If I can only film one angle, which one?

Face-on, for setup work. It is the only view that shows ball position, stance width and side tilt at the same time. Down the line is the better angle for posture and for how far you stand from the ball.

My ball position looks wrong on video but feels fine. Which is right?

Check the camera before you change your setup. The phone has to sit perpendicular to the target line and centred on the ball. A camera parked a few feet toward the target makes a correct ball position look too far back.

How precise does ball position need to be?

One ball width was enough to shift lead-foot loading and centre of mass in a study of twenty professionals. That does not mean there is a single correct spot for everyone, since the study used each player's own preferred position as its reference. It does mean the difference is real rather than imagined.

The swing, position by position

Golf setup: reading your address on video

Three of the four things golfers check at address only show up in the face-on frame. Here is what each view can resolve, and the one measurement where a ball width matters.

A golfer stands at address over the ball with a driver, seen from the front with the stance and ball position visible. Kristin Hardwick, CC0

Face-on for the stance, down the line for posture

Down the line, the camera sits behind you on the target line. That view is for posture: how much you bend from the hips, how far you stand from the ball, where the shaft points.

Face-on, from the front, shows everything measured along your stance: ball position, stance width, side tilt away from the target. If you film only one setup angle, film face-on.

Ball position: one ball width changes what the body does

4.27 cmOne ball width, enough to change lead-foot loading

Researchers moved the ball one ball width, 4.27 cm, toward the target and away from it, against twenty professional golfers' own preferred position, on force plates and motion capture. Loading on the lead foot shifted by 1.8% of body weight one way and 1.6% the other. Centre of mass moved 6.7 mm and 10.1 mm. The paper reports a small shoulder-angle change as a trend rather than a settled figure, because the spread in its reference measurement is wider than the effect.

The reference points are plain. Driver: level with the lead heel. Mid-iron: middle of the stance. Wedge: middle or a fraction back of it.

A down-the-line camera cannot show you any of that. From behind, your feet and the ball fall onto one line, and toward-the-target and away-from-target is the one direction that view cannot resolve.

Hear it

Three clicks: takeaway, top, impact. Start at the tour beat and move to whichever one you can actually swing to.

Stance width: wide for the driver, narrow for the wedge

The instruction is relative, not in inches: a wide stance for the driver, slightly narrower for a mid-iron, narrow for a wedge. Inches do not transfer between a short golfer and a tall one, so read the change from club to club in your own frames instead of chasing a target number.

Face-on again. Down the line, your trail foot sits in front of your lead foot and hides most of it, so the stance reads narrower than it is, and how much narrower depends on where the camera happened to be standing.

Side tilt: the lean away from the target

Two different things get called spine angle. Forward bend from the hips, which down the line shows clearly. And side tilt, the upper body leaning away from the target, which comes mostly from the trail hand sitting lower on the grip than the lead hand.

Side tilt is face-on only. From behind, leaning away from the target moves almost nothing in the frame. Coaches quote degree figures for it and they do not agree with each other, so compare today's frame with your own frame from a month ago, shot from the same spot, and read the direction of change.

Questions

If I can only film one angle, which one?: Face-on, for setup work. It is the only view that shows ball position, stance width and side tilt at the same time. Down the line is the better angle for posture and for how far you stand from the ball.
My ball position looks wrong on video but feels fine. Which is right?: Check the camera before you change your setup. The phone has to sit perpendicular to the target line and centred on the ball. A camera parked a few feet toward the target makes a correct ball position look too far back.
How precise does ball position need to be?: One ball width was enough to shift lead-foot loading and centre of mass in a study of twenty professionals. That does not mean there is a single correct spot for everyone, since the study used each player's own preferred position as its reference. It does mean the difference is real rather than imagined.

Sources

Every number on this page comes from one of these.