Nothing sours a great day on the course faster than the jarring thud of hitting the earth a full two inches behind your golf ball. That fat shot - the one that sends a divot farther than the ball - is one of the most common and confidence-draining misses in golf. This article will break down exactly why you’re hitting behind the ball with your irons and give you clear, actionable drills to change that thud back into a pure, compressed click.
Before we can fix the problem, we need to understand what’s actually happening. Hitting behind the ball, or hitting it "fat," has one simple cause: the lowest point of your swing's arc is happening before you reach the golf ball. Think of your iron swing as a giant hula hoop rotating around you. For a pure iron strike, you want the bottom-most part of that hoop - the "low point" - to occur just after the ball. This allows the club to strike the ball first and then take a divot from the turf in front of where the ball was.
When you hit it fat, that low point has shifted backward. The club bottoms out behind the ball, digs into the ground, loses all its speed, and then ineptly bounces up into the ball, resulting in a weak shot that goes nowhere. Every single cause of a fat shot is a factor that messes with the location of this low point. The good news? It’s completely fixable. Let’s look at the most common culprits and how to correct them.
This is, by a landslide, the #1 reason amateur golfers hit behind the ball. They make a great turn in the backswing, loading onto their trail side (the right side for a right-handed golfer), but then they fail to shift their weight forward onto their lead side during the downswing. The body is the engine of the golf swing, and when your weight hangs back, your body's a stationary engine. This inaction forces the low point of your swing to stay back with your weight - right behind the golf ball.
Many golfers do this because they subconsciously feel it will help them "lift" the ball into the air. In reality, it does the exact opposite, a point we'll revisit later. For now, remember this: a proper iron strike requires your weight moving toward the target.
This is a fantastic drill for ingraining the feeling of a proper weight transfer. It’s impossible to do it without getting your weight forward, making it a nearly perfect learning tool.
After a few swings, you’ll feel just how aggressively your weight and hips must move toward the target to make the drill work. This forward momentum naturally pulls the low point of your swing past the ball, promoting a crisp, ball-first strike.
This is another simple but often overlooked fundamental. Even with a perfect weight shift, if the ball is placed too far forward in your stance for the club you're hitting, your swing will naturally bottom out before it ever reaches the ball.
Think about it. We already established your low point should be just in front of your sternum (assuming you've shifted your weight correctly). If you've placed the ball way up by your lead toe, you're asking your swing to stay "down" for an impossible amount of time. It's an easy mistake to find yourself making, especially as you switch between different clubs in your bag.
A consistent setup is a huge factor for overall consistency. While there are slight variations, a simple guide for ball position with your irons will serve you well.
To check this, take your setup. Then, place a club or an alignment rod on the ground running from the center of your feet towards the ball. This will give you an objective, visual reference of where the ball is. Don't just trust your eyes, they can trick you. Make this part of your pre-shot routine at the range until it becomes second nature.
The human instinct when we want an object to go up is to scoop under it and lift it. This works for a shovel, but it’s a killer for a golf swing. Many struggling golfers see the ball on the grass and believe it's their job to help it into the air. They do this by "flipping" their wrists through impact, adding loft to the clubface in a scooping motion.
This scooping action might feel powerful, but it destroys solid contact. When you flip your wrists, your hands slow down and the clubhead races past them. This immediately shifts the low point of the swing behind the ball, causing either a fat shot or a thin "skulled" shot if you happen to catch the ball on the upswing. You have 14 clubs in your bag for a reason, they have loft built in to get the ball airborne. Your job is to hit down and let the club do the work.
This drill teaches you to lead with your hands and compress the golf ball, the true source of a pure iron feel. It removes the temptation to scoop.
The shot will come out low and powerful with a lot of spin. More importantly, you'll feel what it's like to keep the club's handle moving ahead of the club head, which is essential to controlling your low point and hitting the ball first.
Your setup influences everything that happens after. One common posture fault that leads to fat shots is leaning the spine away from the target at address. We often see this when a golfer puts their right hand lower on the grip, causing the right shoulder to drop and the whole upper body to tilt backwards.
When you start from this "tilted back" position, your body's center is already behind the ball. From here, returning to a good impact position requires a very complicated series of compensations. More often than not, the golfer just stays in this tilted position throughout the swing, which permanently plants their swing's low point behind the golf ball.
We want a setup that feels athletic and centered, or even slightly "on top" of the ball, ready to move forward. Here's a quick way to feel that.
Your upper and lower bodies should feel 'stacked' in a straight line. From this neutral, athletic position, you have a much better chance of shifting your weight correctly and allowing the club to bottom out in the right place.
Putting an end to fat iron shots boils down to controlling the low point of your swing. This is achieved by mastering a few fundamentals: getting your weight onto your lead side, putting the ball in the correct spot, delivering a downward strike by leading with your hands, and starting from a neutral, athletic setup. Focus on one of these areas at a time on the range, and you will begin to replace the frustrating sound of a fat shot with the satisfying click of true compression.
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