How to Play Golf
Align Your Shots and Situate Your Stance
Stance and alignment are two different terms in golf, but they’re connected in a way that can dramatically impact the trajectory of your pending shot, whether it’s a drive or a 3-inch putt.
Your stance is the way you approach the ball. It’s how your feet are positioned, how your knees are bent, whether you’re up close or farther back from the ball. Your alignment is more about your aim.
Once your stance is in place, you can align the ball anywhere within your stance to help predict where the ball will aim. With golfers, everyone has a different stance – they’re almost as unique as fingerprints!
You have some people get into a stance with a lengthy set-up. They have a routine they perform before they approach each ball. Golfers come in a variety of shapes and sizes, so your stance may not match a professional’s stance exactly, but that’s okay.
You may have a unique backswing that makes you take a different stance and alignment. For instance, you might feel compelled to have a more open stance, aimed to either the right or the left because you know that you tend to hook or slice the ball.
This is especially important if you get to a level of play where you can control the ball using shots like a slice, which are usually mistakes to the ordinary golfer. Fred Couples, for example, can fade a ball from left to right on command.
If you’re not quite to that level yet, then you’ll want to embrace a stance that has you parallel with your target. That means your shoulders, feet and arms line up parallel to where you want your ball to end up.
If you close your stance, it will help you draw the ball. An open stance will have the opposite effect. When you take a stance with the ball, you want to have it right inside your left heel for most of your shots, unless you want to slice it on purpose.
To align your body with the target, you can hold the club up to your shoulders and check to see if they’re parallel to the spot you’d like your ball to go. You can also do it by laying your club perpendicular to your feet to see where you’re aiming.
