While most golfers hit on a driving range mat that is about as flat as it gets, golf isn't often played on completely flat ground. Most golf courses have hills of all kinds, and golfers have to hit shots from uphill, downhill and sidehill lies.
Hitting shots from one of those four lies -- uphill, downhill, sidehill with the ball above your feet and sidehill with the ball below your feet -- requires some adjustment in how you stand and set up your swing to be successful.
How to hit golf shots when your ball is on a uphill lie
When your golf ball is sitting on a uphill lie, you have to expect that the ball will have a tendency to go to the left. Most golfers don't prepare for the shot properly, so they are more likely to catch the ball in the latter portion of the downswing, after the club face has been squared. That usually means that the face is catching the ball once it has been closed to the target line and will lead to a draw or a hook to the left for a right-handed player.
However, if you prepare properly, you can play the shot to your target and hit a relatively standard shot.
The first thing to do is to move the ball position forward in your stance, toward your back foot. The ball position move is commensurate with the slope of the hill. The more grade to a uphill lie, the more you need to move the ball toward your back foot. This is part of what we can do to combat that we're likely to catch the ball at an unnatural part of our downswing, as well as the balance issues that can come from trying to swing hard with the slope.
The second thing to do is to keep our shoulders parallel to the slope of the hill. Typically, from a flat lie, our shoulders are, more or less, parallel to the ground and our weight is pretty evenly distributed between the front side and the trail side. We want to achieve this same kind of parallel to the upslope. That's going to mean the feeling that you're tipping your lead shoulder (the left one for a right-handed player) toward the sky. However, what you're really doing is trying to keep those shoulders more parallel to the slope so that you're more likely to catch the ball flush instead of the ground in the upslope first. You should feel some more weight toward the front side of your swing but not drastically so -- just enough to keep your balance.
The third thing to do is to keep your lower body from moving in your swing so that it's throwing off your shoulders from being parallel to the upslope. This doesn't mean having a completely quiet lower body, though that would be easier to do with a wedge or short iron in hand. The key is to set your legs as best you can to mirror the setup of your shoulders and swing along that body path. With an upslope, there's a temptation to overswing, and that can lead to poor balance and bad contact. Instead, take a little extra club with a more severe upslope and make a more controlled swing to hit the ball well.
If you pull off the shot correctly, you're going to hit the ball about how you would normally. However, golfers have a tedency to hit from the upslope so that it comes out a little higher than usual. If you feel capable of controlling the club face well enough, then you can lay the club face slightly closed and aim a little more right of the target to create more loft and send the ball lower in the air with a draw, or you can shut down the loft with a forward press and hit more directly into the back of the ball instead of swinging as much with the slope (though that is risky and only something a better player should consider). The key, though, is to make good contact with the ball first. After that, judging distance from the kind of contact you make is the next-most important thing. Finally, controlling height and spin is a key for more skilled players.
If you know how to handle hitting shots from different slopes on the golf course, then you can handle practically any approach shot the game will throw at you.
