If you’re a beginner, an occasional golfer, or a player who is looking to improve, you’ve probably thought about your stance when standing over a golf ball, and if you haven’t, then you probably should start to consider it. What should a golf stance look like? Should you adopt a wide stance, a narrow stance, or something in between?
First things first, your stance shouldn’t be the same for every shot you hit, which if you stop to think about it makes perfect sense. You’re hardly going to adopt the same stance when hitting a driver as you would when hitting a lob wedge. They’re two totally different clubs that are hit completely differently. One is the longest club in the bag, that as an amateur you’ll probably hit anywhere between 200 and 300 yards, while the other is probably the shortest non-putting club that you’ll carry, a club that you will use to hit shots comfortably inside 100 yards. Therefore, the stances adopted for each club will naturally vary.
Obviously golf is an individual sport, and it’s important that each individual finds something that works for them, but it is generally accepted that the width of the golf stance depends on the club being hit. So, let’s look at the different stances as we move through the clubs typically found in a golfers bag.
Driver Stance
Let’s start by looking at how wide your stance should be when addressing the ball with a driver.
The driver is the big hitting club in the bag, the one you want to be hitting a solid distance with down the fairway to make your second shot as simple as possible. The driver is also longer than any of your other clubs, so you’ll want to adopt your widest stance when using the driver to accommodate what will be a wider swing. The general consensus is that you should stand with your feet a little bit outside of shoulder width. You may want to take this in or out slightly to create what is the most solid base for your driver swing, but working off a general rule of feet slightly wider than shoulder width is the place to start.
Long Irons/Woods Stance
It can be helpful to think in your mind that as you go through your clubs, starting with the driver, narrow your stance in accordance. So, for fairway woods and longer irons such as two or three irons, your stance should be slightly narrower than the stance you’ll take when standing over a shot with a driver. Remember, clubs like a five wood and three iron are still clubs at the longer end of the scale, so your feet need to be wide enough for you to create a solid enough base and avoid becoming off balance during your swing.
Mid to Short Irons
With your mid irons, which most golfers would consider to be four, five, six, and seven it’s best to start with a neutral stance, feet shoulder width apart. With your shorter irons, so eight, nine, and even pitching wedge, again, your stance should be about as wide as your shoulders if you’re looking to hit full shots with those clubs. However, if you’re looking to play something of a punch or a more controlled shot that requires less than a full swing with your eight, then try bringing your feet in slightly, just enough so that they’re a little bit narrower than shoulder width.
Wedges
If you’re looking to hit a full shot with one of your wedges, whether it’s a gap wedge, sand wedge or lob wedge, or any of the wedges that typically range in degrees from 50 degrees to 60, the best bet is to adopt a standard shoulder width stance. That said, if you’re looking to be creative, choke down on a shot, and generally manipulate the distance of a wedge shot so that you’re not hitting it as far as you physically can, you’ll want to do something stance wise. And the obvious thing to do is to narrow your stance according to how much distance you want to take off the shot. For example, let’s say you want to hit a nice easy shot into the green from 50 yards. Your position doesn’t require you to do anything special, it’s an easy enough shot, you just want to control the distance, and you can help yourself to do that by narrowing your feet so that they’re around a foot inside of each of your shoulders.
Stance around the greens
Now, here’s where the real variation tends to come in for an amateur player. When playing pitch or chip shots, there are many different stances that a player can adopt, mainly because there really is a multitude of different chip and pitch shots that can be played, each requiring something slightly address wise. But this isn’t an article on the intricacies of chipping and pitching. Stance wise, when playing chip or pitch shots, you’ll typically want to narrow your stance right down so that your feet are only a few inches apart. If you watch the pros, you’ll even notice that sometimes around the greens, they’ll even play shots with their feet together, so don’t be afraid to go too narrow as this will allow you to close things down in terms of distance and help you to control shots in an area where control is most important.
Putting stance
Putting stance is perhaps the stance in golf that is the most open to personal preference. When standing over a putt it really is about comfort and what feels good as much as anything else. For example, some players find that a wide putting stance helps them to produce their best and most consistent putting stroke, while others feel that a much narrower stance produces the best results. It’s really a case of trial and error. The best thing to do is to try various stances when using a putter. Get on the practice greens and play around with it, hit a series of putts using different stances and find the one that works for you.