I have a few tips and check points that will help you more consistently line up parallel left.

Aim the Name: I have used this check point religiously every time I tee up a ball. I figured it out playing a match in College where I hit the ball into the right rough on the real long and difficult par 4 – 18th hole every time because I was aimed there. There were two problems that had me aiming right, way right into the thick stuff. I had to just chop it out back to the fairway rough.

The first was that the long narrow tee aimed right to the right rough. (Note: many tees do not aim down the middle or straight to the green on par 3 holes. We tend to line up with the tee. Also, many times the maintenance worker placing the tee markers does not put them at a right angle to the fairway or green. It is amazing how many golfers line using the markers. If the markers are aimed wrong, then they are aimed wrong.)

The second problem actually had two issues. The left side of the fairway had a row of huge oak trees towering out toward the fairway. This line of tress causes two problems. One was in walking into ball and seeing them, they easily could make me drift to the right in my setup. The second issue is, once in I was setup over the ball at address and turned my head to look down the hole, seeing the trees and my body lined up into them, made me uncomfortable. This tended to make me re-adjust my feet more right, as well as making my focus wander more to the right, away from the trees. The result was I was aimed to the right rough and even a really good drive ended up in the really rough right rough. I sure couldn’t reach the green from there.

I walked in and out of my setup 2 or 3 times because every time I looked up and saw the trees, I was uncomfortable and wanted to adjust my alignment away from them, more to the right. Finally, I decided that the only option was not to look up so I did not see the trees and get the impulse to adjust my aim more right. So I walked into the ball again and did not look. But I started to feel doubt. Was I aiming down the middle? So the question became: Is there a way for me to walk into the ball, not look up, yet be confident that I am aimed down the middle? And then the answer was staring me in the face looking at my golf ball. Aim the Name down the middle as my reference to check that my toe, knees, hips, shoulder and eye lines are all parallel left. With the name as a reference, I was sure my walk into setup was square and I also did not need to look down the fairway.

To this day, when I hit tee shots, I walk into the setup and never look up. I use the visual I set in my mind from behind the ball and swing without looking up. This is good because not lifting the head to look down the fairway reduces the chance of changing my upper body setup. It also reduces waggle time and more potential to change setup positions. Note: today many golf balls have an arrow on the side of the ball so you can Aim the Arrow. That works as well or better than the aiming the name. Also, you can buy a plastic cover that goes on the ball and has a slot in it that draws a perfect straight line on the side for your ball so you can Aim the Line. And, don’t forget that if the name, arrow and the line help your aim for long shots, it works great for aiming your putts on the green.

Note: When playing the ball down on the fairways, you cannot turn the ball to aim the name. So, the option left is to use the intermediate spot to assist you alignment is your setup routine. Or try the following two check points that work on all shots. Best of all, they work from your setup position.

Lift and Point Your Left Arm: Once you have gone through your setup routine “making the H” and are over the ball, you can use your left arm to confirm that your alignment is correct. Since you are in your address position and gripping the club, without moving your head and shoulders, lift your left hand off the grip and up to your shoulder (palm and arm perpendicular to the ground and pointing your index finger), straight out from your shoulder socket. Now, just turn your head (without moving your shoulders) and look, with both eyes open, to where your index finger points. If you are aimed parallel left, your arm will point left of the target and look quite parallel to it. If the arm looks diagonal left of the target, you are aimed a little right. If you left arm points at or right of the target, you are aimed way right. All you need to do is just reposition your feet a little left until your left arm looks parallel left of the target. (Note: I know I say moving your feet after address is asking for problems, as this will likely change your alignment. But in this case it is OK as you are changing it, looking at the target, using your left arm as the reference point.

Lift and Point Your Right Arm: Following the setup points listed above, instead, lift your right hand and arm straight up (without moving your shoulders and hips) and then just turn your head, with both eyes open, and see where your index finger points. For the right hand, correct alignment will have it pointing at the target. If it points right or left of the target, make the adjustments to your toe line until your index points at the target. Note: For many golfers, lifting the right arm is difficult and creates a lot of tension in the neck and shoulders while keeping the shoulders in place, and tends to pull them out of position and thus, can give you a bad reading. If you feel a lot of tension, then I recommend only using the left arm check point.

Pointing your right or left hand — both work well to check that you are aimed parallel left. There is a good chance one works better than the other for you, and that is the one you should use. I really like the left arm best for two reasons. First is that lifting the left arm straight up has little to no stretching and tension on the muscles of the neck and shoulders, and the arm is in quite a natural and comfortable position. The second is that the left arm points left of the target on the parallel left line, which is the line we are actually checking, and thus really gives more comforting assurance that your alignment is parallel left.

