A Fade Golf Swing Does Not Equal A Weak Golf Swing (Video) - by Peter Finch
A Fade Golf Swing Does Not Equal A Weak Golf Swing (Video) - by Peter Finch

A fade golf swing does not equal a weak golf swing. It is obvious to say when you look at some of the best players in the world. At this moment in time, Justin Johnson is currently using mostly a fade, you’ve got Gary Woodland, you’ve got Bubba Watson, all of these players fade the ball off the T and yet can achieve fantastic distances. And yeah historically, the fade has been seen as the weaker of the two shots. The reason that that's still able to produce great amounts of power is how they use that path, how they use that club delivery to better cheat distances.

Normally, with a faded shot, the club will move from out to in over the target line with a slightly steeper angle of attack, contact the ball, clubface slightly open to that path, cause that curvature in the air to move back to target. What all the best players are doing now and this kind of goes back to the Trevino’s swing, is aiming the body off to the left-hand side, trying to get the swing path a little bit more in to out in relation to where the body is aiming and yet leaving the clubface open to that path and fading it around to the target. What that allows players to do is build up a lot of club head speed, deliver the club, so the ball doesn't spin quite as much and then enable them to fade it around to the right-hand side. Now, the setup for this is to set that club just slightly to the left of the target because we want it to fade back, moving the body so it's aiming quite a long way left, but then just trying to keep those shoulders a little bit squarer than usual. So the shoulders are aiming along the same lines as the body, the shoulders are a little bit squarer to the target line. What that's going to mean is as the power is build up, the club is delivered on quite a straight path, but because the target is over to the right, because the clubface is going to be slightly open to the path, it still should fade around with the added advantage if I am in that little bit of power. And if you can get this right, if you can get all these ingredients together, and you still hit the ball very, very hard, achieve a good distance though with actually a little bit more of that faded ball flight. So if you are hitting the fade, there are ways that you can adapt your swing, that you can adapt your technique to hit that left to right ball flight without losing masses of distance. 2016-09-01

A fade golf swing does not equal a weak golf swing. It is obvious to say when you look at some of the best players in the world. At this moment in time, Justin Johnson is currently using mostly a fade, you’ve got Gary Woodland, you’ve got Bubba Watson, all of these players fade the ball off the T and yet can achieve fantastic distances. And yeah historically, the fade has been seen as the weaker of the two shots. The reason that that's still able to produce great amounts of power is how they use that path, how they use that club delivery to better cheat distances.

Normally, with a faded shot, the club will move from out to in over the target line with a slightly steeper angle of attack, contact the ball, clubface slightly open to that path, cause that curvature in the air to move back to target. What all the best players are doing now and this kind of goes back to the Trevino’s swing, is aiming the body off to the left-hand side, trying to get the swing path a little bit more in to out in relation to where the body is aiming and yet leaving the clubface open to that path and fading it around to the target. What that allows players to do is build up a lot of club head speed, deliver the club, so the ball doesn't spin quite as much and then enable them to fade it around to the right-hand side.

Now, the setup for this is to set that club just slightly to the left of the target because we want it to fade back, moving the body so it's aiming quite a long way left, but then just trying to keep those shoulders a little bit squarer than usual. So the shoulders are aiming along the same lines as the body, the shoulders are a little bit squarer to the target line. What that's going to mean is as the power is build up, the club is delivered on quite a straight path, but because the target is over to the right, because the clubface is going to be slightly open to the path, it still should fade around with the added advantage if I am in that little bit of power. And if you can get this right, if you can get all these ingredients together, and you still hit the ball very, very hard, achieve a good distance though with actually a little bit more of that faded ball flight. So if you are hitting the fade, there are ways that you can adapt your swing, that you can adapt your technique to hit that left to right ball flight without losing masses of distance.