You're Correct!

The straight drive is one of the hardest shots in golf, and if you are capable of doing it then it is even harder to maintain because of the shaft length and loft of the club. With the amount of spin that is created, the ball is likely to fly with some curvature.

You will often see players setting up their alignment pointing left or right of the fairway to allow for their shot shapes. Some even point left or right unintentionally and are convinced they are aiming straight and swinging on plane. Golfers who point their alignment to the sides of the fairways do so to allow for the shots they hit. For example, players who slice the ball will aim left of the fairway. However, this can have an adverse effect because golfers are aware they are aiming left and they almost accentuate their swing fault to make sure the ball does slice in the air and sometimes actually miss the fairways right. Allowing and adding slice to your shots will cost you an awful lot of distance, sometimes up to 50 yards.

The fundamentals of the set up need to be correct to give the player any chance of hitting straight shots with an on plane golf swing, so here is a pre-shot routine to help with alignment:

• Place the ball on the tee and stand behind the ball looking straight at the target, with the ball in between you and the target
• Pick out a small target four to eight inches ahead of the ball, in line with the target
• Stand parallel to the ball and line the club up to the target you picked out ahead of the ball, then continue this line to the target to double check
• Using this imaginary straight line, set your feet, hips and shoulders parallel to it
• Double check the club face is still pointing at your target then take your grip.

When practising this, for your own piece of mind, put your club down to your feet and step back behind the ball and make sure you have created two parallel lines to towards the target.

When checking the alignment, be sure not to lose your posture otherwise the body will actually straighten up and turn left to make you think you are pointing left of target. Remain in the posture and use your head to look along the line.

If your alignment was previously incorrect then this adjustment will feel extremely strange. Practise it well on the range to convince yourself that it is actually correct.

For straight golf shots, the set up has to be parallel to the target. If the body points towards the target as well as the club head, then the body will in fact be closed to target which will encourage an in to out swing path and may cause the golfers ball to:

• Push
• Push slice
• Draw or hook

These shots are dependent on the club face at impact and its relationship to the swing path.

An open stance to the target is something a lot of golfers do when setting up on the course. This causes an out to in swing path which is associated with a sliced shot which is the most common shot amongst amateur golfers so its a set up worth steering clear of.

A draw shot is when the ball moves from right to left in the air so in terms of set up, a player should aim down the right edge of the fairway to allow this small movement to occur. If the player aims left, then the ball will start left and travel further left.