Pete Styles – PGA Teaching Pro
Asking a golfer to practice curving the golf ball deliberately can sometimes be met with a mixture of sort of confusion and raised eyebrows. Some golfers are saying you know, “Why don’t you practice in draw and fades”, and they say, “Pete, I’m just trying to hit the ball straight a moment, don’t confuse me with draws and fades into the mixture as well.” So why would I encourage someone to deliberately curve the ball when actually they are just trying to hit the ball straight.
Well actually understanding how you can curve the ball is a great way of understanding how you can stop curving it unintentionally. So let’s say you’ve got a slice, you’re slicing the ball from a right hander’s perspective, it’s curving from left to right and you simply can’t control that. Hitting the ball straight is just an extension of the things that you need to change to actually hit a draw. So let’s try and hit a draw, so a slice is going to be the club coming outside the line, swinging to the left with the club face that points to the right. So a draw is going to be the opposite swinging from the inside to the outside with a club face that points more to the left. And if I encourage a golfer to swing to the right and get the club face pointing more left, generally speaking somewhere along that progressive improvement they will actually start hitting the ball straight. They then go, “Ah, that’s how I hit the ball straight, that’s how I hit a draw, that’s my old swing how I hit a slice, I now have a good understanding of how I can control the ball” and if they are drawing the ball too much, they just use a bit of their fading or slicing feeling. If they are slicing the ball too much, they use a bit more of their roaring feeling to try and get the ball from right to left a bit more. And a golfer can understand how they are hitting good shots and bad shots accidentally if they can understand how to draw and fade the ball deliberately. Now I’m not advocating necessarily doing this on the golf course, I’m not advocating next time you go and play that you got to draw the ball around the tree and fade the ball around the tree, but it’s well worthwhile spending some time on the practice ground with a decent sized bouquet of balls in front of you and think, “Well, let’s hit 10 shots of my normal shape, see what they look like. Then try and hit 10 shots that curve one way, then try and hit 10 shots that curve the other way.” If you can get a good understanding of the relationship between your path and your club face and you can curve the ball deliberately, you will be able to stop curving the ball accidentally. 2016-10-05 Pete Styles – PGA Teaching Pro
Asking a golfer to practice curving the golf ball deliberately can sometimes be met with a mixture of sort of confusion and raised eyebrows. Some golfers are saying you know, “Why don’t you practice in draw and fades”, and they say, “Pete, I’m just trying to hit the ball straight a moment, don’t confuse me with draws and fades into the mixture as well.” So why would I encourage someone to deliberately curve the ball when actually they are just trying to hit the ball straight.
Well actually understanding how you can curve the ball is a great way of understanding how you can stop curving it unintentionally. So let’s say you’ve got a slice, you’re slicing the ball from a right hander’s perspective, it’s curving from left to right and you simply can’t control that. Hitting the ball straight is just an extension of the things that you need to change to actually hit a draw. So let’s try and hit a draw, so a slice is going to be the club coming outside the line, swinging to the left with the club face that points to the right. So a draw is going to be the opposite swinging from the inside to the outside with a club face that points more to the left. And if I encourage a golfer to swing to the right and get the club face pointing more left, generally speaking somewhere along that progressive improvement they will actually start hitting the ball straight. They then go, “Ah, that’s how I hit the ball straight, that’s how I hit a draw, that’s my old swing how I hit a slice, I now have a good understanding of how I can control the ball” and if they are drawing the ball too much, they just use a bit of their fading or slicing feeling. If they are slicing the ball too much, they use a bit more of their roaring feeling to try and get the ball from right to left a bit more.
And a golfer can understand how they are hitting good shots and bad shots accidentally if they can understand how to draw and fade the ball deliberately. Now I’m not advocating necessarily doing this on the golf course, I’m not advocating next time you go and play that you got to draw the ball around the tree and fade the ball around the tree, but it’s well worthwhile spending some time on the practice ground with a decent sized bouquet of balls in front of you and think, “Well, let’s hit 10 shots of my normal shape, see what they look like. Then try and hit 10 shots that curve one way, then try and hit 10 shots that curve the other way.”
If you can get a good understanding of the relationship between your path and your club face and you can curve the ball deliberately, you will be able to stop curving the ball accidentally.
