long irons

ive heard someone say your ball for long irons should be a little more to your left heel than your short irons (right hand golfer)this might sound daft but what clubs are long irons,i know 2,3,4, are but is 5,6 or are these in short iron position thanks

Irons 1-4 are considered long irons, 5-7 are mid irons, and 8-PW are short irons.

There's 2 schools of thought on ball placement.

One is that your feet are static (the go in the same place every time) and the ball moves - inside the left heel for woods, one ball width back for long irons, another back for mid irons, and slightly ahead of the middle of the stance for short irons (and right in the middle for wedges).

The other is that the ball is static (lined up with your heart), and your stance gets more and more narrow as you progress - the logic being that the longer clubs require a more stable base (wider feet), and as you progress through your clubs, your stance gets more narrow.

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thanks for clearing that up,i keep the ball in same position just widen and shorten my stance.

Sparko

I always go by Jack Nicklaus' advice which is to always play the ball in the same place for every club.

Of course he also says to adjust your flight you can move it back and forth. For a higher flying shot play it a bit further forwards, for a lower flight play it back.

You will also find that playing the ball farther forward reduces any left to right action and vice versa for playing it further back. Whenever I start hitting the hook, I move the ball back in the stance to make sure I havent let it creep forwards, a big fault of mines.
D.

That's odd Mizuno - when my ball positions starts going high and forward, I lose balls to the right, too far back, they go low and left.

Theres no real technical explanation in that last post I'm afraid its just the way it is LowPost, I found it out basically by trial and error, I was actually trying to generate more action on the ball by moving it a little bit back so I would hit the ball with a more descending blow and noticed that my right to left shape was less pronounced when I moved the ball back. We obviously differ in our swing paths.....its a very good example of how theres more than one way to hit the ball though. I would imagine you might have a flatter swing than me if thats the case, I dunno, probably Graham could explain it better.

D.

Hey think i'm with you on that mizunoman, if i've hooked or badly drawn an iron then i check the ball position and yep its been a bit too far forward. Moving back in the stance has heped me create backspin too. Although if I go at it too hard (say belt a 6 when an easy 5 could have done it) it hooks no matter were the ball is in my stance, guess that is my hands turning over too early?

You're probably right, Mizuno - I had a very flat swing and played the ball too far forward early on last year.

Now that my swing is quite steep (compared to what it was), and I've moved the ball back in my stance (overall), I'll have to see what happens if I place the ball forward (it would make sense that it would hook, as your swing is now coming back inside, and the clubface should be closed forward in the swing - in a proper in-square-in swing).