I was going through a fitting with a young lady last week and one of her complaints was hitting her iron shots thin and low trajectory, which was causing a loss of distance. After a quick assessment on TrackMan, we looked her attack angle and found that it was only slightly negative, meaning she was hitting almost up on her irons rather than down and through the ball. Once we dialed her in to the right shaft weight and flex, contact improved but still not where I wanted it to be. So I observed her ball position in her stance and quickly noticed that she had the ball too far forward. This meant the bottom of her swing arc was about a half inch behind the ball causing her to hit the ball on the bottom of the face. This was also confirmed when we did a lie angle test. By moving the ball back in her stance, we immediately went from hitting a 6 iron 125 yards to 142 yards! And more consistently! This same phenomenon can happen with a driver which will cause high spin and a dramatic loss in distance, even with a positive attack angle. The good news is that in our fittings we take all of these factors into account. This means we are truly trying to optimize your performance, not just with equipment fitting, but with the simpler things like ball position.
Dan Sueltz