The Golfer’s Positioning At Address
This article is about the golfer’s stance when addressing the ball. The three stances detailed here will be be open, closed and square stances. How the golfer’s feet are placed will be described in relation to a straight line that might be drawn parallel to one representing the golf ball’s path. The name for this is the line of flight. In actuality, there is a curve to the trajectory of the ball as it flies down the fairway.
The closed stance is the common way to address the ball when taking a long shot. This stance has the forward foot’s toe more or less right on the line of flight, with the toe of the rear placed off the line by a few centimeters. In using the closed stance, the golfer’s body has more freedom of movement for longer shots while enabling the hands and clubhead to more naturally go along an inside-out path.
A square stance is adopted by most for the medium irons. When this stance is used a line drawn imagined connecting the tips of the feet would be parallel to the line of flight. Somewhat open is how the front foot would be placed, turned out a little in the direction of the swing, with approximately equal weight on each of the golfer’s feet. Long iron shots and wood shots may at times be executed from this stance.
The open stance is typically called on with the short irons. In these situationsthe forward foot is a bit behind the line of flight, for a more upright swing that imparts a backspin that doesn’t serve well on long golf shots.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 12:35 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.