Fix your shank over a Canadian winter: simulator drills, the mat trap and a PGA of Canada lesson

It usually shows up at the worst moment of the year. The leaves are down, the course is about to close, you have one last round booked with friends, and on the fourth hole a routine pitch squirts off at right angles into the fescue. Two holes later it happens again with a 9-iron. Now the season is ending on a shank, and the next place you will swing a club is a simulator bay in January, where you will carry that worry with you all winter. It does not have to go that way. The shank is the most predictable bad shot in golf: one cause, a short list of habits that create it, and drills simple enough to do in a five-by-five metre hitting bay. A Canadian winter is long enough to make it disappear for good, as long as you know how the hitting mat can trick you along the way.

One cause behind every shank

Look closely at any iron and you will see where the clubface turns into a curved neck before meeting the shaft. That neck is the hosel. A shank is simply a strike on that neck, or on the very edge of the heel right beside it, instead of on the grooves in the middle. The surface there is round, so the ball glances off it like a pool ball hit thin and leaves almost sideways: right for a right-handed golfer, left for a lefty.

The useful part is the geometry. If the hosel met the ball, the clubhead reached impact a couple of centimetres further from your feet than where you set it down at address. That is the whole story, every time. Different golfers get there by different routes, but every fix you will read below does the same job: it keeps the club from drifting outward, or it brings it back in.

It also means a shank is not a bad slice. A slice starts near the target and curves away because the face is open to the swing path. A shank flies more or less straight, just in a ridiculous direction, because the contact point was wrong. Golfers who try to cure a shank with slice fixes, such as strengthening the grip or swinging more from the inside, often make it worse.

Five ways golfers push the club out

Teaching professionals see the same handful of patterns. Most players who shank have one, occasionally two.

• Crowding the ball, or stretching for it. Set up too close and your hands have nowhere to go on the way down except out toward the ball. Set up too far and your body leans toward your toes during the swing to reach it. Both routes end at the hosel.
• Pressure sliding toward the toes. The most common amateur version. You start balanced over the middle of your feet, then the downswing tips you forward, your chest gets closer to the ball and your hands follow. Fatigue on the back nine and a ball sitting below your feet both make this more likely.
• The hips moving toward the ball. Coaches call it early extension: the pelvis thrusts forward in the downswing and the gap between your body and the ball shrinks. The arms are forced away from you to find room, and the clubhead goes with them.
• A path that heads outward. An over-the-top move throws the club away from you at the start of the downswing. Better players often shank from the opposite fault: they drop the club too far inside, the face hangs open, and they shove the hands out at the last second to rescue it.
• Tension. A strangling grip and rigid forearms stop the face from rotating and pull the arms away from the chest. After one shank most golfers squeeze harder and steer, which sets up the next one. That is why shanks come in bunches.

The simulator mat trap

For most Canadian golfers, the work on this happens indoors between November and April, in a simulator centre, a dome or a garage net. That is fine, with one serious catch.

On grass, a strike that is a little heavy digs and costs you yards, and you notice. On a hitting mat, the sole of the club skids off the surface and keeps going. A shot that would have taken a fat divot outdoors can still produce a decent number on the screen. The mat forgives the bottom of the club, and that hides a lot of contact information you need, including where on the face the ball came off.

The shank itself is still obvious indoors because the ball shoots off the side of the screen. The trouble is everything just short of a shank. Heel strikes that fly roughly straight and only lose a bit of distance look acceptable on a launch monitor readout, so you can practise all winter with the ball sitting near the hosel and never know. Then in May, on firm turf and with a ball below your feet, those near misses become full shanks again.

So set yourself one rule for indoor sessions: judge every swing by the mark on the face, not by the number on the screen. Bring a can of foot powder spray or a roll of impact tape, mark the face before each set of five balls, and look at it after every set.

Diagnose it in one indoor session

Spend the first half hour of your bay rental finding out which version you have. Guessing wastes a whole winter.

Read the face. Spray a 7-iron, hit five shots at normal speed, and look. A tight cluster toward the heel tells you the shank is not random; you live close to the hosel, and the shanks are just the worst strikes of the group. A wide scatter with occasional hosel marks points more to tension or a swing that changes from ball to ball.

Measure the gap. Take your normal setup, then let go with your trail hand and let that arm dangle. It should hang just about where your lead hand holds the grip, a fist or so in front of your thighs. If it hangs well behind your hands, you are reaching. If your hands are nearly touching your legs, you are crowding.

