Every golfer’s goal is to hit the center of the clubface with each swing, which will lead to better impact and farther shot distances.
For those players who struggle with this, simply having a little better technique and an understanding of certain drills can go a long way in improving your ball-striking ability.
Since there’s nothing more fun than crushing a flush golf shot right down the middle of the fairway, here are 10 ways you can hit the center of the clubface with more consistency — so you can impress your playing partners with your newfound skills.
How to hit the center of the clubface
1. Square clubface at impact
Your grip has so much to do with hitting the ball in the center of the clubface.
This means you must allow your lead arm to hang facing your body. When you place your hand onto the club’s grip, be sure your thumb looks similar to your lead arm.
2. Posture
I often tell my students that “posture is contact.”
When you’re in good golf posture, you bend forward from the hips — which allows your hands to hang directly below your shoulders. By doing this, you’ll be able to get the club down to the ground, staying balanced throughout your swing.
It goes without saying that posture and balance go a long way to center-face contact.
3. Spacing
In order to make consistent contact, you absolutely need to create space between your body and your club.
Unfortunately, many amateur golfers confuse this with how far to stand from the ball — which will impact your shot result.
Standing too close to the the club at address will tend to produce heel contact. Standing too far from your club at address will tend to produce toe contact.
4. Trail arm extension – diameter
When you make a backswing, your trail elbow will bend and fold to create energy — which then gets released.
On your downswing, this trail arm needs to straighten and extend down towards the ground, which will help you make solid contact. This downward extension allows the diameter of your circle to be consistent, helping you hit the center of the clubface.
If you’re set up well and don’t extend your trail arm towards the ball, you’ll oftentimes hit the toe of the club, which keeps the ball flight low.
5. Balance
If you’re off balance, it can completely ruin a good swing, as unnecessary motions tend to make it difficult to hit the center of the clubface.
For players who often struggle with this, I have a great drill to help improve your swing balance — swing with your feet together!
If you can maintain your balance with this narrow stance, you’re likely able to do so when swinging with the ball beneath you.
6. Swing path
Proper swing path has a ton to do with being able to hit the center of the clubface.
A swing path that is extremely over-the-top (or, conversely, too inside-to-out) will struggle with contact, with the former often hitting the toe, and the latter hitting off the heel.
7. Short game – arms hanging
Don’t forget about how important it is to hit the center of the clubface with your putter, too!
It’s very common for me to see a golfer with great posture on their full swing, but resort to being very squatty-looking on the putting surface.
Fellow GOLF Top 100 Teacher Todd Sones is a fantastic short game instructor, and he often says that putting is best played underneath the shoulders where the arms can hang. I completely agree.
The same posture that will help you find the center of the face for the full swing also works in the short game.
8. Alignment sticks
Using alignment sticks can help guide you to a better setup and club path, assisting your efforts to hit more flush shots.
Whether you’re checking ball position or general alignment to see proper angles of your swing, they’re a useful training aid when struggling with finding the center of the clubface.
9. Two-tee drill
An all-time favorite drill of mine, the two-tee drill is a great way to center your clubface at impact.
Simply place a tee in the ground on both sides of the ball and have your clubhead pass through the middle without making contact with either tee.
If you’re unable to do this without hitting either tee, you will likely not hit the center of the face. But keep working on this drill to get the look and feel of a clean shot, and then apply that to your next round.
10. Clubs that fit
If you want to have any chance at making consistent ball contact, you must have clubs that fit you!
That are a lot of factors that go into this — including length, lie, and weight. This is also true of your wedges for short game, as a proper combination of lofts and different bounces will allow you to have a higher success rate.
High-end fitters, like TrueSpec, will allow you to test all manufacturers of heads and shafts, delivering data to help pinpoint the areas of your game that need the most practice.
