How to Determine Your Natural Shot Shape, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
How to Determine Your Natural Shot Shape, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

If we understand that as golfers hitting the golf ball perfectly straight every single time is not only very difficult to do, but is not actually that essential, we can make compensations in the way we stand, the way we set and the way we play golf hole, to allow from natural shot shape to take effect. .So what I would like to do in this next section is take three golf clubs to the driving range, take your short irons and maybe a pitching wedge or a sand wedge, take a mid-iron and I’ve got a seven here, and then my driver. I’m then going to hit a series of ten shots using what I would class as my normal swings, the most relaxed normal swing I could possibly make. And I’m going to monitor the ball flight and see what it actually does in the air. Now for most people when they’re hitting their short clubs, they’d see their ball flights is fairly straight, your short irons have a lot of loft therefore generating a lot of back spin, therefore to a certain degree, making it more difficult to tilt the spin on the ball negating what a lot of people would term as side spin and therefore curvature.

So if I take my sand wedge here, go ahead and make my normal swing, I see the ball flight relatively straight, this counting what the wind is doing to that ball, it came out with very little lateral spin and flew dead straight down the target line. So if I’m out in the golf course I can generally work on the principle where my short iron flight straight, I can dead straight at the flag and hit them. If I go to my mid-iron, I’ve got my seven iron here, we’ll start to see a little bit of my natural shape with my longer clubs would actually be on my mid clubs should I say, would actually be a little bit more of a draw. And for a lot of golfers they’re trying to hit the draw, they’re trying to get inside and turn the ball back over. So if you take your seven-iron and again you go ahead and hit ten shots, and just monitor what the ball flight does. My natural ball flight with a seven-iron is a slight draw so I know that on the golf course I can aim a setup slightly right of target and draw the ball back in. If I want to draw the ball back into a flag that’s tied behind the bunker, the drawing into the flag is relatively easy for me to do. But switch that around and try and fade it into a flag behind the bunker, personally I find that shot a little more difficult.

So it’s a question of whether I would take that shot on and try and fade it into that flag, or would I just aim centre of the green, let my draw take effect, land it in the middle of the green, and then take a couple of putts from there. And likewise going up to the driver for a lot of club golfers, they find the driver tends to slice a little bit too much, or cut from left to right too much. So if that’s your natural shape when you’ve hit your ten shots with the driver, you don’t square, the club [face] [0:02:43] quite as easily, it starts to cut away from left to right, the question is now if you’ve got a right to left dogleg, do you try and take that shot on and draw it round the corner, or do you just accept that your natural shape is left to right? Therefore it’d be better to aim left centre fairway, cut it back into mid of the dogleg with your natural shape and play on from there. Yes it’s a little bit longer if you’ve got a fade, on a right to left dogleg ‘cause you can’t take the corner on, but if you try and hook it round the corner, draw it round the corner, are you’re going to get yourself in more difficulty? So the first thing is make sure you understand, what your natural short shape is. Be aware that it might not be the same shape with different clubs. So take a short, a medium or a long club to the driving range, ten shots with each, see what your natural shot shape is, load that into the memory bank and then use that on the golf course to make sure you pick the right shots at the right time.

 2013-03-28

If we understand that as golfers hitting the golf ball perfectly straight every single time is not only very difficult to do, but is not actually that essential, we can make compensations in the way we stand, the way we set and the way we play golf hole, to allow from natural shot shape to take effect. .So what I would like to do in this next section is take three golf clubs to the driving range, take your short irons and maybe a pitching wedge or a sand wedge, take a mid-iron and I’ve got a seven here, and then my driver. I’m then going to hit a series of ten shots using what I would class as my normal swings, the most relaxed normal swing I could possibly make. And I’m going to monitor the ball flight and see what it actually does in the air. Now for most people when they’re hitting their short clubs, they’d see their ball flights is fairly straight, your short irons have a lot of loft therefore generating a lot of back spin, therefore to a certain degree, making it more difficult to tilt the spin on the ball negating what a lot of people would term as side spin and therefore curvature.

So if I take my sand wedge here, go ahead and make my normal swing, I see the ball flight relatively straight, this counting what the wind is doing to that ball, it came out with very little lateral spin and flew dead straight down the target line. So if I’m out in the golf course I can generally work on the principle where my short iron flight straight, I can dead straight at the flag and hit them. If I go to my mid-iron, I’ve got my seven iron here, we’ll start to see a little bit of my natural shape with my longer clubs would actually be on my mid clubs should I say, would actually be a little bit more of a draw. And for a lot of golfers they’re trying to hit the draw, they’re trying to get inside and turn the ball back over. So if you take your seven-iron and again you go ahead and hit ten shots, and just monitor what the ball flight does. My natural ball flight with a seven-iron is a slight draw so I know that on the golf course I can aim a setup slightly right of target and draw the ball back in. If I want to draw the ball back into a flag that’s tied behind the bunker, the drawing into the flag is relatively easy for me to do. But switch that around and try and fade it into a flag behind the bunker, personally I find that shot a little more difficult.

So it’s a question of whether I would take that shot on and try and fade it into that flag, or would I just aim centre of the green, let my draw take effect, land it in the middle of the green, and then take a couple of putts from there. And likewise going up to the driver for a lot of club golfers, they find the driver tends to slice a little bit too much, or cut from left to right too much. So if that’s your natural shape when you’ve hit your ten shots with the driver, you don’t square, the club [face] [0:02:43] quite as easily, it starts to cut away from left to right, the question is now if you’ve got a right to left dogleg, do you try and take that shot on and draw it round the corner, or do you just accept that your natural shape is left to right? Therefore it’d be better to aim left centre fairway, cut it back into mid of the dogleg with your natural shape and play on from there. Yes it’s a little bit longer if you’ve got a fade, on a right to left dogleg ‘cause you can’t take the corner on, but if you try and hook it round the corner, draw it round the corner, are you’re going to get yourself in more difficulty? So the first thing is make sure you understand, what your natural short shape is. Be aware that it might not be the same shape with different clubs. So take a short, a medium or a long club to the driving range, ten shots with each, see what your natural shot shape is, load that into the memory bank and then use that on the golf course to make sure you pick the right shots at the right time.