Why and How to Get Your Hands Out in Front of the Golf Ball

The location of your hands during the golf swing is a critical piece of the overall puzzle. If you think about it, this makes sense – your hands are your only connection to the golf club, so it stands to reason that their positioning is going to play a big role in where the ball goes.

Put your hands in the right spot throughout the swing and you might be surprised to find how nicely everything else can fall into place.

In this article, we are going to talk about getting your hands out in front of the golf ball at impact. Professional golfers have this key fundamental down perfectly, but amateurs often struggle on this point.

If you want to achieve the descending blow that is so crucial for solid iron play, you’ll need to get your hands in front by the time impact arrives. Doing so can be a challenge, but we are here to help.

The Importance of Getting Your Hands in Front

There are a lot of differences between amateur golfers and the professionals you see playing on TV. Generally speaking, pros are better across the board at the various skills needed to play golf. And that makes sense, of course – they are the best players in the world! But one area where they tend to be significantly better than the average golfer is getting their hands in front and creating a downward hit. In fact, an experienced golf teacher can check the position of a player’s hands at impact and quickly assess that player’s ability.

You stand to gain in many ways from getting your hands in front, including the following points –

#1 Hitting Down Through Impact

It’s basically impossible to hit down through the ball if your hands are behind the ball when you make contact. If your hands are behind the ball at impact, the club is probably making its way back up away from the ground – meaning you are hitting up, not down.

This is extremely common in the amateur game. To break out of this habit and make nice divots that start even with the ball, you’ll need to get your hands out in front.

#2 Holding onto Your Lag

This is a big one. You want to hold your lag as far into the downswing as possible to create speed through the hitting area.

When your hands are in front at impact, you’ve likely done a good job of holding that lag and releasing it at the last moment.

#3 Creating Backspin

Many amateur golfers get frustrating with their inability to create sufficient backspin on their iron shots. Backspin not only helps you stop the ball quickly when it lands, but it also helps the ball climb into the air and fall softly onto the green.

While other factors like your equipment and the lie of the ball can impact spin rate, nothing plays a bigger role than hitting down through impact.

Finding the Right Hand Position

There is a lot you stand to gain from getting your hands out in front of the ball at impact, but how do you make it happen? That’s where it gets tricky.

If you have some troublesome fundamentals in your swing currently, you might struggle to get your hands in front at impact on a consistent basis.

#1 Setup position

A bad setup position is going to doom you to fail from the beginning. At address, your hands should be slightly in front of the ball – exactly where you want them to return when you make contact.

Also, make sure your left wrist (for a right-handed golfer) is in a relatively flat, firm position. If it is cupped at address, you’ll be more likely to flip your wrists in the downswing and scoop the ball instead of hitting down.

#2 Make a Great Backswing Turn

So much of what you want to accomplish in the golf swing comes down to making a great turn on the way back. Making a great shoulder turn in your backswing is going to position your body to swing down aggressively with plenty of power behind the club.

Players who struggle to turn all the way back usually use their hands too actively in the swing, which leads to flipping the club and not getting out in front at impact.

#3 Commit to the Downswing

Sometimes, it’s a mental mistake that stands in your way rather than a physical error. If you don’t trust your downswing and believe that you are going to make good contact, you’ll slow the club down and probably not get in front by the time you reach the ball. Once the swing starts, there is no turning back – just commit to it and swing all the way through to a full finish.

Practicing This Technique

As you might imagine, you probably aren’t going to learn how to get your hands out in front of the ball while playing on the course. This is one of those things you need to learn on the range first. There are a couple of quick tricks you can use to help yourself learn this skill as quickly as possible.

If you are practicing on a natural grass driving range, you can use your divots to monitor your progress. You should be making divots that start just after the position of the ball on the ground.

As a point of reference, you can stick a tee in the turf near the ball (but outside of the path of your club). If your divot starts just after where the tee is located, you are doing a good job of getting your hands in front and hitting down.

This gets a little tricky on an artificial turf mat where you won’t be taking a divot. However, some practice mats have alignment lines that you can use as a point of reference. Place the ball on one of those lines and try not to contact the mat until just after the line.

Your club will likely leave a little mark or scuff on the mat where it makes contact with the ground, so you can compare that mark with the position of the ball. This doesn’t work quite as well as it works on natural grass, but you can still make progress.

Getting your hands out in front of the ball with your full swing can help you make significant progress in your game. Not only will you hit the ball better from tee to green, but you may start to chip and pitch the ball better, as well.

Get to work right away and hopefully you’ll see results on the course in short order.