The towel drill is one of golf’s oldest and most effective training tools — and all it costs is a trip to your linen closet. In this guide, you’ll learn the three classic versions of the drill: the towel under the arms for connection, the towel behind the ball for pure contact, and the towel as a landing target for your short game — plus exactly how to practice each one.
What Is the Towel Drill?
“The towel drill” actually refers to a family of practice drills that use an ordinary towel to give your swing instant, unmissable feedback. That immediacy is what makes towel work so valuable: you don’t need a launch monitor or a coach’s eye to know whether you succeeded. The towel falls, or it doesn’t. You clip the towel behind the ball, or you don’t.
Great feedback tools share one trait — they make the invisible visible. A golfer rarely feels their arms disconnecting from their body or their swing bottoming out two inches behind the ball, but a towel exposes both flaws on the very first rep. Each version targets a different fault, so start with the one that matches your miss.
Version 1: Towel Under the Arms — the Connection Drill
This is the most famous version, popularized by legendary instructor Jimmy Ballard’s “connection” teaching. It cures the “armsy” swing: arms lifting and swinging independently of the body turn, which costs you both consistency and power.
How to do it
- Take a hand towel and stretch it across your chest, tucking one end under each armpit. (For a gentler version, fold the towel and tuck it under your trail armpit only.)
- Set up with a mid-iron and make half-to-three-quarter swings, keeping light pressure on both ends of the towel.
- Swing to a balanced finish. The towel should stay pinned until well after impact — if it drops early, your arms have separated from your torso.
- Hit 10–15 balls at 70% effort, focusing on turning your chest through the shot rather than sliding or flipping your hands.
What it fixes
The under-arm towel forces your arms and torso to rotate as a single unit, which shores up sequencing from the first move away from the ball — the same feeling as a good one-piece takeaway. It also quiets the flip: when the body keeps turning, the hands don’t need to save the strike at the last instant. If your typical miss involves scoopy contact and a high, weak ball flight, pair this version with the fixes in our guide to stopping the flip.
Version 2: Towel Behind the Ball — the Strike Drill
This version is brutally honest about where your swing bottoms out. If you hit fat or thin shots, this is your drill.
How to do it
- Fold a towel flat and place it on the ground about 10–15 cm (a grip-length) behind the ball, directly on your target line.
- Start with easy half swings with a wedge or 9-iron. Your only job: miss the towel and strike the ball first.
- If you clip the towel, your low point is behind the ball — the classic cause of fat and thin contact.
- As you succeed, move to fuller swings and longer clubs, and shrink the gap toward one clubhead-width for a stiffer challenge.
What it fixes
The towel trains ball-first contact by forcing your swing’s low point forward, ahead of the ball — the single biggest separator between clean and inconsistent iron play, as we break down in our guide to low point control. It pairs beautifully with compact swing work like the 9-to-3 drill: same length swings, with the towel now policing your strike.
A warning
On real turf, start with the towel a full grip-length back and swings at half speed. Catching a thick towel at full speed with a long iron is jarring — build up gradually, and use a folded-flat towel rather than a rolled one.
Version 3: The Towel as a Short-Game Target
Around the green, the towel switches jobs: instead of feedback on your swing, it gives you a target for your landing spot — the skill that actually controls chip and pitch distance.
How to do it
- Lay a towel flat on the green (or a practice mat) where you want your chip to land — typically a third of the way to the hole for a standard chip.
- Hit 10 chips trying to land the ball on the towel. Score yourself out of 10.
- Move the towel: closer for high soft pitches, farther for lower runners. Re-test with different clubs and watch how each one releases.
- Graduate to a “par 18” game: nine different towel positions, two attempts each, counting landed towels.
What it fixes
Most amateurs chip by feel to the flag and never learn the two-part equation: carry to a spot, then rollout. The towel isolates the carry so you can learn each club’s release pattern — the foundation of the technique in our beginner’s guide to chipping. Tour players practice landing-spot control obsessively; the towel makes that practice measurable for the rest of us.
