Take A Stance
Exclusive by Gary Edwin,
Golf Australia Teaching Editor

The next time you are on the golf course, or hitting balls at the range, look down and make a note of how you position your feet at address.

I’m not talking about how they are placed relative to the target line, that is open or closed, but how they are positioned generally.

Believe it or not, the way you set your feet, or the stance you create at address, can greatly influence your body shape and ultimately the effectiveness of your golf swing.

There are probably three or four different ways people position their feet at address but, in my opinion, there is only one correct way.

Compare your stance to the photographs of feet across these
two pages and see which one closely resembles your stance.

If you chose stance one, your feet are too narrow and you don’t have a solid foundation to make the necessary turning motion with your upper body.

As you can see, the feet are not only close together but the left foot is splayed open and the back foot is placed at about 90º to the target (pic 1). The angle these feet are placed at also makes it difficult to effect a good turn. The splayed left foot can cause the left hip to turn slightly open and the square right foot restricts the turn in the backswing.

A player with their feet positioned this way will be susceptible to making a lateral move away from the ball in the backswing and will have to make compensatory moves in the downswing to even make contact with the ball.

If you chose stances two or three, you have probably heard somewhere that a wide stance is needed for good balance.

Firstly, players who stand with their feet very wide – and some tournament players are guilty of this – don’t have good balance. They adopt a wide stance to get a ‘rooted-to-the-ground’ feeling. However, at impact they are off-balance because their feet are too far apart.

Some players try to adopt a wide stance with their heels wide apart (pic 2) but the angle of the feet causes them to be pigeon-toed or, as I like to call this stance, VW because that’s the way their wheels go on. This is one of the most common stances amongst club golfers and has the potential to completely ruin golf swings.

Another wide stance gone wrong sees the heels wide and both feet splayed out at an angle (pic 3). In both cases, the feet will cause the player to set-up with a less than acceptable body shape and then the amount of turn the upper body makes during the swing will be affected.

Pigeon-toed players will over-rotate their backswing while a player with a splayed stance will be restricted on the amount of body turn they can make.

The resulting swing from these stances will be one that is off balance and lacking in power and accuracy, because of the poor body shape at address and the subsequent backswings. If you chose stance four, you are well on your way to hitting consistently good shots.

Most coaches will tell you that the maximum width of your stance should be equal to the width of your shoulders.

I don’t measure stance width in these terms. The main thing is to have your feet wide enough to make a good body coil in the backswing instead of forcing you to slide your hips laterally away from the target, or tilt your upper body toward the target.

Coaches have changed their opinion over the years about how your feet should be placed on the ground. In the old days we were taught that the back foot should be square to the target line
and the front foot should be splayed open slightly – similar to what can be seen in stance one – because that was what Ben Hogan said he did.

A good stance will see your feet angled out only slightly (pic 4) to allow your body to work in the right direction on both sides of impact. This is a more athletic position and allows you to setup to the ball with a good body shape, which is the ideal start for a quality coil of the upper body.

Gary Edwin is the head of Gary Edwin Golf Schools, based at The Glades Resort & Spa on the Gold Coast, Qld.
For lessons call (07) 5569 1950.

This tip appeared in the October 2005 issue of Golf Australia.