Golf Smart Academy
If you start shanking the ball, it often feels like the club suddenly has a mind of its own. One swing sends the ball off the hosel, and before long you are searching for a miracle fix. In many cases, though, the problem is much simpler: your low point has drifted too far away from you. This is not just a fat-or-thin issue. It is also a heel-toe contact issue. A simple “bowling alley” drill can help you see exactly where the club is striking the ground and retrain solid contact fast.
What low point really means for heel-toe contact
Most golfers think of low point as the place where the club bottoms out in relation to the target line—too far behind the ball and you hit it fat, too far forward and you may catch it thin. But low point also matters toward and away from you. That is the key idea in this drill.
If the club is bottoming out too far away from your body, the heel gets dangerously close to the ball. That is when shanks show up. If the club bottoms out a little closer to you, contact shifts more toward the center or even the toe, which is usually much safer.
Think of it like a bowling lane. If your strike point keeps moving toward the outside gutter, you are in trouble. The goal is to learn how to keep the club’s low point in a better lane—closer to the inside line instead of drifting outward.
Why golfers often shank the ball after making “better” swing changes
One of the frustrating parts of shanks is that they sometimes appear when you are actually trying to improve your motion.
Many amateur golfers have a common pattern:
- They stand up through impact.
- They use a flip release through the ball.
- The arms often bend and pull inward after impact.
Those patterns are not ideal for compression or consistency, but they often make it harder to shank the ball. Why? Because standing up can pull the clubhead inward toward your feet, and flipping can also move the club more inside through the strike.
Now suppose you start improving your swing. You maintain posture better. You extend through the ball instead of dumping the angles early. Those are good changes. But if your body or arms move incorrectly while doing them, the club can suddenly start traveling farther away from you through impact. The result is heel contact, and sometimes a full-blown shank.
That is why this issue can feel so confusing. You may not be getting worse. You may simply need to recalibrate where the club is striking the ground.
The low point bowling alley drill
This drill gives you immediate visual feedback. Instead of guessing where the club is bottoming out, you can see it.
How to set it up
Create two parallel lines on the ground, just wide enough to form a narrow “lane” for the clubhead. You can do this several ways:
- Use spray paint on a practice area if allowed.
- Use Dr. Scholl’s foot spray for a temporary line.
- On grass, lightly scratch two lines with a tee.
At address, place the clubhead so it sits roughly in the middle of the two lines. That space between the lines is your bowling alley.
What you are looking for
Make a practice swing and check where the divot or brush mark appears.
- If the divot is in the middle of the lane, your low point is centered well.
- If the divot hits the outside line or beyond it, the club is bottoming out too far away from you.
- If the divot favors the inside line, the club is working closer to you, which is often the better correction for a shank pattern.
This is what makes the drill so useful. It turns an invisible problem into something you can measure in one swing.
Why the outside line is the danger zone
When you shank the ball, the club is usually reaching the ground too far from your body. That pushes the hosel toward the ball instead of the sweet spot.
On full swings, the heel is less forgiving than the toe. A slight toe strike may lose a little ball speed, but it usually still flies. A heel strike can be far more destructive, especially if it turns into a hosel rocket.
That is why this drill is not just about making prettier divots. It is about moving your strike pattern away from the most dangerous part of the clubface.
If you tend to erase the outside line with your practice swings, you have strong evidence that your low point is drifting outward. Until that changes, the shank is always lurking.
The movement patterns that push low point outward
Several body motions can send the club too far away from you through impact.
Moving your weight toward the golf ball
If your pressure shifts into your toes or your body lunges closer to the ball, the club’s bottom arc also moves outward. Even a small move toward the ball can be enough to turn a centered strike into a heel strike.
Straightening the trail arm too early
If your trail arm drives outward too soon, it can push the club away from you. Instead of the clubhead staying on a controlled path, it gets shoved toward the ball line and beyond.
