DownUnder Board 2.0 Review: The $100 Footwork Fix

I have been told “you come out of your posture” by three different instructors over the last five years. Early extension. Standing up through impact, humping the goat, whatever you want to call it. Every lesson, the same thing. Stay down. Rotate through it. Keep your butt back.

I tried alignment sticks in the belt loops. I tried the chair drill. I tried thinking about it really hard, which is the least effective training method in golf.

The thing that makes me mad — nobody ever mentioned my feet. Not once. Three instructors, probably $500 in lessons, and the thing that actually made a difference was a $100 board I stand on while I swing.

What It Is

The DownUnder Board 2.0 Tour Edition is a rigid plastic board, 10.5 inches wide and adjustable from 14 to 18 inches long. It sits between your feet while you swing, and you “grip” it with your lower body. That is the entire product description.

It was created by Bradley Hughes, an Australian pro who won multiple Australian Masters and played on a Presidents Cup team before becoming a PGA Tour instructor. Hughes figured out that the best golfers use ground force: actively pushing into the ground to generate speed and stability. The problem is that regular golfers have no idea what that feels like. The DownUnder Board gives you that feel.

The 2.0 version is built in two pieces connected by wing nuts, so you can adjust the width to match your stance. The board comes with one instructional video from Hughes, about 14 minutes long, and that covers everything you need. A full video lesson is included with purchase.

It costs $99.50 on the DownUnder Board website, on sale from $109. Available on Amazon for about the same price. There is a 30-day guarantee.

The First Two Swings

I will tell you what PluggedInGolf’s Matt Saternus told his readers, because he was right and I almost ignored it: warm up first.

Saternus went in cold, squeezed too hard, and felt a pop in his left hip. I read his review before using mine, so I did some lunges and a few slow practice swings first. Even warmed up, the first two swings felt weird. The board forces your stance a little wider than normal, and the sensation of actively pressuring something between your feet is unfamiliar in a way that makes you feel clumsy.

Then I hit a ball. It was an 8-iron from about 140 yards, and the contact felt different. Not life-changing. Just solid. Centered. The kind of strike where the ball compresses and the sound is lower than usual. I hit five more. Four of them had that same feel. My miss with an 8-iron is a thin heel strike that loses 15 yards and feels like hitting a rock. That miss was gone.

The mechanism is dead simple. By pressuring the board between your feet, your lower body stabilizes in the backswing. You cannot sway because the board would slide. You cannot stand up through impact because releasing the pressure makes the board shift. Your body figures out what works without you thinking about it. That is the genius of the thing. It does not tell you what to do. It makes the wrong thing feel obviously wrong.

What Works

PluggedInGolf gave the DUB one of its strongest training aid recommendations. Saternus reported that his impact location shifted from the heel to the sweet spot, and that his beginner daughter hit her driver on the center of the face after two swings with the board.

User feedback on GolfWRX and Reddit is consistently positive. One commenter won two tournaments and shot an all-time personal best after a month with the board. A GolfWRX user wrote: “Really decent ball striking and no sway. Keeps you very centered.”

The key insight from actual users, and this lines up with my experience, is that the DUB cleans up problems that usually require three separate swing thoughts. Stable lower body. Better rotation. Staying in posture. One tool replaces all of that.

What Does Not Work

Practical Golf’s review was more measured than Saternus’s, and it raises the right concern. The reviewer could feel “something” while using the board but struggled to translate the feeling into concrete swing improvements, especially without an instructor.

This is fair. The DUB comes with one video. If you are a high-handicapper who has never thought about ground force and does not have a coach, you could stand on this board for three range sessions and feel nothing except sore thighs. The feedback is physical, not verbal. You have to pay attention to what your body is telling you, and not everyone is practiced at that.

Reddit being Reddit, multiple users pointed out that you can cut a piece of wood to the same dimensions and get similar results for about $8. They are not wrong. The value proposition of the DUB is that someone already did the measuring, the wing nuts are already installed, and the plastic is grippier than plywood on turf. Whether that is worth $100 depends on how much you like cutting wood.

Also worth knowing: this board does not fit in a golf bag. It lives in your trunk or leans against the garage wall. Not a dealbreaker, but do not expect to slip it in next to your driver.

A Five-Minute Drill That Works

Before a range session or round, do 10 slow practice swings with the board. No ball, just the feeling of stable pressure from setup to finish. Then hit 5 balls with a wedge, rotating the board out for every other shot. Finally, hit your normal range session and pull the board out whenever contact starts getting thin or sloppy.

The key is not to use it on every swing. The board is a check, not a crutch. You are trying to build a feeling you can recall without the board under your feet. Saternus described the same pattern: “I don’t use it on every swing, but it’s always in arm’s reach if I start to get sloppy.”

The Verdict

Buy it if you have been told you early extend, sway, or come out of your posture, and you have spent zero time thinking about what your feet are doing. This is especially true for mid-handicappers and seniors. Mid-handicappers get immediate feedback on contact consistency. Seniors benefit from the stability and balance work in a way that translates beyond golf.

Skip it if you are a beginner who does not yet have a repeatable swing. The DUB refines what is already there. It does not build from scratch. Get a few lessons first, learn the basic motion, then come back to this when your instructor mentions ground force.

$100 is about the price of one playing lesson or two large buckets of Pro V1 practice balls. Unlike a lesson, the board gives you repeatable feedback every time you stand on it. Unlike range balls, it gives you a physical feeling instead of just more swings.

The thing that makes me mad, that three instructors never mentioned my feet, is also the thing that makes the DUB worth writing about. It fixes a problem most golfers do not know they have. That is rare in a training aid. Most of them solve problems their marketing department invented. This one solves a real one, and it does it without a single swing thought.

Where to Buy

• DownUnder Board 2.0 $99.50 at Amazon (also at downunderboard.com)

Prices updated July 2026. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.