Why golfers aim right is they are using the wrong eye dominace to set up.

Your right eye is your alignment eye, this eye is the one which draws a straight line and aligns you with the target.

In Preshot routine golfers who aim right align their body first, The correct procedure is place the club down, then right foot, balance on right foot with left foot trailing behind right foot, look at your target and square your club face, then place left foot in set up position squaring up to club face, Give this a try,works well,

i noticed norman doing this on the weekend

Why golfers aim right is their using the wrong eye dominace to set up.
Your right eye is your alignment eye, this eye is the one which draws a straight line and aligns you with the target.
In Preshot routine golfers who aim right align their body first, The correct procedure is place the club down, then right foot, balance on right foot with left foot trailing behind right foot, look at your target and square your club face, then place left foot in set up position squaring up to club face, Give this a try,works well,

I actually do this as part of my pre-shot routine. I wasn’t doing it consciously its just something I have always done. It does work, well atleast the ball seems to head in the right direction, when it doesn’t I have usually made a swing error.

Hey Bio, is the right eye dominant for all right hand golfers or is it dependant on hand dominance? The reason I ask this is that I play golf right handed but am actually a left hander (writing, tennis etc) Golf and throwing is the only thing I do right handed! Yes I am a lost cause! ;-)

Also could it be that a lot of golfers at themselves at their target rather than visualising a railway track with the ball-target line being the outside rail and the stance, hips and shoulders forming the inner parallel rail?

This is one of my last pre-shot routine checks. Whilst looking at the ball, I visualise the ball target line and ensure the my “inner rail” is parallel, particularly my shoulders. (Initially this felt “left” to me but now it has become normal)

Great post mate!

Bio
My 11 year old daughter was shown this by her coach/pro and i got her to show me. One of those things that look different when you see it but i tried it, Felt way better over the ball at address. The ball defineily went straighter. Yes excellent advice
Where abouts are you based BiOionicMan?
Thanks Kiwi

I think the reason right eye dominant right handed players have this problem is that your nose gets in the way.
after set up you have to turn your head in order for the right eye to be able to see the target, if you don’t you are looking through your left, this is why it helps to choose a target close to the ball to aim at.
if you want to check what i mean close your left eye after set up and see how much you have to move your head to see the target

I am left eye dominant and right handed with everything which does make aligning a little easier…I have however drifted right as my pre shot routine falls apart…until I do as Bi0 mentioned above….funny I am Left Eye but I still set up right foot first. I still find aligning with a mark on the ground to be the best way of making sure I am at least near the correct line of my desired shot.

Great advice there. I always unintentionally align right of target. Doesn’t help that I always fade the ball.

Short and right are my two favorite places to be! AAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!

Try pointing your chest at the ball when you balance on your right foot to aim the club at the target. This squares up your body on the line as well as your right eye.

I used to line up as described, but when looking at the target my head tilts sideways creating skewed perception. My (golf pro) mate taught me to first stand behind the ball on the line of ball and the target, pick a mark on the ground not far ahead of the ball (ie. blade of grass, twig, leaf, etc) and aim the club face at that, then follow the procedure above using the line between your ball and imaginary marker. Worked a treat. His logic is that looking sideways at a target, you’re always going to have impaired perception (distance and angle) compared to looking head on with your eyes level. The catch with doing that is that once you’ve set your stance you still look up to check your bearings and you may subconsciously move your feet to adjust to the skewed perception. Get out of that habit and you’ll be fine.

Also could it be that a lot of golfers at themselves at their target rather than visualising a railway track with the ball-target line being the outside rail and the stance, hips and shoulders forming the inner parallel rail?

I suspect this idea of parallel railway tracks is a bit of a furphy. For a 150m shot, the angular distance between lines through your stance and the ball to the target is something like 0.2 degrees. bios idea of right-eye dominance (i.e. perceptual bias) is much more likely to cause significant alignment issues.

It’s interesting standing behind golfers setting up to see how wide the variation is between their body alignment and the target line and how much this variation can vary from shot to shot. Of course, sometimes you want to align open or closed to the target to hit specific shots. Chronic slicers often aim their body way left – which ingrains their slice even more if they align their clubface more towards the target.

I routinely align by picking out a point on the ground between the ball and the target and using that for reference. Is this standard practice or frowned on?

Muntz,
The ball goes where the club face is aiming, the feet is alignments for swing path not the travel of ball direction. Where you point the club face is where the ball goes.
A fade for example. Aim club face at target ,line feet up square, then open stance up to home much you want to fade the ball, use your feet as swing alignments, where does the ball go, it starts left and fades to where the club face is pointing at the target.

