Practice Strategies
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Uneven Lies on a Flat Range
To prepare for uneven lies, try to duplicate your stock ball flight given different scenarios. There are 4 options to choose from to help simulate what can happen when you have uphill/downhill, ball below/above your feet, or a combination of both.
- Power Source - more upper body or more lower body than your normal
- Weight Distribution - put your weight more on your front foot or more on your back foot
- Ball position - play the ball position more forward, more backward, or anywhere in between
- Lower body alignment - Don't change your shoulder alignment, but stagger your stance and you can simulate what happens to your pelvis on a combined downhill and sidehill lies.
Tags: Uneven Lies, How to practice
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This video is practicing uneven lies on a flat driving range.
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So most of us intuitively know that the flat driving range is not the same as what happens
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when I'm out on the course.
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Out on the course I can have ball above my feet, ball below my feet, I can have, or
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sorry, ball below my feet, ball above my feet, I can have uphill, I can have downhill.
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And oftentimes, golfers aren't really prepared and they hit a lot of bad shots given
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certain lies.
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Now, you think that you can't really simulate what's going to happen there as far as how
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your balance feels, but there are some skills that those shots require that you can practice
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off a flat lock.
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So when I have golfers working on uneven lies or preparing for this more variability on
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the course, there are four main things that I try to have them play around with.
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So the first is I'm going to have you just do your stock shot and just take a look at your stock
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path and ball flight and all those things.
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And you're going to try to recreate similar path tendencies.
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So the same ball flight, but we're going to mess around with four different things.
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We're going to mess around with, am I swinging more with my arms or more with my legs?
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So power source, we're going to mess around with weight distribution.
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So do I have more of my weight on my left, more of my weight on my right?
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We're going to mess around with ball position, which can be sometimes a challenge when
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it comes through adjusting the path.
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So I'm going to either play ball position forward, ball position, path, back.
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Or the fourth one, we're going to mess around with a slightly closed stance or a slightly
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open stance.
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And this will involve a little bit different knee flex.
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So it's not just totally changing my alignment to open clothes.
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It's just changing my hips and my stance.
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Almost like I was doing a staggered lunge.
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So we can just kind of baseline normal ball flight kind of like so.
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And it's going to be a little challenge to see because I'm filming at the end of work here.
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But now what I can do is I'm going to put more of my weight on my front foot just like so.
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This will make it a little harder for me to use my legs.
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But, and I got just a tiny bit steep on that.
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But I was able to recreate just about the same feeling as far as face to path goes.
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Now I'm going to put more of my weight on my trail foot.
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This will make me really want to swing more from the outside.
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So I'm going to have to work a little bit harder with my arms in order to get the same
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ball flight.
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The same ball flight may go just a bit higher because my upper body is more behind.
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And the stance one, that time I have the path go a little bit too much to the left.
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We'll try that again.
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So now if I'm going to stay more back, I really have to work harder with the arms.
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That was a little bit better there.
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So, caught into tiny bit thin.
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But overall, that was pretty solid.
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So we've got our weight distribution.
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Now we're going to swing more with my arms and less with my body.
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So I'm going to get set up.
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Now I'm going to swing a little bit more armsy.
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That's typically not going to go as far and it's going to be flighted a little bit lower.
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I'll cut that a little on the toe in a little heavy.
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That's not to be unexpected.
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So next one, I'm going to swing a little bit more with my core and my hips.
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So this one can be a little awkward with the irons because that will move the bottom of
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the swing backward.
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But we're going to give it a go.
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So a little bit more with my legs.
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I'm going to hit that one not too bad.
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That was less of the arm action more of the legs.
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Now we're going to do ball position.
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So ball position forward, ball position back.
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So ball position forward, ball position back.
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Just to baseline, there is about my normal ball position.
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So we'll put one object ball just so I know about where that is.
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I'm going to move that ball position forward kind of like so.
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Now I have to make a few subtle adjustments.
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Oh, I caught that one a little fat.
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Did not make enough of those adjustments.
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Kind of got caught in my shoulder.
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So now ball position way forward.
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This is one of the tricky ones just like when my weight is way back, especially if I'm
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trying to hit just a little tiny draw.
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So I'm going to try and exaggerate some of those movements.
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So little thin, which is to be expected with ball position.
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And forward, but got about the same ball flight.
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So now normal ball position and we'll move it way back, keeping my weight about the
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same.
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Now I have to really work hard not to slam the club into the ground.
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So I'm going to make sure that I still shallow things out.
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That's fairly comfortable because that's more of like a punch shot.
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So that started a little right and you're back.
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And then the last one is the staggered stance.
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So this helps you with, you know, when you start to get into more of these tricky
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undulation.
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So now I'm going to get set up and I'm going to keep my chest squared to the target.
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But now I'm going to stagger my stance more forward so that it's about my toe even with
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my heel kind of like so.
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Not too bad there.
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What it really disrupts is my feeling of my weight shift.
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Now open stance usually gets a little bit tougher.
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So still keeping my shoulder square just bringing that front foot back.
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It's just similar to when I'm putting more weight on one side or the other, but it's a
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little different.
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Just simulate some of the combo uneven lies.
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So again, tendencies when it goes forward or my weight goes back, I'm hit it thin.
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That may mean that I need to work a little bit on my weight training.
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Working through this little matrix or this little circuit can help you simulate what's
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going to happen when you're on the course and you have to make subtle adjustments for uneven
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lies.
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If you really struggle or you play a lot of hilly courses, I recommend at least incorporating
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a few of these into your regular practice routine.