If your iron contact feels like a coin flip — sometimes crisp, sometimes chunked, sometimes thin — there's a good chance ball position is the variable you've been ignoring. Most golfers set up by feel, and feel drifts. That drift shows up as strokes on the scorecard.
Shawn Koch has a fast, visual fix for it.
The drill
Shawn Koch — Golf Digest #7 Best Teacher in Georgia (2024–25), Georgia Section PGA Teacher of the Year (2016), Golf Magazine Top 100 Teachers to Watch (2023–2024), and Director of Instruction at Atlanta Athletic Club — uses the pathpal to take the guesswork out of ball position entirely. See the full drill page here.
The setup:
- Place the white pathpal rod at your lead heel
- Place the blue rod at your ball position
- See the exact relationship between the two — visually, every rep
- Swing down and forward, driving toward the white rod — your low point
That white rod isn't just a heel marker. It represents your swing's low point — the bottom of your arc. By training your swing to work toward it, you're ingraining ball-first contact without having to think about mechanics mid-swing.
Watch the drill
Shawn demonstrates the full two-rod setup and the low point feel in the video below. Watch on YouTube or play it directly here:
Why it works
Ball position determines where in your swing arc you make contact. Too far forward and the club is ascending — thin. Too far back and it hasn't reached low point yet — fat. The only way to make this consistent is to anchor ball position to a fixed reference point.
Shawn uses the lead heel as that anchor. The white rod marks the heel; the blue rod marks the ball. Together they make the relationship between those two points visible on every single rep — eliminating the eyeballing and subtle creep that make practice feedback unreliable.
What makes this drill particularly powerful is its portability. With enough reps using the pathpal on the range, you internalize the heel-to-ball relationship so deeply that you can replicate it on the course by eye. The training aid builds the habit; the habit travels with you.
Who this is for
- ✓Golfers struggling with alternating fat and thin iron shots
- ✓Players who feel like their ball position "drifts" without noticing
- ✓Anyone trying to build a more repeatable pre-shot routine
- ✓Golfers working on hitting down and through the ball consistently
Try it
Drop both rods before your next iron practice session. Hit 20 balls focusing purely on working toward that white rod through impact. Let the pathpal show you exactly what your low point looks like — and where your ball is relative to it.
For the full setup details and coaching notes, visit the Ball Position and Low Point Drill page on pathpal.
- Set white rod at lead heel, blue rod at ball position — see the relationship clearly before you swing
- Hit 20 iron shots driving toward the white rod through impact, returning the ball to the blue rod every rep
- Rep 21: remove the rods and address the ball using only the lead heel–to–ball visual you've been building
- Hit 5 shots without the rods — consistent contact confirms the ball position habit has been encoded
Related drills
Ball position and low point are foundational to contact quality across the entire bag. These three drills address the upstream and downstream variables that connect directly to what Shawn is training here.
"Ball-First" Impact Control Drill — Eric Barlow
Eric Barlow places the pathpal ground rod perpendicular behind the ball as a physical low point marker — giving instant, binary feedback on whether the club is bottoming out before or after the ball. Where Shawn's drill establishes consistent ball position, Eric's drill confirms the low point is arriving in the right place relative to it. Run Shawn's drill first to fix position, then Eric's to verify the outcome.
Avoid Swinging Under Plane Drill — Shawn Koch
Shawn's companion swing plane drill uses the pathpal at 55 degrees to define the correct downswing delivery — the club must track on top of the rod, not drop beneath it. A consistent ball position without the correct plane still produces stuck, under-plane delivery. This drill gives you the swing shape that turns Shawn's ball position anchor into clean contact.
Downward Strike Drill — Grayson Zacker
Grayson Zacker places the pathpal behind the ball in the short game to enforce a steep, descending attack — the same ball-first contact principle applied to chips and pitches. If inconsistent ball position is costing you contact quality in your full swing, chances are the same drift is affecting your short game. Grayson's drill fixes that end of the bag using the same pathpal, same logic.
About Shawn Koch
Shawn Koch is Golf Digest's #7 Best Teacher in Georgia (2024–25), Georgia Section PGA Teacher of the Year (2016), Golf Magazine Top 100 Teachers to Watch (2023–2024), and Director of Instruction at the R.T. Jones, Jr. Instruction Center at Atlanta Athletic Club in Johns Creek, Georgia. He holds the Georgia PGA Player Development Award (2022) and Professional Development Award (2019) and has over 20 years of elite instruction experience.
Visit Shawn's website: shawnkochgolf.com · Follow pathpal on Instagram
Frequently asked questions
Why does ball position affect contact quality so much?
Ball position determines where in your swing arc you make contact. Every swing has a low point — the spot where the clubhead stops descending and starts to rise. For iron shots, you want the ball positioned slightly before that low point so the club is still descending at contact. Too far forward and the club is already ascending — thin. Too far back and the club hasn't reached low point yet — fat. A ball position that drifts even an inch between swings makes contact quality unpredictable regardless of how consistent the swing is.
Why does Shawn use the lead heel as the reference point?
The lead heel is a consistent, body-based landmark that doesn't move between clubs or stances the way the ball's position relative to the target line does. Because the swing arc is anchored to the body's rotation, the low point falls reliably near the lead heel for iron shots. Anchoring ball position to the heel rather than to a visual estimate from the feet or the centerline gives the golfer a reference that travels with them to the course — no rods, no aids, just the relationship between the heel and the ball.
Does ball position change between clubs?
Yes — the correct ball position varies across the set, generally moving slightly further back as clubs get shorter and the swing arc gets steeper. Shawn's drill is most commonly demonstrated with irons, where the heel-to-ball relationship is most critical for consistent descending contact. For driver, the ball moves forward in the stance to promote an ascending strike. The principle — anchor position to the lead heel and train the habit visually — applies across all clubs, but the specific heel-to-ball distance should be calibrated for each club during practice.
Can this drill be used to improve my pre-shot routine on the course?
Yes — and that's the specific transfer Shawn builds into the drill. After enough range reps with both rods in place, the visual relationship between the lead heel and the ball becomes automatic. On the course, Shawn simply checks where his lead heel is relative to the ball before every shot rather than relying on feel. That one visual check — no training aid needed — replicates the same ball position the rods enforced on the range, making the habit portable and self-sustaining.
Make the invisible visible — ball position, low point, and contact on every rep
The pathpal is an integrated, all-in-one training system used by top instructors to build repeatable setup habits and consistent ball-striking with immediate visual feedback.
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