Nicklaus and Flick believed all shots should be played off the inside of the lead heel. He explains it much better than me, so see the link below. Sometimes I wonder if playing the ball too far back (for me) promotes a rightward "drift" because my head wants to be "more" over the ball. This move puts too much weight on my trail foot.
Yesterday I played the ball as Nicklaus shows in the video. The consistent position did make it easier to get stacked over the ball, plus, it seemed to alleviate any subconscious drifting to my trail side during the backswing. Plus, the low point of the swing is under the left arm pit, so why move the ball back, or to the right of the natural low point?
Anyway, food for thought.
The intent of this thread was to look at ball position in relation to the natural low point in the swing. After that, the preferable ball position relative to the amount of lateral hip slide during the downswing. Thus if a person has good hip slide, playing the ball more up in their stance is likely better. Conversely, if one has minimal hip slide, which is most golfers, then playing the ball more back is a better position. However, if someone with minimal lateral slide starts doing T2T, or Hogan Hips, they might have to adjust ball position.
In Hogan's famous book, he provided a graphic about a fixed ball position for all clubs like Nicklaus (pic below). And of course, Hogan did the T2T move. Thus he did T2T and played the ball off his lead heel. Had Hogan not done the T2T move, or only slightly, he may have advocated to play the ball more towards the middle of his stance.
When I started working on T2T I hit pushes and overdraws. At first I thought there was something wrong with my swing and started chasing non-fixes. Then it dawned on me that my ball position may be too far back. I would assume 2 inches of T2T movement at the top equates to a low point that has moved two inches forward in my stance. So as I moved the ball more forward, the pushes and overdraws died down.
It's interesting that Hogan moved from a closed stance with his driver, and progressively opened his stance for shorter irons and wedges. But then again, Hogan wanted to eliminate the left side of the golf course and he hit noticeable fades. Thus his tailbone "line" from an overhead view must have traveled to the left of his target on the backswing as his stance was more open. Plus, similar to Nicklaus's fade instruction, Hogan must have aimed his clubface at the target and then swung along his toe line, or from a top view his club handle would travel outside the target line on the backswing, then cut across the target line on the downswing. Who really knows if he did this all the time as in the picture, but it must have been his "go to" ball / feet positioning.
Nicklaus also advocated for a a fixed ball position for a consistent low point, but he didn't specifically teach to progressively open the stance, at least as a rule. He just moved the trail foot up or back, then he would adjust for a fade or draw, in his case mostly high power fades. Thus I imagine Nicklaus's open stance was not as open as Hogan showed in his book, and I'm fairly certain Nicklaus hit a 7 iron much farther than Hogan, but then again, the irons are less about distance and more about accuracy.