Why Do I Keep Hitting the Heel of My Golf Club?

That jarring, clunky sensation of the ball contacting the hosel - the dreaded heel strike - is one of the most frustrating feelings in golf. One moment you're picturing a purely struck iron shot, and the next, the ball is rocketing sideways. If this is happening to you, take a deep breath, it's an incredibly common issue, and more importantly, it's entirely fixable. This guide will walk you through exactly why you’re hitting the heel and give you simple, actionable drills to get you back to finding the sweet spot, consistently.

What Is a Heel Strike and Why Does It Happen?

Before we can fix it, we need to understand it. A heel strike occurs when the golf ball makes impact with the part of the clubhead nearest the shaft - an area called the hosel. When the contact is extremely severe, it’s often called a shank. While there are a few potential swing flaws that can lead to this miss, they all boil down to one simple, overarching theme:

At the moment of impact, your hands and clubhead are closer to the golf ball than they were when you set up at address.

That's it. At some point during your downswing, you’re moving your body, hands, or the club itself forward, into the space that the ball occupies. This movement pushes the sweet spot past the ball, leaving the heel to make contact. Our job is to figure out *what* movement in your swing is causing this forward lunge and retrain it with a better, more stable motion.

Let's look at the most common culprits and how to correct them.

Common Cause #1: Standing Too Far From the Ball at Address

It sounds counterintuitive, but standing too far from the ball can actually cause you to hit closer to the heel. When you reach for the ball at address, your weight is often distributed incorrectly, usually onto your toes. From this slightly off-balance position, your body’s natural instinct is to stabilize itself during the powerful motion of a golf swing. How does it do that? By moving forward and into the shot, correcting the initial imbalance.

This forward lunge pushes your arms and the club away from your body, directly toward the ball, leading to that ugly heel connection. A proper setup creates a stable foundation that allows you to rotate freely without losing your balance.

The Fix: The Natural Arm Hang Drill

This is a fundamental check every golfer should do to find their ideal distance from the ball. A good setup has your arms hanging naturally and relaxed from your shoulders.

1. Stand up straight, feet shoulder-width apart, while holding a golf club across your chest.
2. Start the posture bend by hinging from your hips, pushing your bottom backward as if you were about to sit in a chair. Keep your back relatively straight.
3. Bend forward until the club you’re holding on your chest points directly down at the balls of your feet. Let your arms hang straight down from your shoulders.
4. Wherever your hands are naturally hanging' that is where the grip of the club should be. Bring the clubhead down to the ground from that position. This a neutral, athletic stance where you don’t need to reach for the ball.

From this position, you'll feel balanced and stable over the middle of your feet, not your toes. It gives your body a stable platform to rotate around, rather than an unstable one it needs to recover from.

Common Cause #2: Early Extension (The Hip Thrust)

This is probably the single biggest cause of heel strikes among amateur golfers. Early extension is when you lose your spine angle during the downswing. Instead of rotating your hips and torso through the shot while maintaining your setup posture, your hips and pelvis thrust forward towards the golf ball.

This "hip thrust" forces your entire body to stand up, which again, shoves your hands and club outward and away from you. This motion not only ruins your swing plane but also completely changes the distance between you and the ball, leaving the heel of the club path fatally exposed. Golfers often do this in a misguided effort to generate power or "help" the ball into the air, but all it does is prevent clean contact.

The Fix: The Backside Against the Wall Drill

This is the classic drill to cure early extension because it gives you immediate physical feedback when you make the wrong move.

1. Find a wall or use your golf bag. Get into your address posture with your backside just lightly touching the wall or bag.
2. Take slow, controlled practice swings. Your goal is to keep your backside in contact with the wall throughout the backswing and, most importantly, through the initial part of the downswing.
3. As you rotate through where impact would be, your left glute should remain on the wall as your right glute rotates away from it. After your hands have passed your hips, your whole body will naturally rotate and your backside will come off of it into the finish.
4. If your hips thrust forward and both cheeks come off the wall too early, you know you’re extending early. Focus on the sensation of rotating your hips around, not pushing them forward.

This drill trains your body to use rotation as its power source, exactly like the golf swing demands.

Common Cause #3: Weight Drifting Onto Your Toes

Closely related to setup, your weight distribution throughout the swing has a massive impact on strike quality. If your weight starts on your toes at address, or if it moves there during your backswing or downswing, your body will react by pushing forward to stay upright. Think about it: if you were standing on your tiptoes and someone gave you a slight nudge, you’d stumble forward. The forces generated in a golf swing are like a massive nudge.

When that forward stumble happens, even on a micro-level, your path shifts outward and you get a heeled shot. A powerful, repeatable swing happens from a grounded, stable base.

The Fix: The Toes-Up Drill

This drill forces you to feel what proper balance is like by taking your toes completely out of the equation. You can't be on your toes if they're in the air!

1. Set up to a golf ball as you normally would.
2. Before starting your swing, pull the toes of both feet up inside your shoes, so all your weight is on the heels and middle part of your feet. You should feel remarkably stable.
3. Take a few half-swings, keeping your toes up the entire time. The goal is just to make contact with the ball.
4. You'll immediately feel how this anchors your lower body, preventing any forward lurching and encouraging proper rotation. After hitting a few shots like this, go back to your normal stance, but try to recreate that same sensation of being "settled back" and centered over your feet.

Common Cause #4: An "Over-the-Top" Swing Path

An "over-the-top" move is when your first move in the downswing is driven by your right shoulder and arms (for a right-handed golfer), throwing the club outside of the ideal swing plane. This causes the club to travel on an aggressive "out-to-in" path relative to the target line.

When the club approaches the ball from this steep, outside angle, the part of the clubhead that gets to the ball first is often the heel. The proper downswing sequence involves starting the movement from the ground up - with a slight shift of the lower body, followed by the unwinding of the torso and, finally, the arms and club.

The Fix: The Two-Ball or Headcover Gate Drill

This drill provides a clear visual and physical consequence for coming over the top, training you to swing from the inside.

1. Address your golf ball as normal.
2. Take a second golf ball (or a headcover, or an empty water bottle) and place it about 4-6 inches outside and slightly in front of your intended ball.
3. The goal is simple: hit the inside ball without touching the outside one.
4. If you make an over-the-top move, you will inevitably hit the outer ball first. To miss it, you are forced to drop the club into the "slot" on the downswing and approach the ball from a shallower, inside path - eliminating the heel strike and promoting a powerful draw.

Final Thoughts

Hitting the heel of the club is a signal that your hands and clubhead are moving closer to the ball at impact than they were at setup. The root cause is almost always a loss of posture or balance, whether it stems from starting too far from the ball, early extension in the hips, unstable weight on your toes, or an over-the-top swing path.

Uncovering the precise cause of a swing fault on your own can be a guessing game, and that's precisely why we designed Caddie AI. It acts as your on-demand golf coach, giving you clarity when you feel lost. If you're hitting it off the heel, you can describe the problem to Caddie and instantly get personalized a diagnosis and the right drill to fix it. It helps you stop guessing and start practicing the right thing, so you can groove a better swing and get back to enjoying the game.