Golf Ball Position Chart: Where Each Club Goes, and Why the Teachers Disagree

Ball position charts look like they are reporting a fact. They are reporting a teaching method, and there are two. One moves the ball. One moves your feet. Nicklaus and Hogan adjusted their stance around a fixed ball position, so it is worth knowing what they actually said before you print the chart.

The ChartPer-club positions, in ball widths from centre

A golf ball is at least 1.68 inches across, the minimum the Rules allow, so "one ball width forward" is a real measurement and you can lay it out on the floor with a club shaft across your toes. The columns are four published charts. Where they disagree, the row says so.

Notice where the columns agree. The driver is forward, at or just inside the lead heel, in all four. The 7-iron is centre or a fraction ahead of it in all four. The fight is over the short irons and wedges, which two charts leave in the centre and one pushes an inch and a half back, and over how much the woods and long irons move, which one chart states from the heel and another from the centre, so the two cannot even be compared without knowing the stance width.

The Other SchoolNicklaus, Hogan, Harmon, Foley: the ball does not move

Jack Nicklaus, in Golf Digest, with Jim Flick:

“I try to play every shot with the ball opposite a point just inside my left heel. That is a pure fundamental for me.” … “It might appear that I play the ball progressively farther back in my stance for fairway woods, irons and wedges, but that is more a result of my stance becoming narrower.”Jack Nicklaus, Golf Digest, March 2010

Hogan's Five Lessons puts every standard shot half an inch to an inch inside the left heel and changes the stance instead: shoulder width for a 5-iron, wider for the long clubs, narrower for the short ones, with the right foot doing the moving. Butch Harmon, in 2015, said the same thing in fewer words: keep the ball in line with your shirt logo for every full shot, and "it's about how wide the right foot goes." Sean Foley's version is the argument for it. Changing ball position for every club "becomes guesswork as to where the ball should be played to hit it solidly and a reliable distance."

The ReconciliationWhy both methods work, and what the launch monitor sees

A driver is meant to be hit level or on the way up, and everything off the ground on the way down. TrackMan's tour averages show the delivery, not the ideal: PGA Tour players hit the driver at an attack angle of about minus 0.9, close to level, and a 6-iron at minus 3.7; LPGA players hit the driver at plus 2.8. TrackMan lists ball position among the things that set attack angle.

The per-club school gets there by moving the ball toward the low point of the swing for the driver and back toward it for the irons. The constant school gets there by moving the trail foot, which shifts your centre, and with it the low point, relative to a ball that stays put. Brian Manzella, interviewed by Luke Kerr-Dineen in Golf Digest in 2025, put it bluntly: Hogan "was one hundred percent tricking himself," because once the right foot and his alignment had moved, his ball position "would be pretty much like Tiger and Rory McIlroy." The ball was in a different place relative to his body. It just was not in a different place relative to his left heel.

The Missing ColumnStance width, which the charts assume and rarely state

The per-club charts only work with a stance that changes width, and most do not say by how much. The published figures that exist: Hogan, shoulder width for a 5-iron, wider for woods and long irons, narrower for the lofted clubs. Golf Monthly's Ben Emerson, shoulder width for a 7-iron to start, then a touch wider, with "one more step away from the target with your trail foot" for the driver and about shoulder width for a full wedge. The USGTF is the only one to put numbers on it: the driver "near 2 inches outside of the shoulders for each foot," the 9-iron 2 inches narrower than each shoulder. On the same page it says the ball moves back 2.7 inches from driver to 9-iron for tour professionals, which it describes as an average measured across more than a hundred of them.

The ChoiceWhich one to use

If you can hit every club solidly from one spot, use one spot. Foley recommends a fixed position because it makes distance control easier to repeat, and Nicklaus and Hogan played that way. If your irons are fat and thin by turns, check the ball first. The sources do not even agree on which way amateurs get it wrong: Golfer Geeks says most play the irons too far forward, MyGolfSpy says too far back is the bigger mistake. The test is the same either way. Move the 7-iron to the centre of your feet, hit ten, and see what the divots say. A divot that starts behind the ball is one sign the ball is forward of where your swing bottoms out; a divot after the ball, and a ball that flies, is the other answer.

Either way, put a shaft on the ground across your toes and a second one pointing at the ball from between your feet. Alignment sticks make ball position easy to check from above, and they are the only equipment this page needs.

RelatedThe rest of the setup

Ball position is the cheapest fix in golf and it interacts with two others. Driver loft and a forward ball position both raise launch, so change one at a time. And if you are building your first bag, how many clubs a beginner needs makes the case that fewer clubs means fewer ball positions to learn. The club distance chart tells you what each of those positions is supposed to produce.

FAQQuick answers