Both arm check points are simple, fast and accurate, and done in place in your setup position. It doesn’t get any easier to check and see and be assured that your Big A for alignment gets a Grade A for accurate.

The Surge!

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Standing directly behind the ball, looking straight to the target, you pick out your intermediate aiming spot on the ground, around 1 foot in front of the ball. Once you have it, then you check for it’s “in line accuracy” by plumbing it with you club. Now, being 100 % sure and confident you’re aiming spot is on your line, it is time to move to the address position.

Step 1: Standing behind the ball you are at 6:00 o’clock. You will now make a quarter circle to the left to reach the ball, which now puts you at 9:00 o’clock. As you turn to the ball and plant your right foot pointing an inch or so right of the ball in an approximate correct distance from the ball, you then extend your arms and sole your club behind the ball. Set the clubface square (perpendicular) to your intermediate aiming spot, which you know is also square to your target. Now, draw a line (in your mind on the ground) from the spot back to the ball and a little beyond. You have just drawn line #1, the outside right line to the H.

Step 2: Draw a line (line #2) from the bottom edge of the club straight back toward your feet. Since the clubface is perpendicular to your aiming line, this line is also perpendicular to it. This will be your ball position reference line. In the reference to the H, it is the center cross line.

Step 3: Draw line (line #3) perpendicular across the #2 center line. Since this line is perpendicular to line 2, which is also perpendicular to line 1, this makes line 1 and 3 parallel to each other. This is your toe line and thus the inside or left line to the H, which you have just completed. Once you have your line in the mind on the ground, you lift and set your left foot to toe on the line and then re-adjust your right foot to toe on the line. (Note: Remember that in the PPGS setup, both feet are flared outward 30 degrees touching the toe line.) Lastly, when the feet are planted, check and make sure you square up your knees, hips, shoulders and eyes over your toe line which is parallel left and square to your aiming line.

I call the planting of the feet the alignment 2 step. That is, once the toe line in your mind is drawn on the ground, and you lift and place, first the left foot and then the right, it’s 2 steps to the toe line. Now, I use the term lift and “PLANT” the feet: once down, the feet never move again until the shot is over and you walk out of the finish.

Why do we want the feet to stay planted? Because if they move, especially if your waggle lifts them (one or both) off the ground, there is a high probability that they will be set back down in a different place. I call this “dancing.” I promise you, if you dance, and the feet get re-positioned you have changed your alignment. All it takes is to change each foot ½ inch and you have a 1 inch right or left alignment adjustment, taking you out of your original correct parallel left and square alignment. And, a 1 inch off alignment has the effect of fanning the aiming line out around 10 yards every 100 yards. This means a 100 yard shot hit perfectly straight from the new alignment, will fly right or left 10 yards off line. A 250 yard shot is 25 yards, minimum, off line.

Keep the waggle soft and quiet and the feet planted. Dancing during the waggle is not “Dancing with the Stars.” It is dancing away from your target line and into the rough, trees, bunkers and water hazards.

You have to practice this 3 step alignment setup routine to get good at it. You especially want to practice the 2 step foot planting to be sure your mind and muscles learn the perfect amount of step needed by each foot to get the toe of your shoe perfectly on the line. You can practice this anywhere. I always like to be looking at a line on the floor, like in the linoleum or the seam in a carpet. You burn the line in the mind and the exact amount of step for each foot.

Lastly, you practice the 3 step routine and the 2 step foot planting until it becomes routine. It is never automatic, you always, like your swing have to think about it, but you want to get to the point where you do it without having to really talk you way through it. You want it to become an autopilot, ingrained, trained and a learned response to your mind triggering the setup routine, just like your tying your shoelaces when you put your shoes on. I know we don’t practice tying our shoes once we learn the routine, but I would recommend re-visiting and re-grooving your setup routine every now and then, especially if you catch yourself getting out of alignment a little too often. You want your setup routine grooved and smooth and so that you sort of just sink into your setup. And, as far as practice goes, remember the axiom “perfect practice makes perfect.” And you certainly want your setup and alignment to be perfect, since “the setup determines the motion.”

The Surge!

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The best way to help assure that your physical alignment will match your mental intended aim is to learn, and religiously and meticulously practice, a good pre-swing setup routine. A good routine takes concentration and attention to details, but is necessary if you want to tremendously increase your odds of aiming correctly when you setup to the ball. And, a good pre-swing routine always starts with finding and zeroing in on an intermediate spot or target in front of your ball on your aiming line.

