Learn Proper Alignment Technique On The Range

Brad Ott: Hi, this is Brad Ott, Director of Instruction here at TPC Craig Ranch.

What I'd like to talk to you about today is about alignment.

Now, alignment's a little bit different than what a lot of people think, and I get a lot of alignment questions.

There's several things to consider when you're talking about alignment.

Today we're going to talk about a couple of basic ones, something you can implement into your daily practice routine that's going to allow you to master your alignment. What I have is I have two sticks here.

You can get these sticks at hardware stores.

A lot of golf stores have them, so they're real easily to find.

What you're going to do is you're going to have a stick for your body line and you're going to have a stick for your target line.

Now, a couple things to consider with your target line, let's talk about that one first. Target line encompasses a couple things.

It encompasses the club face, and it encompasses the path.

What do I mean by that? When you're setting up to these sticks you want to make sure that your club face is square to this line.

As you set it in your scoring edge ...

That first line on the groove line is actually called the scoring edge.

You want to make that perpendicular to the stick.

Whenever you set it in don't just put your club in here and just assume that it's square, make sure that that line is dead square with your alignment stick. Another component to path, when you're taking it back you want to make sure that club works along that stick line for at least the first foot of the golf swing.

We all know the club works on a plane, so it's going to come in, it's going to eventually come on the inside.

The first foot back and the first foot through should be relatively square, you want to try and keep your path square. As far as the body line goes, what you're trying to do is you're trying to get your feet parallel.

You'll set these sticks up.

I get my best view when I do this from well back behind the target, so sometimes I'll stand as far as 10 yards behind, try and get these lines parallel.

Once I get that set up you want to make sure that your feet are parallel. A couple things to look at, not only feet, you want knees and hips to be parallel.

What I'll see a lot is I'll see sometimes I'll see feet parallel, but I'll see a knee here.

All that is is one of your knees are bent more than the other, so make sure the knees are equal so that you can have your knees square. Once you do that you get your club face square, you get your knees, feet square, and you start to get your path square, that ball's eventually going to start going straight as long as you have a fairly good path on the way back, on the way through.

You don't have to have to have a perfect golf swing, sometimes you can get it offline.

If you can keep everything relatively square through the impact area I think what you'll find is that ball will eventually start heading right down that line.

You'll see the ball go pretty straight.

Work on not only your target line, work on your body line.

Make sure that club face is square, make sure the path is square, make sure the feet, knees, and hips are square.

If you do that I think you're going to find yourself hitting a lot more greens than fairways.