Set Up for Success to Reduce Hitting Hooks (Video) - by Pete Styles
Set Up for Success to Reduce Hitting Hooks (Video) - by Pete Styles

So here’s a couple of simple checkpoints that you could utilize in your setup position to encourage you to reduce the amount of hooks you’ve been hitting on to the golf ball. Now one of the things we talked about previously was the fact that lot of people hooked the golf ball because the club is coming too much from the inside as they make their swing. So these first two changes are going to impart – sorry, impact how you swing from the inside and therefore how much spin you impart on to the golf ball.

So one of the areas I’d like you to consider doing is is just check how far back from the golf ball you’re standing. Lot of golfers, if they get too far away from the golf ball and they start to really reach out and stretch out, when they hit that ball they’re going to be too much from the inside. Basically they’ve got too much room here, there’s too much room from the inside. They throw the club out to reach the ball and they swing very aggressively from in to out. So what I encourage you to do is just move a little bit closer if you are too far back away from the ball and check your address position. So a good way of checking that would be two inches above the top of your kneecap in a good position here, that should be the right distance away, like I suggested too far away could be swinging too much from the inside. The correct distance you shouldn’t have too much room to get inside. Your swing should be a little bit more up and down the line which is going to help you out quite nicely. The next thing to consider doing is just check whereabouts the ball is in the width of your stance. If you have the ball too far back in the width of stance consider that your golf swing is a rotational action. So if you have the ball too far back in your stance here then you’re going to be on the inside part of the arc when you hit the ball swinging from in to out. But if you move the ball up in your stance a little bit to its correct position, the ball would now be on a more straight forwards path of the arc. So the club would be hitting as it goes straight forwards rather than hitting it from the inside which could cause the hook to happen. So changing that ball position should reduce the amount of inside approach you have to the shot. We also need to look at the knee action in a golf swing. We want the knees to be nice and dynamic and be able to move forward during the swing. We know that a static bottom half could be causing a hook. So if you feel that you’ve setup to the golf ball and you’ve locked your legs out, you’re not going to move them at all, it’s going to be very difficult for your legs to be dynamic through the swing if there’s no knee flex or not enough knee flex. So a good amount of sitting on knees there is important so locking them back, nice flex, that will be fine. If they’re lot back and they don’t flex, the legs don’t move enough during the swing. You get a bit woody, a bit static in your bottom half; again we hit hooks from here. So a good amount of knee flex is quite important. One last thing to stop the hook, just to make sure the hands aren’t over rotating and doing too much is just lighten off the grip pressure a little bit, just feel like the grip isn’t quite so tensed. A lot of golfers when they’re hitting bad shots they get tensed because of their bad shots, therefore they create more grip pressure, therefore they create more bad shots, in this instance hooking the ball golf over because the hands were doing too much in terms of grip pressure, muscling the club over the shutting the face down. So if you can work on those four elements that should start to improve your setup to the golf ball which should in turn improve the chance that you have of hitting the ball straighter and less hooks. 2015-08-11

So here’s a couple of simple checkpoints that you could utilize in your setup position to encourage you to reduce the amount of hooks you’ve been hitting on to the golf ball. Now one of the things we talked about previously was the fact that lot of people hooked the golf ball because the club is coming too much from the inside as they make their swing. So these first two changes are going to impart – sorry, impact how you swing from the inside and therefore how much spin you impart on to the golf ball.

So one of the areas I’d like you to consider doing is is just check how far back from the golf ball you’re standing. Lot of golfers, if they get too far away from the golf ball and they start to really reach out and stretch out, when they hit that ball they’re going to be too much from the inside. Basically they’ve got too much room here, there’s too much room from the inside. They throw the club out to reach the ball and they swing very aggressively from in to out. So what I encourage you to do is just move a little bit closer if you are too far back away from the ball and check your address position. So a good way of checking that would be two inches above the top of your kneecap in a good position here, that should be the right distance away, like I suggested too far away could be swinging too much from the inside. The correct distance you shouldn’t have too much room to get inside. Your swing should be a little bit more up and down the line which is going to help you out quite nicely.

The next thing to consider doing is just check whereabouts the ball is in the width of your stance. If you have the ball too far back in the width of stance consider that your golf swing is a rotational action. So if you have the ball too far back in your stance here then you’re going to be on the inside part of the arc when you hit the ball swinging from in to out. But if you move the ball up in your stance a little bit to its correct position, the ball would now be on a more straight forwards path of the arc. So the club would be hitting as it goes straight forwards rather than hitting it from the inside which could cause the hook to happen. So changing that ball position should reduce the amount of inside approach you have to the shot.

We also need to look at the knee action in a golf swing. We want the knees to be nice and dynamic and be able to move forward during the swing. We know that a static bottom half could be causing a hook. So if you feel that you’ve setup to the golf ball and you’ve locked your legs out, you’re not going to move them at all, it’s going to be very difficult for your legs to be dynamic through the swing if there’s no knee flex or not enough knee flex. So a good amount of sitting on knees there is important so locking them back, nice flex, that will be fine. If they’re lot back and they don’t flex, the legs don’t move enough during the swing. You get a bit woody, a bit static in your bottom half; again we hit hooks from here. So a good amount of knee flex is quite important.

One last thing to stop the hook, just to make sure the hands aren’t over rotating and doing too much is just lighten off the grip pressure a little bit, just feel like the grip isn’t quite so tensed. A lot of golfers when they’re hitting bad shots they get tensed because of their bad shots, therefore they create more grip pressure, therefore they create more bad shots, in this instance hooking the ball golf over because the hands were doing too much in terms of grip pressure, muscling the club over the shutting the face down. So if you can work on those four elements that should start to improve your setup to the golf ball which should in turn improve the chance that you have of hitting the ball straighter and less hooks.