You start this routine standing directly behind the ball, looking straight down and at your target where you are seeing a straight line. The key here is to find a spot on the ground directly in line with your target, around 1 foot at the most, in front of your ball. This 1 foot is important as the farther out your spot is from the ball, the greater the chances of the spot being off line and/or, you setup off line. I have had students tell me that they choose a spot five to ten feet in front of the ball. The most commonly mentioned distance in instruction is 3 feet out for your spot.

The issue here is that if your intermediate spot is off 1 inch at 3 feet in front of the ball, the aiming line will fan out an average of 10 yards off for every hundred yards. That means as much as 25 yards off line for a 250 yard drive for a lousy 1 inch mistake on your intermediate spot. And that is for 3 feet. Just imagine what county you will be aimed at if your spot is 10 feet out in front of your ball.

A final and really important issue is to double check the accuracy of your spot being on your aiming line by pluming the spot to the target, using the shaft of your club. This is important because in standing behind the ball and looking down at the ground, it is real easy to pick a spot that is NOT on your aiming line. You may say right now, “That is ridiculous. I am standing right behind the ball, how can I pick a spot that is not on the line?” Well, it happens all the time, even when being careful.

Yesterday, I was giving a lesson to Steve, a 3 handicap player who drove in from Dallas to see me. To check his alignment when practicing, he brought and used his homemade 4 foot sticks to place on the ground for making his parallel lines. The right. or outside one. was aiming at his target, and his inside or toe line one was parallel left of his target line. Well, I start him working on his walk in routine and hitting balls. I am standing in front of him face on as we are working on his ball position, and I am also watching his left arm as relates to the PPGS limited turn being over the toe line at the top of the backswing. Steve makes 3 real good swings and hits 3 real good shots around 10 yards right of his target. He is thinking and asking me if he moved slightly ahead of the ball before impact and blocked (a swing error) those shots. I say all 3 swings looked good and then move to standing behind him to watch his takeaway in the event he was swinging a little too much inside to out (one of his problems we worked on), which would hit the ball right.

But what do you think I see as soon as I get behind his aiming line and look at his stick pointing at the target. It is not pointing at the target but exactly at the spot his last 3 shots landed, which is around 10 yards right. So I ask Steve to show me his spot and check out his line. He comes back behind the aiming line stick, points to the spot, and says the stick is right at the spot and target. I ask him to look closely and see if the stick is aimed at the target. He says yes! I say, I don’t think so! He defends his alignment. I finally say, I know you are not blind, and I guarantee you that your target line is off at least 10 yards right. He assures me it is not.

So, I drop the challenge bomb on him, telling him to plumb the line and spot to the target with his club shaft. He gives me the “Holy Cow” yelp, and says he can’t believe he was that far off. I counter with you better believe it now and for the future. It will happen more because just plain looking leaves a big margin of error. The way to narrow that margin of error and even eliminate it is plumbing every spot with your club shaft. It is the only way to make sure you are “spot on.” If you go to a PGA Tour event, you will see many of the players standing behind their ball pluming their aiming spot.

The key is that alignment is important and plumbing the spot to the target greatly increases it being “spot on” and thus your odds of having “Terrific Towards.”

The Surge!

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Alignment is a big issue in playing good golf. First and foremost the best swing in the world will not hit the ball to the right place if the alignment is off. Conversely, if the alignment is off, and the brain senses it. the swing is immediately changed to create the compensations to try and re-direct the ball to the target. If the alignment is right, the swing will either pull the ball or try to hook the ball to the target. Aimed left, and the swing has to push or slice the ball to get it to go toward the target.

Alignment is so important that my Surgism for alignment is “90 to 95 percent of all swing problems, adjustments and compensations arise out of bad alignment. So, your question about how do you keep from creeping right, and what should you look at with your eyes after you take your stance, are really important.

Let’s start by asking a question: Is alignment more important for low handicap to scratch players and pros, than for higher handicap golfers?

The answer is, it is important for all golfers. But the low handicap players and pros have alignment hurt them in a way differently than the higher handicappers. The accomplished player has a much more consistent swing, shot after shot. Bad alignment bites them in that many times they will align right and just make a perfect swing (that is with no compensations to correct) and fire the ball straight into the right rough, fairway bunker or greenside bunker. The problem is doubled or magnified when this player concludes that the shot that just sailed dead right was a push or a block, because it was hit so solid and straight. He or she just made a perfect swing and dismissed it as a bad one. This really will mess up the mind because what felt good and should have been good was dismissed as a bad swing because of direction. So, now there is a conflict in the mind and senses of what a good swing is.

