2026-09-15 · Birdia Blog

Why Is My Golf Swing Too Steep?

What a "steep" swing means

Ben Hogan explained the swing plane with his famous pane-of-glass image: an inclined sheet resting on the shoulders and passing through the ball. When your lead arm and club climb above that glass, your swing is too steep. The opposite case — dropping well below it — would be flat.

The problem isn't just cosmetic. A steep plane changes the angle of attack, which TrackMan defines as the angle the clubhead is traveling on as it reaches the ball. With irons, Tour players average around -4° of descent with a 7-iron (TrackMan data from thousands of swings): a clean downward strike that compresses the ball. A swing that's too steep exaggerates that descent, digs too much and multiplies contact errors.

What problems it causes

• Fat or thin contact: a very steep arc arrives with little margin. An inch short and you drive the club into the turf (fat); an inch long and you catch the equator (thin).
• Deep divots and ballooning shots: the excess descent adds too much spin and dynamic loft; the ball climbs high but loses distance.
• Over the top and slice: from a steep position, the natural reaction is to pull with the shoulders and drop the club outside the plane. That's where the classic slice shows up, with the face open relative to the path (TrackMan ball flight laws).

David Leadbetter stresses that the plane is set in the backswing: a takeaway that lifts the hands and hinges the wrists too early pushes the club up vertically instead of rotating it around the body.

How to know if it's you and how to fix it

The most common causes: a takeaway that lifts the hands, too little body rotation, or an overly steep shoulder plane in the backswing. To fix it, Leadbetter recommends thinking of a more "rounded" backswing, with the hands following the tilt of the shoulders rather than lifting straight up to the sky.

The catch is that with the naked eye you can't tell how many degrees off plane you are. Birdia analyzes your backswing from your phone video and flags whether the club crosses above your plane line, so you know whether the problem is in the backswing (steep) or in transition (over the top) before you start fixing things blind.

Fuentes

• Ben Hogan — Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf.
• David Leadbetter — The Golf Swing.
• TrackMan — Ball Flight Laws.

Frequently asked questions

Does a steep swing always produce a slice?

No. Steep defines the backswing plane; the slice depends on the face-to-path relationship at impact. What happens is that from a very steep plane the instinctive reaction is to come over the top, and that out-to-in path with an open face is the classic recipe for a slice according to TrackMan's ball flight laws.

Is steep or flat better?

It depends. Neither extreme is ideal: Hogan wanted to keep the swing inside the pane of glass, without breaking it above or below. Many tall players tend toward a slightly steeper plane and shorter players toward flatter due to biomechanics, but straying far from the ideal plane for your body penalizes contact.

How do I measure if my swing is too steep?

With video from the "down the line" view (behind you, in line with the target). You draw the plane line at address and check whether the club crosses above it in the backswing. Birdia does that analysis from your phone and separates the plane fault from the transition fault, which are different things.