Pete Finch – PGA Teaching Pro

Let’s have a look at the causes of why your divot pattern might be going off to the left of target. Now I’ve already covered all about alignment and what you want to be seeing as far as your target line and your body line is concerned. But here I'm just going to — a little kind of quick kind of setup here just to show you exactly why it might be happening and what the causes are. Now the first thing to say is divots going to the left of target aren’t necessarily a bad thing. What I've done here is I've set out these balls in a bit of an arc pattern.

Now this represents what I will be seeing within my natural swing arc as the club playing moves around my body. What you will see as the club comes down, you want it to be moving slightly from an inside path if you don’t want to hit a fade or anything else. You just want to hit a straight shot, slightly from an inside path moving down into impact, and then that club then goes more around my body. It’s that arcing motion that the club takes when I actually hit. This is quite an extreme example. It’s never ever that extreme.

But if those divots starts to go off to the left-hand side, don't panic and don't worry too much. It is a natural progression of the swing arc. It’s when the club starts to go a long way left and when you start to see a lot of ball flight movement, that's when the problems start to occur. Now the reason for that is altogether more sinister. Probably not the right word to use, but altogether more destructive for your game. If you're seeing the divot pattern go a long way left, what will be happening is as you're moving down into the ball, the club is coming outside the target line.

So it’s crossing over the target line, moving out over your desired plane. And then it’s moving down steeply through the ball and travelling left very, very quickly. Now the reason that this is a problem as opposed to a natural arc which takes the club a little bit more on the inside as you strike down. What the problem is with this one is that the path really shifts from out to in. And that will necessitate a change of club face angle. If you're going to be swinging from out to in by quite a large amount, 5 or 6 degrees wherever it might be.

If you're swinging that much from out to in, the club face then has to alter. It has to open to try and get that club actually in a position that will fade the ball back around to target. And that's your best-case scenario. That's the only way that you're going to get the ball back to target is if you actually start to fade it around. So those are the causes and those are the reasons why you might be seeing that divot pattern go a long way off to the left-hand side.