Fat and thin shots feel like two different problems. They are not. They come from one thing: the bottom of your swing arc lands in the wrong place. Fix that, and both mishits disappear together. Let me show you how.
Why do I keep hitting it fat AND thin in the same round?
Because you are chasing your own tail. Here is the trap I see almost every week on the range. You hit one fat, the club digging into the turf before the ball. It feels heavy and short, so on the next swing your hands lift a little to “save” the ball into the air. Now you catch it thin, and it shoots low and hot. So you hit down harder to stop that. And you chunk it fat again.
A lot of new golfers describe this exact cycle to me, and it drives them a bit crazy. One golfer with a few years of play told me the unpredictable days were worse than always doing one miss, because every swing needed a different guess. That feeling is real, and it points straight to the true cause. You are not fighting two faults. You are fighting one, and correcting it with another fault on top.
What is the ’low point’ — and why does it control everything?
The low point is the very bottom of your swing arc — the spot where the clubhead reaches the ground. With an iron, you want that spot to be in front of the ball, on the target side. That way the club meets the ball first, then brushes the grass. Ball first, turf second. This is the clean, compressed strike you love the feel of.
When the low point sits behind the ball, everything goes wrong. If the club reaches the ground too early and hits it before the ball, that is fat. If it bottoms out early but is already rising by the time it reaches the ball, it catches the ball high on the equator — thin. Same early low point. Two different-looking misses.
What causes the low point to end up behind the ball?
Your body decides where the low point falls, mostly through the centre of your chest. Coaches call it the sternum. If your chest is still behind the ball at impact, the low point is behind the ball. Slide your chest forward of the ball through impact, and the low point moves forward with it. Simple idea, big result.
Three body movements pull that low point backward:
- Weight stuck on the back foot. Motion-capture studies show amateurs who hit it fat still carry weight on the trail foot at the top of the backswing, and never finish shifting forward. Tour players are already centred at the top, so they can drive forward through the ball.
- Early extension. This is the hips thrusting toward the ball on the downswing. The Titleist Performance Institute finds it in roughly two-thirds of amateurs. It stands your spine up, lifts your hands, and throws the low point behind the ball.
- Sliding the hips instead of turning them. When your lead hip slides toward the target instead of rotating, the club bottoms out early.
That last one is sneaky because a small weight shift is good. In one Rick Shiels lesson, a student combined an inside swing path with a big lateral slide to the left, and the club dug behind the ball every single time. The fix was not the arms. He turned his hips instead of sliding them, and the low point moved forward on its own.
What setup changes help right away?
Start before you even swing. Ball position matters more than most people think. Too far forward in your stance, and the club is already rising when it arrives — thin. Too far back, and you catch it fat. For a mid-iron, put the ball slightly ahead of centre, your chest over it, and your hands just a fraction in front of the clubhead.
Jack Nicklaus had a lovely trick here: hover the club a touch above the grass at address instead of resting it on the turf. When the club sits grounded, it invites a heavy, fat hit. Hover it, and the swing’s own momentum brings it down to the ball cleanly. Try it — it feels strange for two swings, then it feels free.
Which drills actually fix fat and thin shots?
These are the ones I use first with my students, and they need no launch monitor.
The towel drill. Fold a towel and lay it about four inches behind the ball. Make your swings. If the club touches the towel, your low point is too early. This gives you honest feedback on every single swing — you feel it instantly.
The chalk line on concrete. Adam Young has players draw an X on a hard surface and try to clip it. Almost everyone discovers they bottom out three or four inches behind the mark. There is a real gap between where you think the low point is and where it truly is. Seeing that gap changes how you practise.
The three-tee drill. Line up three balls, on tees going from high, to medium, to ground level. Master the high one, then the medium, then the turf. Each lower tee pushes your low point forward a little more, one step at a time.
The step drill. As you take the club back, let your lead foot step in toward your trail foot. As you start down, step it back and swing through. That footwork forces your weight to move forward in the right order, and the low point follows.
Small steps like these win. On the range at Chi Chi Golf in Utrecht, this is exactly the order I coach — feedback first, then footwork.
How do tour pros strike the ball differently at impact?
They arrive at the ball with their weight forward and their wrists firm. On iron shots, professionals have around 85–90% of their weight on the front foot at impact. Amateurs who chunk it? Often only 60–65%. That single difference moves the low point forward and puts the ball first.
Butch Harmon gives two quick feels for this. First, a small “bump” onto your front foot on the downswing, so your chest sits over the ball. Second, at impact the back of your top hand faces the target — like a firm tennis backhand — instead of scooping up to the sky. That scooping, by the way, is the number one cause of fat and thin chips too. If your short game suffers from the same lift, my guide on clean chipping without scooping uses the same descending-blow idea.
How long does it take to fix — and how should I practice?
Faster than you fear. Once the low point clicks, students often see cleaner contact inside a single practice session. Keeping it takes a few weeks of short, honest reps — the towel and step drills, ten or fifteen focused minutes, not two exhausted hours.
One golfer got so frustrated with the fat-and-thin pattern that they switched to single-length irons, hoping equipment would cure it. The same miss followed them, because the swing was the real story. Gear rarely fixes a low-point problem. A little feedback and the right feel usually do.
The grip, stance and posture you build at address set up all of this, so it is worth reading my golf fundamentals guide alongside these drills. And if your misses curve as well as fly fat or thin, the fix-a-slice and fix-a-hook guides sit right beside this one.
If you would like me to watch one swing in person, come find me at Chi Chi in Utrecht or Hoenderdaal in Driebergen — you can see the options on my lessons page . Bring your towel. We will find your low point together, and I promise the clean strike that follows is one of the best feelings in golf.