This was researched and proven, doesn’t matter if your left or right eye dominant, your right eye is your alignment eye, to draw straight lines. Draw a line from the target back to club face, if there something eight in front the line runs through sure square up to it.If you like but no closer.
It’s the same as putting, they all aim right same set up faults and pres hot routine.
Muntz the feet in order to be square have to run parallel. To your club face,

I routinely align by picking out a point on the ground between the ball and the target and using that for reference. Is this standard practice or frowned on?

I suspect this idea of parallel railway tracks is a bit of a furphy.

Yes matt, that makes sense.

great post Bio, watch the pros they all do it. another thing they do is when they are set up they keep the clubhead moving (waggle). they put the club in behind the ball then start their swing. it takes the tension out of your hands.
everyone knows someone who just stands there staring at the ball, he’s thinking too much. try it with what Bio has mentioned and you’ll flush it.

cheers sb

i put my club shaft across my chest and align everything up from that . sets me up nicely.. picked that up on videojug ‘rickard strongert….

Next time you see golfers aim right, ask them to aim again but as if a left-handed player, see if they can aim parallel…I guess they can!

What do you think the flipping wrist as the course of aiming right?

Aim right is a compensation for OTT. It works a bit

The noodle holds zero info when you step the other side of the ball and alignment works just fine then. So its not your eyes.

Biomechanic

I think that your theory that “the cause for aiming right is use of the wrong eye to check alignment” is a belief without any evidentiary scientific basis. If you believe that it is due to the use of the wrong eye, please do two things – i) explain the physiology of the phenomenon; ii) take a few golfers who have a huge “aiming right” problem and cover the “wrong” eye with a patch, and then see if this maneuver immediately solves the “aiming right” problem.

Jeff.

Jeff,
what you think I come on here without trying this first, Not one of my students have an alignment problems, One of the first thing they are taught is alignments, Whats the point in giving a golf lesson, when they can’t even align straight to the target on the coarse, how can they swing correctly without the right alignments.
They all use this pres hot routine, they have no alignment problems.
Bendoyle, teaches you to focus your right eye on inner aft quadrant of the ball. Homer taught Ben this.
Any golf teachers understands eye dominance .
why does all the tour player use this pre shot routine

Biomechanic

Unfortunately, you always manifest the same attitude when challenged. You simply imply that you are “right” and you make ancillary diversionary comments with no attempt to address the specific questions/requests.

You stated “Your right eye is your alignment eye, this eye is the one which draws a straight line and aligns you with the target.”

I will offer you 100:1 betting odds that you cannot unequivocally prove that the “right eye is always the eye that is used to draw straight lines”. If you can prove your claim, I will give you $1,000. If you cannot, then you must donate $10 to charity.

Jeff.

jeff
Most people prefer to use their right eye for viewing. New evidence reveals that this dominance is much more plastic than that for one hand or foot: it changes from one eye to the other depending on angle of gaze. Remarkably, sighting dominance depends on the gaze being directed towards the visual target. (Right eye)
by Sciencedirect J.D Crawford and A . Z Khan
When you turn your head to towards the target you gaze with your right eye to draw a line to the target, Read up Jeff and use your money to buy some new clothes.
Jeff, here’s a hint of advice, look in the mirror about who has to be right all the time.

Biomechanic

You seem to be arguing that eye dominance is plastic, and can change from the one eye to the other eye. Do you have scientific evidence to back up that claim? I believe that eye dominance is “fixed” by the brain and not the eye, and that it cannot change from day-today.

One can easily determine which eye is dominant by holding the right index finger vertically at arms length and then aligning the finger with a distant target. Then one should close each eye separately to see if the finger moves relative to the distant target. If the finger moves in relationship to the target, then that eye is the non-dominant eye. With the dominant eye, the finger will not move and it will remain perfectly in line with the distant target.

I think that many amateur golfers aim right because of an incorrect eye viewing position (viewing the target when standing alongside the ball) rather than standing about 12-15’ behind the ball, and establishing the ball-target line (imaginary straight line between the ball and target) with both eyes open. Then one should memorize that imaginary ball-target line in one’s mind, and approach the ball from the side and one should then place the clubface at right angles to the memorized ball-target line. Then, one should build one’s stance around the clubface by ensuring that the foot stance and body (knees, thighs, pelvis, shoulders) is aligned perpendicular to the clubface and parallel to the ball-target line. Many beginner golfer make the cardinal mistake of then looking at the target from the side-viewing eye position and decide to change their stance/body alignment. based on their side-viewing perspective – which undoes all the good work previously accomplished and frequently causes them to re-align to the right of the target..

Jeff.

For all of us here, can you please post links to both sides of this eye domination thing….and make sure they do not end up in some xxx site:)

I know from old archery days I only had one dominant eye which meant I had to shoot from what I had thought the wrong side of a bow.

This could be an interesting topic if we can prevent it from becoming a picky picky match again.

Looking forward to the research papers on this.