Film it from behind. Most bays have room to stand a phone on the floor behind your hands, pointing down the target line. Compare two frames, address and impact. If your belt buckle is closer to the ball at impact, or your head has dropped toward it, you have found your culprit.

Drills you can do in a hitting bay

Pick the drill that matches what you found. Start with half swings using a wedge or 9-iron and only build to full swings once the face marks move toward the centre.

The outside marker. Place a headcover or an empty sleeve of balls about four centimetres outside the ball, on the far side from your feet. Hit the ball without touching the marker. Contact with it means the club travelled out. This is the oldest shank cure in the book because the feedback is instant, and on a mat you can repeat it fifty times without a divot to repair.

Address it off the toe. Set up so the ball sits opposite the toe of the club instead of the middle. Odd as it feels, many shankers start hitting the centre straight away. Hit a dozen like this, then check the spray; once the mark is central, that sensation becomes your reference.

Heavy heels. Hit half shots with your toes lifted slightly inside your shoes. With the weight back over your heels, your body cannot tip forward toward the ball. Alternate ten like this with ten normal swings, trying to keep the same feeling of pressure in your heels.

Backside to the bag. Stand with your seat lightly touching your golf bag or a chair placed behind you. Swing slowly and keep that contact through impact. It stops the hips from moving toward the ball and keeps space open for the arms. Do it without a ball first, then with easy shots.

Whichever drill you use, ease your grip pressure. On a scale of one to ten, hold the club at about four. For some golfers that single change is the whole cure.

A practical tip for the winter: since many simulator centres book by the hour, plan the hour before you arrive. Ten minutes of warm-up, twenty minutes of one drill with face marks every five balls, twenty minutes of normal swings, and ten minutes of game play at the end so you test the change under a little pressure. Our guide to making a range session count works just as well in a bay.

Where Canadian golfers can fix it this winter

A PGA of Canada professional. A shank is one of the faults a teaching pro can usually find quickly, because the cause shows up clearly on video. The PGA of Canada website has a Find a Pro directory to locate a professional near you, and many pros teach indoors through the winter. Tell them in your first sentence that you are there about a shank; it focuses the lesson from the first swing. Our article on getting value from lessons explains how to prepare.

A simulator centre, used the right way. Indoor bays have become the default winter home of golf across most of the country, from Ontario and Quebec to the Prairies. Use the launch monitor for what it does well, start direction and ball speed, and use foot spray for what it does not show reliably, where the ball met the face. Our guide to launch monitor numbers to track over the winter covers which readings to trust.

Golf Canada and the rules side. Golf Canada applies the Rules of Golf written by the R&A and the USGA, and the 2019 modernization added an optional local rule, Model Local Rule E-5. When a club’s committee adopts it, a ball that goes out of bounds or is lost, without a provisional played, can be dropped in a large area between where it went out or was lost and the edge of the fairway, for two penalty strokes, instead of going back under stroke and distance. It does not cover a ball in a penalty area. Some Canadian clubs use it for daily and league play but not for their club competitions, so check the scorecard or ask in the pro shop before you rely on it. A shank over the white stakes next spring will cost you less if you know.

Your setup, before anything else. A surprising share of shanks are born at address, from a ball position or posture that crept during the season. Start with our grip and setup guide and check it against your video.

If it shows up on the course

The drills are for the bay. During a round, you need a quick patch that gets you through the next shot without rebuilding your swing on the fly.

• Step back a touch. One centimetre farther from the ball is enough, and it rarely creates a new problem.
• Settle into your heels at address and make a shorter, smoother motion.
• Stare at the inside edge of the ball, the side nearest your feet. Where the eyes go, the club often follows.
• Take one more club and swing at two-thirds speed. Effort tips the body toward the ball; a three-quarter swing shanks far less often.
• Keep the hosel out of play around the green. If a short pitch suddenly scares you, putt from the fringe or chip with a 7-iron using a putting stroke until the round is over.

Your plan for the next indoor hour

• The cause: the hosel arrived where the centre of the face should be, because the clubhead drifted away from you.
• The test: face spray, the hanging-arm check and a phone video from behind.
• The drills: outside marker, address off the toe, heavy heels, backside to the bag.
• The trap: the mat hides heavy and heel contact; trust the face mark over the screen.
• The help: a PGA of Canada pro, found through Find a Pro, usually spots it on video in one lesson.

Book your next bay, pack a can of foot spray and a headcover, and spend the first five balls finding out where you really strike it. If the marks sit near the heel, set the marker outside the ball and hit twenty easy wedges without touching it. By the time the snow melts and the first tee times open, the shank should be a story from last fall rather than a fear for next season.