Xander Schauffele’s trick to getting the clubface together every time

When golfers start hitting the ball poorly they often make swing changes. Whether it’s takeaway or swing technique or any number of other things, they always think their problems need some kind of swing tweak.

Many times, however, the cause of their problems can be the deterioration of the basics of the setup. These pre-shot checks aren’t the sexiest things in the golf swing, but if done incorrectly they can ruin your chances of success before you even start your swing.

Take Xander Schauffele, for example. Going into the 2019 Masters, he was struggling with a hook attack and lost track of what was causing it. As it turns out, all his problems were the result of a bad strategy in his setup.

Xander’s square clubface trick

As Schauffele was looking for answers to his lefty offense, his father, Stefan, suggested he look at the angle of his clubface when setting it up. Schauffele insisted that he was not determined to have a closed face, but when he came to measure it, he was surprised at how closed his football face was.

“You put this [golf] glove box on the floor and tells me to put my face down behind it,” said Schauffele.

With the straight edge of the box as a test point, Schauffele was finally able to see how close his face was to the address.

“I was like, ‘Holy smokes,'” Schauffele said. “This is like a butter knife. It just looks bad.”

After months of playing with a closed face at address, I have a clubface actually the address square looked like it was wide open. However, in reality, the face was perfectly square.

“I played with what felt like a wide open face,” Schauffele said. “Hopefully with this objective measure that was fair and square, though.”

If you have a persistent miss problem, take a page out of Schauffele’s book and place the glove box (or any other straight edge) behind your clubface at address. The fix may be as simple as getting the clubface square at address.

Zephyr Melton

Golf.com Editor

Zephyr Melton is an assistant editor for GOLF.com where he spends his days blogging, producing and editing. Before joining the GOLF team, he attended the University of Texas followed by stops with the Texas Golf Association, Team USA, Green Bay Packers and the PGA Tour. He assists in all instruction and covers youth and women’s golf. He can be reached at zephyr_melton@golf.com.