the hip joint, keeping their back straight and simply lean forward until they begin to over balance.

As they begin to overbalance their natural tendency is to flex their knees to regain balance. What happens is their backside pops out a little as a counter balance leaving their knees slightly flexed with their weight tending toward the balls of their feet. Their arms are hanging vertically from their shoulders. If they now allow the head of the club to drop to the ground they are very close to being in an ideal address position.

Because (for right handers) the left hand is higher on the club than the right, the left shoulder should be higher than the right shoulder as should the left hip and left knee. The body, arms and hands should be completely relaxed.

As I have said before it is my experience that a correct stance/ set-up/ address position solves 90% of the faults you see in your golf swing. If you are set up correctly it is easy to swing correctly but a bad set up drives you to distraction.