Instruction
Ball above your feet: why the wedge goes further left than the 7-iron
On a sidehill lie the slope tips the toe up and the loft turns that tilt into aim. A sand wedge from 80 yards starts further left than a 7-iron from 150. The table below gives how far to aim right, club by club.
Hold a sand wedge out in front of you with the leading edge square to a wall, then raise the toe. The face swings round to point left of the wall. Do the same with a 5-iron and it moves about a third as far. That is what happens to a right-hander’s club when the ball sits above the feet: the slope lifts the toe, and the more loft the club has, the further left the face points.
On a 6° slope, a sand wedge from 80 yards starts about 9 yards left of where the face was aimed at address. A 7-iron from 150 yards on the same slope starts about 8 yards left, from almost twice the distance. The wedge needs at least as much aim to the right as the 7-iron.
Why loft turns a slope into aim
A lofted face points up as well as forward. Tilt the toe up and part of that upward tilt becomes sideways tilt. A thread on The Sand Trap forum sets out the formula: the face turns left by the angle whose tangent is the sine of the toe-up tilt multiplied by the tangent of the loft. A driver at 10° of loft turns about 1° on a 6° slope. A sand wedge at 56° has a tangent of loft about three times a 5-iron’s, so it turns three times as far.
Devan Bonebrake, who runs a golf academy at the Carlsbad Golf Center, tested this with a TrackMan and a 6-iron on an 8° training slope in 2016, hitting 20 balls above his feet and 20 below. On average his shaft was 10° flatter at impact with the ball above his feet than below them. “The flatter the shaft at impact, the more the sweet spot points left,” he wrote for GolfWRX.
The face does not decide the whole start line. Titleist’s Learning Lab puts the face at about 75% of an iron shot’s starting direction, with the path responsible for the rest. The figures below use that 75%.
Yards left per 100 yards of carry
These are start-line figures for a right-hander who soles the club flat on a slope running across the target line, so the toe rises by the slope’s angle. Multiply by your carry in hundreds of yards: 1.5 for a 150-yard shot, 0.8 for an 80-yard one.
| Club (loft) | 3° slope | 6° slope | 9° slope |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5-iron (27°) | 2.0 | 4.0 | 6.0 |
| 7-iron (33°) | 2.5 | 5.1 | 7.6 |
| 9-iron (41°) | 3.4 | 6.8 | 10.2 |
| Pitching wedge (45°) | 3.9 | 7.8 | 11.7 |
| Sand wedge (56°) | 5.8 | 11.6 | 17.3 |
Lofts vary by maker, and modern game-improvement irons are often several degrees stronger than these. If your 7-iron is 30°, read it from between the 5-iron and 7-iron rows.
The table covers only where the ball starts. A face pointing left of the path also puts hook spin on the ball, so it keeps curving left. “The left shots will curve more dramatically, especially with the more lofted clubs,” Chris O’Connell wrote in Golf Digest. Aim further right than the table’s start line.
Reading the slope in ball heights
Few golfers can tell a 3° slope from a 6° one by eye, but they can see how far the ball sits above the ground under their toes. Compare that rise with a golf ball, which the R&A’s Rules of Equipment say must be at least 42.67mm across.
At home, measure the distance along the ground from the line of your toes to the ball when you set up to a 7-iron. At 70cm, the ball sits about 4cm above your toes on a 3° slope (just under a ball’s height), 7cm on a 6° slope (one and three-quarter balls) and 11cm on a 9° slope (about two and a half). If your distance is longer, the same rise means a gentler slope: divide the rise by that distance and multiply by 57 to get degrees.
Ball below your feet
The same geometry points the face right when the ball is below your feet, but the effect on the course is smaller. “When the ball sits below your feet, the sole of the club can’t rest flat along the turf and so the toe hovers,” O’Connell wrote. The club therefore tilts less than the ground does. Treat the table as an upper limit when the ball is below your feet, and aim left by less than you would aim right with the ball above them.
Less loft from short range
On a 6° slope 80 yards out, a sand wedge starts about 9 yards left and a three-quarter 9-iron about 5, before either starts to hook. When nothing short of the green needs carrying, take the 9-iron, grip down and make the shorter swing. When a bunker guards the front and the wedge is the only club that stops the ball, aim the wedge 9 yards right of the flag and add a few more for the hook.
Sources
- GolfWRX: TrackMan tells us the truth about uneven lies, part 1 (Devan Bonebrake)
- Golf Digest: What to expect on sidehill lies (Chris O’Connell)
- Titleist Learning Lab: Face angle
- The Sand Trap: Effects of lie angle on varying degrees of loft
- The R&A: Rules of Equipment, Part 4, conformance of balls
- Mitchell Golf: What is loft and lie in golf?
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