Pete Finch – PGA Teaching Pro

The next step in deciding if you have a usable over the top golf swing is figuring out the ball flight which you are most likely to produce with your swing. Now, for example, if your club is moving from out to in and is travelling off to the left-hand side and the club face is pointing off to the left-hand side as well, you are going to have a variation of the pull. So, if the club and the ball are in sync, they’re travelling left and pointing left at exactly the same point, you will have a perfect pull, so the ball will start left, it would travel left without any type of curvature.

If that club face then begins to open more, that’s where you begin to get the fades and of course the slice. If the club is actually close to your path, then you are going to get a horrible pull hook, which you really, really don’t want to be seeing. So, you have the option of moving from out to in and pointing the club face left, therefore the ball will travel left or at least start left.

The more and more that club face points off to the right-hand side, that’s where you start to get the fades and the slices. Now, if that club points too far right, so it points further right in the path and the target line that’s why you get the slice. If the club face points a little bit to the right, so it’s open to path and yet remains close to your target line, that’s where you start to get that little bit of a fade from.

And that is the workable ball flight that you will need to use if you are going to continue to swing out and over the top. You can adjust your alignment. You can adjust lots of different things to try and hit successful shots. But once you have an understanding of where your path is and where your face is, then you can start to understand and hopefully fix and use this over the top swing.