Losing heel pressure
A simple but helpful feel is to stay more in your heels instead of letting your balance run toward your toes. That does not mean leaning backward. It means keeping your pressure organized so the body does not crowd the ball.
When you combine better heel pressure with keeping the trail arm bent a little longer, the club often starts striking the ground closer to the inside line.
The best correction: train “inside gutter balls”
If you are shanking the ball, trying to hit perfect center contact right away is often too ambitious. A better strategy is to intentionally bias the strike toward the toe for a while.
In bowling terms, you are trying to throw inside gutter balls.
That means your goal is to make the club strike the ground near the inside line of the bowling alley. If you do that, you move the low point away from the shank pattern and toward a safer strike.
This is an important idea: when you are battling heel contact, a little toe bias is not a problem. It is often the cure.
How to rehearse it
- Set up with the clubhead centered between the two lines.
- Make a practice swing trying to brush or divot the inside line.
- Check the result.
- Repeat until you can consistently miss the outside line entirely.
At first, you may feel like you are exaggerating. In fact, your attempt to hit the inside line may only move the divot back to the middle. That is normal. It tells you your feel and your real motion are not yet matched. The drill helps you close that gap.
Why this feedback works so quickly
Most golfers do not have a clear sense of where the club is contacting the turf in the toward-and-away dimension. They know when the shot is bad, but they do not know what changed.
This drill gives you instant feedback on two things:
- Where the club is bottoming out
- What body feels produce that strike location
As you practice, you begin to connect certain sensations with better contact. You may notice that when you stay more balanced in your heels, the divot shifts inward. You may notice that when the trail arm stays softer longer, the outside line survives. Those are the kinds of discoveries that make the fix stick.
Without feedback, you are guessing. With feedback, you are calibrating.
How to use this on the course
One of the best features of this concept is that you can apply it during a round, even without a practice station.
If you start shanking the ball on the course, find a visual edge on the ground—something like the border between fairway and rough. Use that edge as your outside line.
Then make a few rehearsal swings and notice what happens:
- If your club keeps clipping the outside grass, your low point is still too far away from you.
- If you can rehearse swings that stay inside that edge, you are moving back toward a playable strike pattern.
For the rest of the round, you may need to feel like you are setting up to hit the ball more off the toe and swinging toward the inside line. That may not produce perfect contact, but it can absolutely get you back to solid shots.
When you are in survival mode on the course, that is enough. You do not need a complete swing rebuild mid-round. You just need a way to stop sending the club into the outside gutter.
How this relates to fat and thin shots
This drill is primarily for heel-toe contact, especially shanks, but it still improves your overall awareness of low point. The more control you have over where the club strikes the ground, the easier it becomes to clean up contact in general.
Fat and thin shots happen more along the target-line direction of low point. Shanks happen more in the toward-and-away direction. They are different problems, but they are connected by the same larger skill: controlling where the club bottoms out.
That is why this drill is so valuable. It teaches you that low point is not one-dimensional. Great ball-strikers control both where the club hits the turf forward and back and where it hits the turf in and out.
How to apply this in practice
When you practice this drill, keep it simple and objective.
- Create your two-line bowling alley.
- Start with practice swings, not full-speed shots.
- Check whether the divot or brush mark favors the inside, middle, or outside line.
- If you are hitting the outside line, feel more pressure in your heels and keep the trail arm bent a bit longer.
- Train yourself to hit inside gutter balls until the outside line is no longer in play.
- Then add a ball and keep the same intention.
If your contact improves, you know the low point calibration was the issue. If you still struggle, that usually means there is another shank-related pattern involved, but this drill is still the right starting point because it tells you exactly what the club is doing at the ground.
The big takeaway is simple: if you are shanking the ball, do not just think about the clubface. Look at where the club is striking the turf. When you learn to control low point toward and away from you, you give yourself a practical, reliable way to move contact off the heel and back toward the center of the face.
