While clubhead speed certainly causes an upward trend in distance, square centered contact in the middle of the clubface is easily more important. A solid shot not only goes farther, but straighter as well.
A long drive does us no good if we are playing from behind a tree on our next shot.
Of course, none of us are perfect – we all miss the sweet spot sometimes. For some golfers, they consistently miss the sweet spot towards one side of the face or the other. We can hit towards the heel, the toe, or too high or low on the face.
If you are a beginning golfer, without a ton of repetition, or if your technique is really poor, you will miss all over the face randomly. There will be no particular trend. The simple solution here is to clean up your fundamentals and practice more often.
But many intermediate and advanced golfers miss the center of the face consistently in one or even two spots.
The heeled shot is the most common miss. A heeled drive will generally start left, as the clubface gets flipped shut at impact from the impact with the ball. It will then usually slice back towards or even right of the center of the fairway. Heel shots are often low on the face as well, and likely has more backspin. Do you know what a shot hit off the heel feels like?
A toed shot is general the miss of a better player. The ball will often start wide to the right of the target (right handed golfer) and draw back towards the center. This is from the clubface being torqued open by the non center impact with the ball. Draws are often hit high on the face as well, and likely has less backspin. Do you know what a shot off the toe feels like?
In the above video, a well trained eye will see that the clubface is twisting slightly open from the ball being struck maybe a dimple towards to the toe. The stripe on the ball is rotating counterclockwise, indicating a resulting hook spin axis.
Contrary to the belief of many, toes and heels have little to do with how far from the ball you are standing. You won’t fix a heeled shot pattern simply by moving back a little further from the ball.
Here are some common causes for each type of mishit drive:
Heeled Shots – You could be reaching too far out with the arms through the impact zone. A poor arm and club handle path will cause the heel to lead into the ball. Releasing the head of the club late or not at all will also cause a heel pattern. Early extension of the hips towards the ball, will cause the handle to raise and lead too much.
Toed Shots – Left hip is late reaching the front post or not reaching it at all. The release of the hands is faster than the pivot. Like a baseball player who is out in front of a curve ball – he will hit it off the end of the bat.
Low on the Face – Teeing it too low. Your arc may be bottoming out too far behind the ball so you are just barely catching the top of the ball as the clubhead returns upwards. Your weight is probably hanging back on the rear foot too long and lead hip is not reaching the front post.
High on the Face – Could be from teeing it too high. Commonly, your angle of attack is too negative, or downwards as the club strikes the ball.
I will be covering each of these four major misses in upcoming lessons in the premium section.