After I’d written my last article, about where to put the ball in your stance, many people got in touch with me asking to explain more about distancing the ball between your feet. Looking back, I realise that, because I’d struggled more on distance from my body, I spent most of the last article discussing that aspect.

Whereas, it appears most of you are more concerned with the other aspect of the ball position. Just proves once again how varied we are as golfers! I revisited the notes I made during coaching, and realise there is more to say on the subject, hence this second part of the article.

So, just to recap the previous article, you should have the ball the distance away from you of the club and swing you’ll be using – that is, further away for the driver, woods and long irons, and nearer to you for the short irons, wedges and putter.

So what I was taught to do once I’d mastered that, was again based on the club selected for the shot, and placing the ball at different positions along the line of the swing. So there are 2 elements of positioning that are dependent on club selection – distance from the body and placement along the line of the shot.

The longest clubs should see the ball placed further forward in your stance. That is, along the line of the direction you want the shot to go in, opposite or near to your front foot, which will be your left foot if you’re a righthanded golfer like me.

The driver is the longest of the clubs, and requires more of a rounded swing than any other clubs. Because of this, we don’t want to hit the ball too early in the swing, so when we place it near to our front foot, we will be hitting the ball on the upswing rather than the downswing.

For almost every amateur, the only time we really think about using the driver is from the tee. Having a high tee is recommended for the driver, so this in combination with our forward placing, will see us hit the ball up away from the tee and sailing further down the fairway.

With the other clubs not requiring as big a swing, and also not needing us to hit the ball quite so much on the up, we position the ball further back down the line of the swing, with the shortest clubs having their best ball position in line with your eyes, in the middle of your stance.

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