How to Shallow Your Swing for Better Ball Striking

This drill trains late shallowing—the part of the downswing where many golfers look fine at first, then get too steep as the club approaches the ball. When that happens, you tend to strike the turf too early, hit fat shots, or drive the handle forward while the club cuts down too sharply through impact. By placing an alignment stick or shaft in the ground on your delivery side, you give yourself a visual and physical reference for the space the club should travel through from about hip-high to hip-high. It is especially useful for short 9-to-3 swings, where you can learn how your body rotation, side bend, and wrist motion help the club shallow correctly into the strike.

How the Drill Works

The idea is simple: you place a shaft in the ground behind you at roughly the same angle as your spine or delivery plane, then rehearse and hit short shots while feeling the club trace down that shaft on the way into impact. This gives you a clear picture of the path you want the club to follow in the late downswing.

This is not a full-swing drill. It works best with a mid-iron or short iron and a controlled 9-to-3 motion, where the club moves from about waist-high in the backswing to waist-high in the follow-through. Longer clubs make the geometry harder to manage, and full swings make low point control too difficult for most players while learning the movement.

To set it up, place a spare shaft or alignment stick in the ground behind you so it roughly matches your spine angle at address. The exact position will take some experimentation. You want it far enough behind you that the club can trace along that line during the delivery phase, but not so close that it interferes with your body.

Once the stick is in place, find a ball position that works with the drill. You are trying to create a reference for the bottom part of the swing arc, so you may need to make a few rehearsals to see where the club would naturally bottom out. That is one reason this drill is challenging: if you are used to getting steep late, your low point will often start out too far behind the ball.

The key is that you are not trying to shallow the club with your arms only. The club should work down the shaft because your body is opening, your trail side is working down correctly, and your wrists are allowing the clubhead to fall into the right delivery pattern. In Tyler’s language, two common pieces that help are:

Side tilt or trail-side bend through the downswing
Ulnar deviation, which helps the club move down into the proper delivery space

At the same time, your body sequence still matters. Your lower body and torso should keep rotating so the club is being delivered by a moving pivot, not just dropped behind you with your hands.

Step-by-Step

Choose the right club. Start with a short iron or mid-iron. A 9-iron, 8-iron, or 7-iron is ideal. These clubs make it easier to control the drill and learn the movement without too much speed.
Set a shaft in the ground behind you. Place an alignment stick or spare shaft into the turf so it roughly matches your spine angle at address. It should sit behind your trail side and represent the path you want the club to trace in the delivery phase.
Make a few rehearsal swings without a ball. Swing from 9 o’clock to 3 o’clock and observe where the club would bottom out. This helps you understand whether the stick angle and your ball position make sense.
Adjust your ball position. Set the ball where your short swing can reasonably strike it while tracing the intended path. If needed, move the ball slightly forward to help you visualize the club traveling down through the space created by the stick.
Rehearse the delivery position. In the downswing checkpoint, feel your hips slightly open—pointing somewhat in front of the ball—while your chest or belly button is more toward the ball. Your shoulders may still feel a bit closed, and the club may feel “behind” you, but your body should already be opening.
Let the club slide down the shaft. From that delivery position, feel the club move down along the line of the stick as your body rotates. This is the heart of the drill. You are learning the correct late-downswing space rather than throwing the club steeply on top of the ball.
Add the wrist and body pieces together. As you rotate, allow some ulnar deviation so the club can shallow and approach the ball from the proper angle. Pair that with enough trail-side bend or side tilt so the handle and clubhead stay in the right relationship.
Hit short shots only. Start with soft 9-to-3 swings. Expect to hit some fat shots at first. That is normal. This drill often exposes how steep you get near the bottom, and it takes time to move your low point forward while preserving the shallowing motion.
Evaluate contact, not just appearance. A good rep is one where the club traces the intended path, your body keeps opening, and the turf interaction improves. If the club looks shallow but you are still bottoming out behind the ball, your pivot is probably late or stalled.
Repeat until the path feels familiar. The goal is to build awareness of the delivery space from the transition into impact. Once you can feel it on short swings, you can gradually blend it into longer motions.

What You Should Feel

This drill is all about giving you a better sense of where the club should travel late in the downswing. If you normally get steep near the bottom, the correct motion may feel surprisingly different at first.

Key sensations

The club feels like it is dropping behind you slightly, but not because you are yanking it there with your hands.
Your hips are opening before impact, while your upper body is not spinning level and open too early.
Your trail side feels lower, creating some side bend that helps the club approach from the inside and on a shallower angle.
Your wrists are allowing the club to fall into delivery, especially through ulnar deviation, rather than holding the club up and chopping down.
Your chest keeps rotating through, so the club is being delivered by motion, not by a last-second hand throw.

Useful checkpoints

At delivery, your hips should be more open than your chest.
The club should appear to move down the line of the stick rather than over it.
Your divot, if you take one, should begin to move closer to the target side of the ball as you improve.
Contact should gradually become more centered and less heavy.

If you are doing it well, the movement will feel organized rather than manipulated. The club is shallowing because your body and wrists are working together, not because you are forcing a dramatic reroute.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Trying to use this as a full-swing drill. It is much more effective in a 9-to-3 format. Full swings add too much speed and make the low point difficult to control while learning.
Shallowing with the arms only. If you simply drop your hands behind you without body rotation, the club may look shallow but your strike will suffer.
Stalling the pivot. If your body stops and the arms keep going, you will often hit behind the ball or flip through impact.
Ignoring side bend. Many golfers try to rotate hard without enough trail-side bend, which steepens the shaft late.
Forgetting the wrist component. Without the right amount of ulnar deviation, the club may stay too vertical and never trace the intended path.
Expecting perfect contact immediately. This drill often produces fat shots early because it exposes where your low point really is.
Placing the stick in the wrong position. If the shaft angle or location is off, the visual can become misleading. Take time to experiment.
Overdoing the “drop.” If the club gets excessively stuck behind you, you may start swinging too far from the inside or block the ball.

How This Fits Your Swing

This drill addresses a very specific problem: late steepening. Some golfers are reasonably good in transition, but as they approach impact they lose the delivery pattern and throw the club down too vertically. That usually shows up as fat shots, pulls, glancing contact, or a feeling that the club is always “on top” of the ball.

By tracing the shaft on the way down, you learn how the club should move through the delivery zone. More importantly, you learn how your body creates that path. The club does not shallow in isolation. It responds to your pivot, your side bend, and your wrist mechanics.

In the bigger picture, this drill helps you connect three important pieces:

Transition: starting the downswing with the proper sequence rather than throwing the club outward
Club path: delivering the club through a shallower, more functional approach into impact
Body motion: using rotation and tilt to support the club instead of steepening it late

If video shows that you get steep only near the bottom, this is a highly effective drill because it gives you a direct reference for the missing space. You are not just hearing “shallow the club”—you are seeing where the club needs to go and training your body to support it.

It is also a good reminder that there is more than one way to improve the look of the shaft. Some players need more side bend. Others need better ulnar deviation. Many need both. The drill helps you identify which ingredient is missing, because if one piece is absent, tracing the shaft becomes difficult.

Use this as a focused training tool, not as a permanent swing thought. Build the feel on short shots, improve your contact, and then let that better delivery pattern blend into your normal motion. When you do, you will have a shallower, more efficient strike without losing the body sequence that makes solid golf possible.