How to Build Towel Drill Practice Sessions
A towel drill only changes your swing if it shows up regularly. Here’s a simple weekly structure that takes under an hour total:
- Range session (25 minutes): 5 minutes of under-arm towel half swings as a warm-up, then 15 balls with the towel behind the ball, then 10 normal balls applying the feeling. Finish with 5 towel-free swings at full speed.
- Short game session (20 minutes): par-18 towel landing game with two clubs — one lofted, one running.
- Home reps (10 minutes): under-arm towel swings in the garden or garage, no ball. Slow motion is fine; the towel doesn’t care about speed.
Alternate the emphasis week to week based on your misses. Fat shots creeping in? Weight the strike drill. Contact fine but chips flying everywhere? Weight the landing game.
Common Towel Drill Mistakes
- Squeezing the towel with your arms. Pinning it by clamping your elbows to your ribs creates a cramped, restricted swing. The pressure should be light — the towel stays put because you stay connected, not because you’re crushing it.
- Using full speed too soon. Every version works best at 50–70% effort first. Speed hides faults; slow exposes them.
- Putting the towel too close behind the ball. Starting one clubhead-width back guarantees failure and frustration. Begin at a grip-length and earn the harder setting.
- Treating one good session as a fix. Low point and connection changes need hundreds of reps over several weeks before they survive on-course pressure.
- Ignoring the ball flight. The towel is feedback, not the goal. If you’re missing the towel but hitting weak cuts, check your face and path fundamentals too.
Bonus: The Towel Throw Drill for Release and Speed
There’s a fourth towel drill worth knowing, and it doesn’t even require a club. The towel throw teaches the feeling of a free, fully released swing — the antidote to the tight, steery action that creeps in when golfers get scared of their miss.
How to do it
- Tie a single loose knot in one end of a hand towel to give it a little weight.
- Grip the un-knotted end with your normal golf grip and take your address posture.
- Make a smooth backswing and “throw” the towel down and through the impact zone, letting it snap out toward the target. The knot should crack like a whip at the bottom of the arc — not early, behind you.
- Do 10 throws, listening for the snap location. If it cracks behind the “ball,” you’re releasing early; if it never cracks, you’re holding on and steering.
What it fixes
Because a towel has no clubface to worry about, your brain stops steering and starts sequencing: body first, arms second, wrists last. Golfers who struggle with casting from the top usually feel the difference within a dozen throws, and the whip-crack timing transfers surprisingly well when you pick the club back up. It’s also a superb warm-up before a round when there’s no range available.
Which Towel Drill Should You Start With?
If you’re not sure which version matches your game, use your most common miss as the diagnosis:
- Fat and thin iron shots: start with the towel behind the ball. Nothing fixes strike faster.
- Weak, armsy swings or a chicken-wing finish: start with the towel under the arms and stay there for two weeks.
- Casting or scooping from the top: begin with the towel throw to re-order your sequence, then add the under-arm version.
- Solid contact but poor scoring: your long game isn’t the problem — go straight to the landing-spot game around the green.
Whichever you choose, commit to one version per practice block rather than rotating through all four in a single bucket of balls. Depth beats variety when you’re rewiring a movement pattern, and each drill’s feedback gets sharper the longer you sit with it.
How Quickly Will You See Results?
The behind-the-ball strike drill often produces visible improvement within a single range session — contact simply sharpens when fat shots carry an instant penalty. Connection work is slower: expect two to four weeks of regular under-arm towel reps before the unified turn feels natural with a driver in hand. The short-game landing drill improves scoring fastest of all, because it converts vague “feel” into a number you can track from week to week.
The towel is the cheapest training aid in golf, and arguably still the best. Keep one permanently in your bag, and every range session comes with three built-in coaches: one for your connection, one for your strike, and one for your touch.
