Golf Smart Academy
If your arms get too steep in the release, this drill teaches you how to shallow them without relying on extra body motion to save the club. Many golfers can make the club look better from a normal stance by adding side bend, standing up, or using rotation to reroute the shaft late. The problem is that this often masks what the arms are actually doing. The feet together shallowing drill takes away much of that compensation and forces you to organize the club with your arms and forearms more efficiently. It is especially useful if you tend to rotate the lead arm too far open or fail to unhinge the club properly through the release zone.
How the Drill Works
When you bring your feet together, your base of support becomes much smaller. That means you cannot aggressively slide, tilt, or side bend to rescue a steep shaft without losing balance. In a wider stance, you may be able to use your body to shallow the club late. With your feet together, those options are reduced, so the drill exposes whether your arms are truly delivering the club on a better pitch.
The key arm match-up is simple: as the club moves down, you want the trail elbow to work more underneath the lead arm rather than climbing on top of it. If the trail elbow gets too high and out in front, the shaft tends to steepen and the club’s leading edge often arrives in a harsher, less forgiving way. If the trail elbow stays more tucked and the forearms align better, the club approaches the ball with a shallower, more playable delivery.
This is not a full-speed power drill. It works best with short 9-to-3 swings, where the club travels from about waist high in the backswing to waist high in the follow-through. That smaller motion lets you feel the arm structure clearly without the noise of a full-motion swing.
Step-by-Step
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Set up with your feet together. Place your feet close enough that your balance feels challenged but stable. Use a short iron or wedge to start.
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Make a small backswing. Keep the motion to a controlled 9-to-3 length. You are not trying to hit a full shot.
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Start down without using your body as the fix. Because your feet are together, avoid trying to add a lot of side bend or a sudden stand-up move. Let the arms organize the club.
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Feel the trail elbow work under. In the downswing and release area, sense that your right elbow is moving more underneath your left arm rather than over the top of it.
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Let the club shallow naturally. As the forearms and elbow align better, the shaft should feel less vertical and the clubhead should approach the ball more from the inside with less digging.
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Hit soft shots and monitor contact. Solid contact is the goal. If the club is still steep, you will often notice a sharper strike or less forgiving turf interaction.
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Repeat until the arm position becomes familiar. Use several slow, balanced reps before increasing speed.
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Blend the same feel into a normal stance. Once the arm motion improves, widen your stance and make the same 9-to-3 swing. Then gradually build toward fuller swings without losing the shallowing pattern.
What You Should Feel
This drill should give you a much clearer sense of where your arms are in space relative to the ball. Because your body cannot bail you out as easily, the sensations are usually more obvious than they are in a full swing.
- Trail elbow lower, not higher through the release area
- Less need to save the club with torso tilt or late body manipulation
- Better forearm alignment as the club approaches impact
- More centered balance during the strike
- Softer, more solid contact instead of a glancing or steep hit
A useful checkpoint is whether you can maintain balance while making crisp contact. If you have to lunge, tilt excessively, or pop up to reach the ball, the club is probably still being delivered with the wrong pattern. When you do it correctly, the motion feels simpler and the strike usually sounds better immediately.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Trying to hit the ball too hard. This is a precision drill, not a power drill. Excess speed usually brings back the same compensations you are trying to remove.
- Using too much body tilt. If you try to side bend aggressively with your feet together, you will often lose your balance.
- Standing up through impact. Some golfers replace one compensation with another by raising the handle and chest too early.
- Letting the trail elbow get on top. That is the steep pattern the drill is designed to expose.
- Making the swing too long. A full backswing adds complexity and makes it harder to isolate the release pattern.
- Ignoring contact quality. The drill is not just about appearance. Better arm shallowing should produce better strike conditions.
How This Fits Your Swing
This drill helps you separate an arm issue from a body-driven compensation. If you can shallow the arms and strike the ball well with your feet together, then you know the pattern is available to you. From there, your job is to preserve that same delivery as you add speed and a normal stance.
If the motion looks good in the drill but disappears in your full swing, that tells you something important: the real problem may not be your arm awareness at all. It may be the way your body is powering the swing. In other words, once speed enters the picture, your engine may be throwing the club out of position.
That is why this drill is so valuable. It does more than give you a feel—it helps diagnose the source of the steepness. If you improve immediately with your feet together, you have learned the correct arm motion. If it falls apart only when you add body speed, then your next step is learning how to rotate, shift, and release without forcing the shaft back into a steep delivery.
Used the right way, the feet together drill becomes a bridge. It teaches you how the arms should shallow in the release, then lets you carry that awareness into your stock swing. Start with short, balanced swings, build the right forearm and elbow relationship, and then gradually test whether that same structure holds up as the motion gets bigger and faster.
