Transcription
Let’s talk about how we set our feet so we can swing like an athlete.
So in this video, I want to talk to you guys a little bit about how our setup can affect the way we swing and what the greatest of all time have done to be able to swing in an athletic way. So, first thing I’ve got here, I’ve got a little square, so you can get an idea of ball position. I just wanted to walk you through some ball position with each golf club. So as I’m swinging a sand wedge, like I have here, I’m going to, first thing I always do is I like to set my face, and then I usually come in, I set my face with my right foot, and then I set my left foot where I want it. And for me, my left foot’s going to be just forward about a club head width from the orange line. And then here, I’m going to widen my stance out.
So now you can see that ball is probably just slightly forward of center with the sand wedge for me. And I also like to have a slightly open stance. You won’t be able to see it as good from this angle, we’ll flip around in a minute and show you from down the line, what that looks like. But my stance is just slightly open, ball’s just forward of center when I’m hitting a sand wedge. And the other thing to note is what my toes or my foot flare looks like. My left foot is slightly turned out, my right foot is probably also slightly turned out, but not quite as much. Let’s grab a seven iron.
So I go through the exact same process here with seven iron. I like to set my club face with my right foot forward and then place my left foot where I want it. Okay. It’s back in the exact same foot hold. Okay. And then I dropped my right foot back a little bit and now my stance is a hair wider, you can see that ball position is now looks to be a hair forward in my stance, relative to what the sand wedge looked like. And at this point, my stance also is pretty much dead square to my target line. Now that can vary based on your preference. Our stance line is not necessarily the most important thing, and we’ll show you more from down the line in a second. But the thing to note is my feet are not perfectly square. And throughout history, we’ll show you a picture of some of the greatest players of all time, and you won’t see any of them with their feet set dead square like this.
They generally start with their toes just slightly flared, and then as they go into motion that might change somewhat, because a lot of them lifted their heel and maybe replanted more back square, but they didn’t start there. Okay.
Now let’s go to driver. Get it on a tee, we’ll go through the same process here. So set the club face. Now I’m going to set my left foot with driver, my left foot’s going to basically stand on top of the orange stick, and then I drop my right foot back. That puts this ball more up in line with my left shoulder. Okay. So if that was there, I would be basically almost standing on the orange stick instead of having my foot out here more in front. And if you’re looking at my stance line is actually now slightly clothed. And I learned this from reading the books of some of the greats like Jack Nicholas has a diagram in his book, Golf My Way, and also Ben Hogan has an awesome diagram. We’ll throw one of those into this video so you can see what the greatest players, how they kind of saw where their feet go.
Okay, let’s flip this over and now I’m going to set the same thing up but we’re going to be now down the line. So let’s go back to the sand wedge. So here I’m going to show you from down the line what it looks like when I set up with a sand wedge. So again, I set the face in my right foot, now I’m going to place my left foot where I want it and drop my right foot to where I want it. And you can see my feet are not exactly parallel to that aim line, they’re actually aimed a little to the left. My heel line is probably a little closer, but because my feet are flared slightly, my toe line and looks like it’s aimed left. Now what’s really important here is my chest line is pretty close to square. So as I address this ball, my chest is going to be fairly square and hopefully my eyes are fairly square. If I start to get set up like this, the odds are pretty good that I’m going to hit from the outside. So we’re going to really feel chest square, feet are a little open, that promotes me being able to get open and get around on this shot. So let’s hit a little chip shot here, a little wedge.
Okay. So I went pretty much down my line that I’m looking at. Now, as I move out to a longer golf club, like a seven iron. Let’s see what changes. So again, I set the face, place my left foot where I want it, now drop my right foot. Now you’ll see that my stance looks pretty close to square to that stick on the ground. And that feels pretty good for aiming where I want to hit it. And again, my eye line is fairly square, my chest line is fairly square, now my foot line is pretty square. We’ll hit one out there. Oh, I hit that so bad, but it went straight. Okay.
Now here we are with our last ball, we set the face, set our forward foot and you can see, I stood right on top of that stick. Now I set my trail foot. And so for me to hit it down that orange line or parallel to it, I’m actually slightly closed at this point because the club’s a little longer. Okay, so this promotes me being able to make my path fairly neutral, even though I’m going to hit up, because if I aimed square and I hit up, my path is shifted pretty good to the left. Going to make the ball cut a lot. So again, we set the face, set our front foot, set our back foot where we want it, and with driver, it’s going to be a little wider. And again, my feet are slightly flared. Stance is just slightly clothed. Okay. So here we go. Let’s see if we can hit a nice drive.
That there we go, nice drive down the line. Almost like I knew what I was doing. So again, where we align our feet is not really as important as how our bodies aligned and our eyes. We have great examples throughout history of players that set up open stances and closed stances, yet were still very successful hitting the ball at their target. Some examples of that would be Lee Trevino. He tended to aim pretty open here and then dropped it in and hit the ball down the line. Sam Snead was closed, some amount like this, and in today’s game, Matt Kuchar sets up pretty darn closed while other players like Rory McIlroy hits high draws out of an open stance. So where your feet are doesn’t necessarily matter that much. What matters is that can you path the club how you want to. What your feet do can help though. So if you struggle with certain things adjusting, our setup can help.
So again, we don’t want to set our feet dead square. We want to go ahead and let them naturally have a little bit of flare. And then based on the golf club, our stance will widen and narrow, or widen or narrow, and it could open or close based on what we’re swinging. So I hope that helps.
I hope you and enjoy this video. Please leave a comment below with any questions, thoughts, or future video ideas, as we read every comment and we try to respond to each of you. If you would like further help with your game, head over to milolinesgolf.com, my website, and you can schedule lessons with myself or a member of my team. You can also join our academy where you can get one on one coaching. We have members of our academy all over the world and we’re excited to work with you no matter where you’re at, and if you’re new to our channel, don’t forget to click that subscribe button because we come out with new videos weekly. Thanks for watching.