But now let’s get back to your basic question of how do you keep from “creeping” right. The word creeping implies that your feet are moving. I see players walk into the ball, and when they look up back at the target, they start creeping. I also call that dancing. The best way to stop that is once you walk into your setup and “PLANT” your feet, they stay put. Notice I used the word “PLANT.” I have another alignment Surgism that states, “most players are in the best or closest to good alignment when they first set their feet walking into their setup.” What that means is that when they look up to see the target, and or start waggling their club, they start fidgeting their feet and dancing themselves right out of and into another alignment.

So the answer is if you go through a good setup routine that includes alignment. Once your feet hit the ground, they MUST stay planted. This means that if you look back to the target, and you waggle, which is OK, (but I like to see slow, small and quiet waggles,) the feet must stay grounded. Many waggles, especially fast and snappy ones seem to invite the player lifting the feet up a little, which can cause the foot to be placed back down in a slightly different spot. Do this a few times with both feet lifted up and placed down in a different place and you can easily have changed your aim as much as 20 or 30 and even 40 yards.

Now, regarding what do you look at. The first key is, when you have setup and turn to look back at the target, turn your head and only your head, rolling the down the aiming line. Unfortunately, most golfers tend to lift the right shoulder and turn the chest and head (so the eyes are lifted to horizontal to the ground and you see a sweeping panoramic view of right to left) to look, which can cause dancing. What I think is a good thing in your first alignment check is to look down at your toes and draw line from them to see where they point relative to your target, which should be parallel left. If they are good, then you must stay in the “planted foot mode” during your waggle. If they are incorrect, I would actually recommend walking out of the setup and then redo your entire routine back in to get it correct. Why walk out and not just re-adjust your feet? Because that would be dancing and we don’t dance once the feet are planted.

Once the feet are correctly planted parallel left, the last thing you have to do is make sure your shoulders and hips are directly over your toe line so that your entire body, from toes to knees to hips, shoulders and eyes, are all in the same parallel left alignment. From there it is all systems go for a good swing.

Alignment is so important, I will dedicate two or three more articles to covering other important aspects, issues and key thoughts, that will help get you into good alignment shot after shot.

The Surge!

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Jim, who is now using the Peak Performance Golf Swing, had a very good question that I know all of you can appreciate. Among other things, he wanted some advice on ball positioning.

Jim,

You ask that I cover ball position for the long, medium and short irons, Well, here it is, and I will be addressing these positions as for playing normal shots, for right-handers. I use these same ball positions when I play. Note: Because the PPGS stance is a maximum of shoulder wide for the driver, the changing of ball position from the wedges thru the long irons will be the equivalent of no more than a few inches or 2 -3 balls left from center.

For short irons, from the wedges to the 8 or even 7 iron, I believe the ball position should be in the CENTER of the stance.

For mid irons, 6 – 4, the ball will move slightly left toward the left and forward foot, around 1 inch or 1 ball

For the long irons, 3 and 2, which very few players carry anymore even on the PGA Tour, the ball moves another inch , or ball ro the left, which will place it a little inside the left heel. This is also the position that one would play hybrids that replace long irons.

Fairway woods, the 5 and 3 could be played from the same position as the hybrids or could be moved a little more left.

The Driver will be played just about straight off the left heel.

There are a few key points to remember about ball position when you use the PPGS setup of 30 degree flared feet. The first point is that stance width and ball position is determined relative to your ankles and heels, not the toes. This is especially true if you flare one foot more than the other as I do, flaring the front foot at least 15 degrees more. Ball position may look and feel a little more back, relative to its position off the left foot, because with the left foot flared, the heel is closer to the middle of the stance than would be if the foot were pointing straight forward.

The second point to be aware of is, since the left foot is flared and the ball, for many players, will look and feel a little back in the stance, there is a tendency to move the ball more forward in the stance. This will likely lead to hitting thin shots, and/or the upper torso shifting left to get to the ball.

The best practice to learn and check ball position is to place a club or thin stick (many players us a shaft with no head that you can get from a club fitter) on your toe line. Then place another club or thin stick (shows ball position line) perpendicular to the toe line out from the center of your heels toward where the ball will be hit to use as a reference point to learn the view of center ball position. Once you learn center ball position, then you use it to learn the forward ball position to just inside the left heel for the driver. This will give you a good perspective of the total distance the ball moves from the center, for the short irons, to the driver. Once you have a feeling and view of the range the ball moves, then you can hit balls using the ball position line to more clearly and quickly burn the picture in your mind from seeing and feeling the correct ball position as it points out, relative to your left foot.

The Surge!

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