Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.
This year I’ve been stressing — at times to a borderline obsessive amount — my setup. Back in the winter, I vowed to make 2025 the year of fundamentals, and I’ve done my best to stick to that plan throughout the summer.
Why the obsession with boring fundamentals? Because they’re the foundation of any good golf swing. If you don’t have the basics nailed, you are severely limiting your ceiling. Any time you go to see a swing coach, the first thing they’ll do is check the basics — stance, posture, alignment, grip, etc. Sometimes the issue with your swing comes from an error before you even take the club back.
With that in mind, I’m always trying to get better at my pre-shot fundamentals — and that includes asking for advice from some of the top teachers in the game about them. One such conversation came with GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jeff Smith last winter at Cabot Citurs Farms. During our talk, Smith gave me a quick checklist to go through before every shot to make sure the fundamentals are taken care of.
Hitting off a nice flat lie is always preferable to hitting off some sort of slope, but in this game, you’re going to encounter some uneven lies. And when that happens, you’ve got to make a few adjustments to your setup to make sure you’ll generate solid contact.
1. Stabilize your base
First things first, you need to establish a stable base on your downhill leg. When hitting off an upslope, that will be your trail leg and vice versa for downslopes. Find the downhill leg and make sure it’s stable before you do anything else.
“If I don’t do that, I could drift and float down the hill as soon as I start to move,” Smith says. “And now there’s no chance of me finding that golf ball.”
2. Make the slope level
Your next step will be getting your shoulders level with the slope. If you’re on an upslope, tilt your shoulders back, and if you’re on a downslope, tilt them forward.
“You want to match you shoulder line with the line of the ground,” Smith says.
3. Establish your club length
Yes, every individual club will always be the same length, but the effective length of the club can change based on the slope you’re hitting off. So, once you stabilize your base and level your shoulders, you can establish where on the grip you will be holding the club.
“Drop your arms and hang them naturally,” Smith says. “And that’s how we’re going to find the club length.”
With your arms dangling naturally, you can now put the club in your hands and determine where on the grip you will hold the club based on the low point of your swing arc from the uneven lie.
“For every shot that’s different, if I have the same three-step process, all of the sudden, I have the right length of club to get to the ball easily, but I don’t have too long a club where I’m sticking it in the ground,” Smith says.
4. Determine the ball position
Now that you’ve got the correct club length, you need to determine where the ball should be placed. For that, you need to make some practice swings and find the bottom of your swing arc.
“As soon as I find the bottom, that’s where I’m going to place my ball,” Smith says. “
Swing away
It might seem tedious to go through this checklist before every swing, but when you’re facing a shot from an uneven lie, it can be a game-changer. This checklist takes the guesswork out of your setup, so by the time you swing the club, you don’t have to worry about making any more adjustments. You can simply swing away and know you’re going to make solid contact.
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