Club Path Direction And Strike Location In The Golf Swing

In this article, I’m going to bust one of the myths that many amateurs have regarding strike location. So if you’ve ever hit a toe or heel shot, you will want to make sure you read this.

I hear amateurs talk about how they’re hitting toe or heel mis-strikes. In a lot of cases, I also hear how they’re trying to fix this by changing their swing path direction.

However, when I’m teaching, I see

• swing path direction and
• strike location

as two separate entities. Let me explain.

Any Path Can Hit Any Strike

While path direction can correlate to strike location for some people, an off-line path direction is not the causal factor for a mis-strike (correlation is not causation).

For example, you can swing in-to-out and hit the toe (picture 1)

You can also swing in-to-out and hit the heel (picture 2)

You can swing out-to-in and hit the heel (picture 3)

and you can also swing out-to-in and hit the toe (picture 4)

And yes, you can also have a perfectly square path and hit any part of the face. A neutral path does not guarantee a centered strike either. They’re separate variables!

Pros Shape Shots

Think about it!

Pro golfer shape shots all the time. They’re able to swing more to the left or right to draw/fade the ball, yet they are not mis-striking it when they do so.

So it’s simply a myth that it’s your path that’s causing you to hit off the toe/heel.

Now, this isn’t to say that working on your path is not a good idea. If your natural path is 10 degrees left, it’s probably a good idea to get that closer to neutral for efficiency reasons (we don’t want to be cutting across it too much for our stock shots).

So What Am I Saying?

What this short article is getting at is this….

If you’re trying to fix your strike issues by changing your path direction, you’re probably better off working on something that relates more directly to strike location. 

When I’m teaching,

• If I want to fix someone’s path direction, I work on elements of the swing that relate to path direction.
• If I want to fix someone’s strike, I work on things that relate to strike location.

It’s that simple.

Yet I see so many amateurs failing tirelessly to change their strike because they’re working on their path direction. The number of shankers I see trying to fix their out-to-in path and still shanking it is too high!

Just because you have an out-to-in or in-to-out path and shank it DOESN’T mean that changing your path is going to change the shank. Fix the shank first!!

Learn More

If you have been suffering with poor strike locations (toe/heel), check out my Strike Plan program (click the image below).

It’s full of drills and techniques to help you quickly move the strike more to the center of the face, as well as drills to fix fat and thin shots, and even add more consistency to you game.

If you feel your strike is pretty good but your accuracy is hurting your game. Or if you feel you curve the ball too much in the air, or even want to learn how to do that intentionally, my Accuracy Plan program is for you (click the image below).

It’s full of skill drills and techniques to help you hit the ball straighter, as well as a unique strategy system to allow you to hit more greens and lower your scores.