Find the center of your stance for better contact with your irons

Welcome to Shaving Strokes, a GOLF.com series where the game’s brightest minds share their tips to help you, well, shave strokes! Today, GOLF Top 100 Teacher Joe Plecker explains how to find the center of your stance and hit more crisp approach shots.

Everyone wants to flag their irons like the pros do, but most don’t understand where to even start in that pursuit. Obviously, you want to get out to the range to groove your swing — but what exactly should you be working on?

A good place to start is understanding where the true center of your stance is and why it’s so important for solid contact. In the text below, GOLF Top 100 teacher Joe Plecker shows a quick way to find that center and explains how it can help you hit more solid iron shots.

Find your true center

Having the ball centered under your sternum is the true center of the stance. Playing the ball too far forward or back of the center can cause poor contact and shots starting offline. If you want to hit consistently crisp shots with your irons, you need to find this true center.

The true center of the stance aligns with your sternum. To get a feel for this standing over the ball, hang a golf club from the grip end from the center of your chest, right over your sternum. The shaft should hang like a pendulum. 

Check out the photo at above to see what I mean.

From here, take your stance and keep your sternum and chest in place over the ball throughout the swing. This will ensure proper contact with your irons.

Begin practicing this with moderate swing speeds — not the fastest you can swing. Notice how the contact feels on the face of the club and where the divot occurs. If done correctly, you will get more centered strikes and a divot slightly ahead of ball.