Identify the Two Main Causes of Your Right Miss

A ball that starts right, stays right, or peels farther right can come from more than one source. That is why this miss is so frustrating. You may know the shot shape, but if you diagnose the wrong cause, the fix usually makes things worse.

When you miss right, there are two main patterns to look for. The first is a swing that gets the hands too far out in front of you during the downswing. The second is a swing that arrives in a decent delivery position but leaves the clubface too open because the release is held off.

The key is to stop guessing and check the swing at the same point every time: around P6, or when the club is roughly parallel to the ground in the downswing, just before impact. That checkpoint will usually tell you which family of right miss you are dealing with.

What It Looks Like

Pattern 1: Hands Too Far Out in the Downswing

In this pattern, your hands move away from your body too early on the way down. Instead of staying deeper and more connected to your pivot, they get pushed outward. From there, the club tends to approach the ball from a compromised position.

This version of the right miss is often the ugly one. You may see:

• Shots that start right and curve farther right
• Big blocks or wipey slices with the driver
• A miss that feels powerful but completely uncontrollable
• Occasional pulls when the face and path happen to line up differently

If you swing with a lot of speed, this is the miss that can send the ball way off line. It is not just a gentle push. It is the kind of shot that can miss by a huge margin because the club gets trapped in a position that forces a last-second compensation.

Pattern 2: Good Delivery, but the Face Stays Open

The second pattern looks cleaner on video. At P6, your hands may actually be in a fairly solid position. The problem comes later: your arms and wrists stay too stiff, and the clubface never fully squares up.

This version usually produces:

• A soft push that starts a little right and stays there
• A gentle fade that never quite turns over
• A shot that feels controlled, but lacks compression and start-line precision
• Sometimes a pull-fade or pull-slice if the path shifts left

This golfer often feels like the swing is “pretty good” and cannot understand why the ball keeps leaking right. That is because the issue is not a dramatic reroute. It is a subtler problem with how the face is being delivered through impact.

Why It Happens

Why the Hands Get Too Far Out

This pattern is usually part of a larger sequence problem. The club gets steep early, often because the upper body takes over in transition or the shoulder blades move too soon instead of staying back. Once that happens, the club is pitched out in front of you.

From there, you have two options, and neither is ideal:

1. You keep rotating and hit a pull or pull-cut because the club is working too far left.
2. You instinctively try to save it by backing up, early extending, or dropping the club under late.

Most golfers choose the second option without realizing it. They sense that the club is out in front, so they stop rotating well and let the club fall behind them. That often leaves the face open and the path too far to the right. The result is the big right miss.

This is why the shot can look so confusing. Earlier in the downswing, the clubface may not appear wildly open. But because the body motion stalls and the club gets stuck, the face arrives open relative to the path and target. The ball launches right and curves farther right.

Why the Face Stays Open

The second pattern is different. Here, the structure of the downswing is not the main issue. Instead, the problem is that your release is too restricted.

You may keep too much tension in the wrists and forearms, or your arms may stay too rigid through impact. Rather than allowing the club to release naturally, you “hold on” to the face. This can create a look that includes:

• Stiff wrists through the strike
• A held-off finish
• Excess arm tension
• A tendency toward a chicken wing or overly dominant lead shoulder through impact

This pattern often appears after a golfer has worked hard to stop flipping or stop getting steep. In trying to become more stable, you can go too far and remove the release entirely. The club then arrives with the face slightly open, producing that gentle right miss.

So even though both patterns send the ball right, the underlying causes are very different:

• Pattern 1 is a delivery and sequencing problem.
• Pattern 2 is more of a face-control and release problem.

How to Check

The best checkpoint is around P6: the downswing position where the shaft is roughly parallel to the ground before impact. If you film from down-the-line, pause the swing there or just slightly after, and ask two questions.

Checkpoint 1: Where Are Your Hands?

Look at whether your hands are:

• Out away from your body, pushed toward the ball line
• Or more deep, working closer to your trail hip and staying better organized with your pivot

If the hands are too far out, you are likely in the first family of right miss. That means the problem starts before impact, and the open face is often a byproduct of how the club got there.

Common clues that support this diagnosis:

• You feel the need to “save” the shot late
• Your pelvis moves toward the ball in the downswing
• Your chest stops rotating and the club drops under late
• Your worst shots are big blocks and wipey slices

Checkpoint 2: Is the Hand Position Good but the Face Open?

If the hands look reasonably well placed at P6, shift your attention to the clubface and what happens next. If the club is in a decent slot but the ball still wants to leak right, the issue is probably your release pattern.

Signs you are in the second family:

• Your transition and delivery look fairly neutral on video
• The ball starts only a little right rather than way right
• The shot shape is more of a push or soft fade than a wipey block
• You feel tight or controlled through impact rather than free and released

In other words, the club is not dramatically out of position. You are just not letting the face square.

Pay Attention to Ball Flight Differences

Ball flight can help confirm what you see on video.

• Starts right and curves more right: usually the first pattern, where the club gets out and then stuck open.
• Starts slightly right and stays there or falls gently right: usually the second pattern, where the face is held open.
• Occasional pull-fade: can happen in either pattern, but especially when the path shifts left while the face remains open.

The more violent the miss, the more likely you are dealing with the first issue. The softer and more repeatable the miss, the more likely it is the second.

What to Work On

If Your Hands Are Too Far Out

Your priority is to improve how the club is delivered into the downswing. You want to avoid the steep-early, shallow-late pattern that forces compensations.

Focus on feels that help you:

• Keep your back to the target longer in transition
• Let the hands work deeper rather than immediately outward
• Avoid spinning the shoulders open too early
• Maintain rotation instead of standing up and backing away from the ball

A useful concept here is that the club should organize earlier, not be rescued later. If you can keep the arms and hands from getting thrown out in transition, you will not need those timing-based save moves near impact.

When this improves, the path tends to neutralize, the face has more time to square, and the giant right miss starts to disappear.

If the Face Is Being Held Open

If your delivery position is solid, then you do not need a major reroute. You need to reduce the tension that prevents the club from releasing.

Work on:

• Less stiffness in the wrists and forearms
• Allowing more natural supination of the lead arm
• Letting the clubhead release instead of dragging the handle through impact
• Finishing without the feeling of “holding off” the face

This does not mean flipping. It means getting rid of the excessive control that leaves the face open. Many golfers who miss right in this way are trying so hard to be stable that they remove the athletic release the swing needs.

Use the Right Fix for the Right Problem

This is the most important point: do not apply a face-release fix to a hand-path problem, and do not apply a hand-depth fix to a release problem unless you have confirmed the diagnosis.

If your hands are too far out, trying to simply roll the face closed may create even more timing issues. If your delivery is good but the face is open, obsessing over shallowing or hand depth may do very little.

Start with the checkpoint at P6 and sort yourself into one of these two groups:

• Group 1: hands too far out, usually from steep-early mechanics and a late compensation
• Group 2: decent delivery, but an open face from too much tension or a held-off release

Once you know which pattern you own, the fix becomes much simpler. Right misses are frustrating when they feel random. They become manageable when you understand whether the problem is how the club is arriving or how the face is being released.

If you have been fighting shots to the right, this is one of the best places to begin. Check the delivery position, identify the pattern, and then work on the piece that actually matches your miss.