How to Stop Dipping in a Golf Swing

If you’ve ever topped a shot that barely scuffs the grass or hit a tee shot so fat you take a bigger divot than your local gopher, you’ve likely dealt with a common and frustrating swing killer: dipping. This unwanted vertical drop can make crisp, powerful contact feel like pure luck. We're going to break down why you dip and, more importantly, give you a few simple, practical drills to maintain your height and build a consistent, stable golf swing.

What is Dipping (and Why is it Wrecking Your Swing)?

Dipping is exactly what it sounds like: your head and torso drop down vertically during your swing. It usually happens in the backswing as you turn away from the ball, but it can also occur as you start your downswing. Think about it for a second. The bottom of your swing arc is a precise point in space that an iron needs to find just after the ball. Now imagine trying to hit that tiny point while your entire upper body is moving up and down. It turns a repeatable motion into a high-stakes timing challenge.

When you dip on the backswing, your body knows it’s too low. To make solid contact, it has to stand up through impact. If your timing is perfect, you might catch one pure. But if you stand up too little? That’s a fat shot, where the club bottoms out behind the ball. If you stand up too much or too quickly? You'll hit a miserably thin or topped shot. This up-and-down movement not only ruins your consistency but also robs you of power by disrupting the efficient transfer of energy from your body's rotation into the club.

The Root Cause: Why You Dip in the First Place

Understanding why you dip is половина the battle. It’s rarely a random act, it's almost always a reaction to a faulty thought or a physical limitation in your swing. Let's look at the three main culprits.

1. The Misguided Urge to "Help" the Ball Up

This is probably the most common cause for new and high-handicap golfers. We look at a ball sitting on the ground and feel an instinctual need to get under it to pop it up into the air. This makes us lower our body, trying to scoop the ball. The reality is, your golf clubs are designed with loft to do the work for you. A 7-iron is built to launch the ball at a 7-iron trajectory. Your only job is to deliver that clubface to the back of the ball with a descending strike. Thinking "hit down to make the ball go up" is a complete game-changer and immediately combats the mental urge to dip.

2. A Lack of Proper Rotation

The golf swing is fundamentally a turn, not a lift. Power comes from your body coiling and uncoiling. When golfers struggle to rotate their hips and shoulders properly, the body searches for an alternative way to create a feeling of "loading up" for the downswing. One of the easiest compensations is to simply drop down. If your hips don’t turn away from the target but instead stay relatively quiet, the only way your shoulders can get into a "loaded" position is by tilting and dropping. A good swing feels like a turning spring, not a bouncing one.

3. Losing Your Posture Angles

At address, you create intentional angles with your body - a tilt forward with your spine and a certain amount of flex in your knees. A consistent swing maintains these angles incredibly well. Dipping is a direct failure to maintain them. The most frequent way this happens is by adding too much knee flex in the trail leg during the backswing. Instead of the right hip (for right-handers) turning behind you while the knee maintains its flex, the golfer squats, causing the whole upper body to descend with it. Maintaining your posture feels athletic and powerful, collapsing it feels unbalanced and weak.

Three Drills to Erase Dipping and Build a Stable Swing

Reading about the problem is easy, fixing it requires getting some feedback and ingraining a new feeling. These three drills are excellent for giving you that specific feedback you need to stop dipping for good.

Drill 1: The Head-on-the-Wall Backswing Drill

This is the classic drill for stability, and it gives you undeniable feedback on whether or not your head is moving vertically. It shows you what it feels like to rotate without any up-or-down movement.

• Setup: Get into your golf posture without a club, about six inches away from a wall. Your backside should face the wall. Tilt forward until the top of your head is lightly touching the wall.
• Execution: Cross your arms over your chest and begin making slow backswings. Focus on rotating your shoulders and hips away from your imaginary ball. Your primary goal is to keep the same light pressure on the wall with your head.
• What You'll Feel: If you dip, you'll feel your head press harder into the wall. If you stand up, it will pull away from the wall. Correct execution means feeling your core and hips turn while your head stays perfectly still vertically. Your head will pivot slightly as you turn, but it shouldn't go down or up. Once you can do it without a club, try it with slow, short swings with a 9-iron.

Drill 2: Maintain Your Trail Leg Flex

This drill helps you combat the tendency to "squat" into your backswing, which is a major dipping source. It teaches you to load into your trail hip, not your trail knee.

• Setup: Stand in your golf setup. Take an alignment stick or even another golf club and place it in the ground just outside of your trail foot (your right foot for a right-handed golfer). The stick should be angled so that it lightly touches or is just a fraction of an inch away from your trail hip.
• Execution: Make smooth backswings. Your swing thought should be "turn my right hip back and away." You want to turn so that your right hip moves off the alignment stick.
• What You'll Feel: If you sway instead of turn, you’ll push the stick over. If you dip by over-flexing your right knee, your hip will drop downward and away from the stick. A proper turn keeps your knee flex stable and rotates your hip away from the stick, effectively moving it back and slightly up. This is the feeling of creating a stable platform to push off from in the downswing. */

Drill 3: The Shaft Across the Shoulders Turn

Sometimes, we just don't know what a good turn feels like. This drill gives you an incredible visual to understand what it means to rotate on a plane instead of bobbing up and down.

• Setup: Get into your normal golf posture. Take a club or an alignment stick and hold it across your chest and shoulders, gripping it firmly with crossed arms.
• Execution: Rotate back as if you're making a backswing. Now, look down and check the angle of the shaft.
• What You'll See: If you have dipped, the shaft will be pointing very sharply down toward the ground, almost level. You have lost your spine angle. A correct, powerful turn maintains your spine tilt, and the shaft will be pointing down at the ground well behind where the ball would be. This visual distinction is massive. It shows you the difference between a flat, dipping turn and a steep, powerful coil around your spine.

Putting It All Together on the Range

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with these feelings, it’s time to take them to the range. Don’t start by trying to make full swings at full speed. That’s a recipe for reverting to old habits. Start with gentle, 50% speed swings. Your only thought should be one of the feels from the drills you just did. For some, "keep my head still" is perfect. For others, "turn my right hip back" works better. It doesn't matter which one you pick, what matters is committing to the new feeling. As it starts to feel more natural, you can slowly increase the speed until the new, stable rotation is your default move.

Final Thoughts

Eliminating a dip from your swing is about learning to trust your mechanics. It’s about fighting the instinct to lift the ball and replacing it with a full, stable body rotation. Practicing these drills will help you build that muscle memory, leading to more consistent contact and, ultimately, more confidence over every shot.

While these drills provide terrific feedback, sometimes breaking a deep-seated habit requires another pair of eyes to see what you can’t feel. As we develop new tools to help golfers, that external feedback is more accessible than ever. For example, my app, Caddie AI, allows you to analyze your swing at any time, pinpointing posture changes or rotation issues. You can get instant analysis and ask for custom drills designed for your specific fault, giving you the expert guidance of a coach right in your pocket, 24/7.