You must understand this first:
An Athletic, unwinding downswing, is just like throwing a ball. It is continuous, uninterrupted and nothing happens half way through. It unwinds around a Dynamic Axis, that is just about where your front hip is. This is where the downswing rotation pivots.
It is important that you understand what was just said in that, this post is about ball position… or how I teach it, Body Position to the Ball.
Everything up to this point was mentioned so we can answer this question. “Where is the bottom of the golf swing?” Is it in the middle of your stance? No! Does the bottom of the golf swing move around for different clubs? No! The bottom of the golf swing is just inside the front foot where our Dynamic Axis always rotates. It is always there for every club and is what makes this method more repeatable.
Okay Ross, so what about ball position?
Well, there is no ball position, only an Athletic Setup and its position with respect to the ball.
Essentially, we want to use our feet to move our “Setup” around until the club face is right behind the ball and aligned 90 degrees to our target line. The concept is… we have focused on certain setup essentials and once they are in place, we want to maintain their relationship. We want use only our feet to move the body as a whole, to align the face in the direction we want to hit. This keeps us athletic, connected, square to our self and ready to just unwind and trap the golf ball with our turn. We do this by using our arm template as a guide. The arm template hangs down and without reaching out or changing its natural position, we use our feet only to move over to the ball and then just sit down athletically. Everything is already setup, connected and our body is now right where it needs to be, so we can just unwind our golf swing and trap the ball with our body rotation.
This routine keeps the hands from subconsciously having to fix the downswing due to a bad ball position and setup issues. This routine does not take much time to learn. It takes more time to trust because you think you need to take more time to setup than you do. This builds confidence very fast.
FYI:
With traditional setups that key off of the ball, then try to build a setup, or try to adjust body parts, change the club face, readjust the feet, then bend over and reach out, etc… the body looses all sense of Natural Athleticism and ends up disconnected. No other athletes that I can think of, contort their bodies prior to making an athletic movement like golfers. The body knows what to do and how to setup athletically and in a ready position. We just want to get that natural setup behind the ball… then forget about the ball and just turn!