Double Cross Swing Fault - Golf (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
Double Cross Swing Fault - Golf (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

When you're watching one of the world's best players and they're playing quite nicely they lead in the tournament by a couple of shots playing down the back nine and suddenly they hit this horrific golf shot. It might be 30 yards left of target, 30 yards right of target, great contact but just way off line. And the commentator always says those immortal words of "he’s double-crossed himself." What does that mean? What does a double-cross mean in golf? What it means is that the player was trying to hit one particular type of shot but the message didn’t quite get down to the clubface or, more importantly, his hands and the clubface and his hands have done one job and his swing path has done another job and they've double-crossed themselves and it produces a very, very bad shot. Let’s look at that in a bit more detail.

If, let’s say, you join me now and I’m playing down the target line here but I wanted to try and hit a fade so I want to hit the ball from left to right now to cut it into a pin position. I would make a swing that would be outside the line hitting from out to in going to left and I would aim to have the clubface open to that swing path line so my hands would effectively feel like they weren’t releasing and they were holding the face slightly more open to the swing path line. But if my brain tells my hands to release, which they would probably do in a normal straight forward or certainly a draw shot, my hands release and close the clubface in relation to the swing path line. I get a ball that sets off left and then goes further left. It's like a pull hook so it's left going further left. So if I make my fade downswing but then with my drawing hand action, it just goes left and never comes back. Likewise, the one that goes the opposite way, the block shot, maybe I’m trying to hit out to the right-hand side and draw the ball back in so I would make a swing that comes down a little bit flatter from the inside line, I’d be looking to release my hands over on this one to have a face angle that's closed to the swing path line. But if I didn’t close the clubface and I held it off like a cutting hand action, I end up with a ball that goes right and further right so like a push slice or a push cut. So if it's down on the inside, open clubface, it's away this way. So a double cross is a play that's trying to hit a particular shape but the swing path and the clubface don’t match up and that puts him in big trouble when they double cross.

2012-09-17

When you're watching one of the world's best players and they're playing quite nicely they lead in the tournament by a couple of shots playing down the back nine and suddenly they hit this horrific golf shot. It might be 30 yards left of target, 30 yards right of target, great contact but just way off line. And the commentator always says those immortal words of “he’s double-crossed himself.” What does that mean? What does a double-cross mean in golf? What it means is that the player was trying to hit one particular type of shot but the message didn’t quite get down to the clubface or, more importantly, his hands and the clubface and his hands have done one job and his swing path has done another job and they've double-crossed themselves and it produces a very, very bad shot. Let’s look at that in a bit more detail.

If, let’s say, you join me now and I’m playing down the target line here but I wanted to try and hit a fade so I want to hit the ball from left to right now to cut it into a pin position. I would make a swing that would be outside the line hitting from out to in going to left and I would aim to have the clubface open to that swing path line so my hands would effectively feel like they weren’t releasing and they were holding the face slightly more open to the swing path line. But if my brain tells my hands to release, which they would probably do in a normal straight forward or certainly a draw shot, my hands release and close the clubface in relation to the swing path line. I get a ball that sets off left and then goes further left. It's like a pull hook so it's left going further left. So if I make my fade downswing but then with my drawing hand action, it just goes left and never comes back. Likewise, the one that goes the opposite way, the block shot, maybe I’m trying to hit out to the right-hand side and draw the ball back in so I would make a swing that comes down a little bit flatter from the inside line, I’d be looking to release my hands over on this one to have a face angle that's closed to the swing path line. But if I didn’t close the clubface and I held it off like a cutting hand action, I end up with a ball that goes right and further right so like a push slice or a push cut. So if it's down on the inside, open clubface, it's away this way. So a double cross is a play that's trying to hit a particular shape but the swing path and the clubface don’t match up and that puts him in big trouble when they double cross.