Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

Here we're going to look at how to hit drives with a power fade, so that you're going to get maximum distance from the shot but in a controlled way that the ball is going to swing left to right in the air and land on the target. So if we're looking at what a fade means, it's just purely a golf shot that starts left of the target, but lands on the target line, and during its trajectory and during its flight, the ball is just swinging left to right in the air. So it starts on the left it swings left to right in the air, but it lands on the target in a controlled way. So here's how to hit the fade. If I put this alignment pole on the club face, just to show you where the club face is aiming, I've set up on the floor here a club and a red alignment pole. The clubs representing the line that goes to the target, so that’s where we want the ball to finish on that line. But to hit the power fade, we've got to start the ball on the left of it. So it's really important you set up with your club face aiming left of the target line. So I'll set my club up in this way. So you can see that the club face is aiming left of that target line.

Now to hit the fade, what I want to do is now swing along the red line. So even though my club face is aiming left of the target, it's not aiming down the line, I'm going to swing on it. It's actually aiming to the right of the line that I'm going to swing along. So in order to do that I'll set ,my club facing this way and then I'll adjust my alignment so that I'm now aiming my feet parallel to the red line that I want to swing down. I'll now hold the golf club and as I swing back I'm going to follow the redline back, my feet line and I'm going to swing back down along that red line and as I come in to hit the ball, I'm working on making sure that my face, my club face is aiming between these two points. So it's aiming to the right of the swing line but its aiming to the left of the target line. So that will start the ball to the left, and then because there's a difference between where the club face is aiming and the path that the club head is travelling along, the difference between those two angles will impact a tilted axis spin onto the ball and that tilted axis spin will make the ball curve in the air and it will curve left to right in this situation. So that’s how to hit your power fade, work on it on the driving range first and on the practice ground and then take it out on the course, you'll find you're hitting longer drives but with much more accuracy.