How to Stop Hitting Fat Shots/Thin Shots

Hitting it fat and hitting it thin feel like opposite problems — one shot chunks eight inches behind the ball and dies, the other catches the equator of it and skips across three fairways — but they come from the same place: the low point of the swing arriving somewhere other than where the ball actually is. A golfer who chunks his wedges around the green and a golfer who blades his irons off the tee are usually working through variations of the same structural issue, just showing up in different parts of the game. One lives in how the club is set up to strike a short shot. The other lives in where the head and hips travel during the swing itself.

What Fat and Thin Actually Have in Common

Fat contact means the club reaches the ground before it reaches the ball. Thin contact means the club is already rising, or the ball is positioned somewhere the low point never gets to. Both are about location, not effort, which is why swinging harder at a thin shot or softer at a fat one almost never fixes anything — it just moves the same miss to a different yardage. The two most common places that location breaks down are the setup on shorter shots around the green, and the way the body moves, specifically the head and hips, during a full swing.

Cause One: Ball Position on Short Shots

Around the green, the miss usually starts before the club ever moves. Golfers who struggle with pitch shots tend to make it worse for themselves in one of two ways: reaching for a club without enough loft — a pitching wedge or 9-iron instead of a wedge built for the shot — or bouncing between four or five different clubs depending on the distance instead of getting proficient with one. Both habits are a setup problem before they're a swing problem. On top of that, the ball often ends up too far back in the stance, with the hands leaned aggressively toward the target. That combination is close to guaranteed to produce either a chunk, where the club gets stuck and hits the ground first, or a thin, bladed shot that flies over the green once the elbows break down trying to save it.

Fix One: Center the Ball, Rock the Shoulders

The correction is almost entirely about setup. Play the ball in the center of the stance rather than back in it, with the hands only slightly ahead of the ball rather than jammed forward toward the lead leg, and put a little more weight on the lead foot — then leave it there through the swing instead of shifting further. From that position, the motion itself gets simple: rock the shoulders back and forth without adding wrist action, arm manipulation, or extra body movement. It's worth rehearsing that rocking motion a few times first, feeling exactly where the club is going to meet the ground, before actually hitting a shot. A 23-yard pitch built on that setup should produce contact crisp enough to hear the difference, and that consistency is what actually lowers scores around the green — not a wider variety of shots, a more reliable version of one.

Cause Two: Where the Head and Hips Go in the Full Swing

Off the tee and out of the fairway, fat and thin shots usually come from somewhere else entirely: how the head and hips move during the swing, not how the club is set up at address. In a swing that consistently finds the ball, the head stays inside a fixed area through the backswing and the hips stay within a defined line rather than drifting off it. In a swing that produces fat and thin misses, one or both of those points move — the hips slide away from the target, the head drifts outside where it started — which shifts the swing's low point out of position before the club ever starts down. Even a backswing that avoids that problem can still go wrong on the way down, if the head doesn't return toward the target and the hips don't keep moving that direction through impact.

Fix Two: The Alignment-Rod Drill

You can fix this with simple physical check: an alignment rod held about an inch outside the trail ear. The goal in the backswing is to turn without the ear ever touching the rod, which keeps the head from drifting outside its starting position. The goal in the downswing is the opposite motion — moving the head back toward the target while continuing to push the hips toward the target too, again without making contact with the rod. It's a drill built for immediate feedback rather than a feeling to chase. Either the ear hits the rod or it doesn't, and a golfer or a practice partner holding the rod can see the difference right away. Watch this video to see how it works.

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Two Different Misses, Two Different Fixes

The practical value in separating these two causes is knowing which one actually belongs to your game. A golfer who chunks pitch shots around the green but strikes his irons cleanly from the fairway has a setup problem, not a body-movement problem, and working on ball position will do more than any alignment rod. A golfer who catches it fat or thin from the fairway and off the tee, in a pattern that shows up regardless of club or shot length, is more likely dealing with where his head and hips travel during the swing — and no amount of adjusting ball position at address will fix a low point that's moving during the swing itself. Figuring out which situation actually produces the miss is most of the diagnosis. The fix, once that's clear, is genuinely simple in both cases.

Take advantage of the Summer Sale now to book a Game Evaluation, get a lesson plan and find out whether your fat and thin shots are coming from setup, from your swing's movement pattern, or both.