Make Good Decisions to Stop Hooks (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
Make Good Decisions to Stop Hooks (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

It’s really important that when you’re fighting against any fault that you have on the golf course, you understand that part of that fault is mental and part of that is physical. Now we’ve already looked at the physical aspects of the hook; let’s look at the mental aspects. Why we might be making mental mistakes and bad decisions that could be creating the hook? One of the first areas I see quite common is people miss a line to the golf ball. They aim in the wrong place therefore they create the hook. So if we’re playing a standard golf hole where we’ve got trouble down the right side, ironically lot of right-handed golfers aim to that right hand side. So if I’m aiming towards these trees down the right hand side of my golf hole, I’m actually initiating a hooking reflex in my setup. So I’m aiming too far right and then almost encouraging and forcing myself to whip my hands over and to try and hook the ball away from that side and to hook it to safety. And that isn’t really any good because if I actually hit the ball straight, I’m in trouble, but also if I over hook it, I’m in trouble down the left hand side as well. So I’ve got to be a little bit smarter about this. I’ve got to aim really carefully at a desired target and have the confidence to hit towards it.

That really leads us nicely into the second part of this tip is make sure you’ve got a good target and you have the confidence to swing at it. We often see people make bad decisions in terms of club selection. Particularly when they may be thinking they’ve got too much club, so if we setup to a ball and you know we’ve got a 5 iron, we think it could be a 5, 6, or 7. We take 5 but then you don’t commit to it. You think, well I’ve got enough club, I’ll be able to reach but you don’t commit to it. Your legs slow down, your bottom half slows down, your hand action overtakes, we end up hooking the golf ball. So if we can aim at the desired target and then swing with a decent degree of confidence that we’re going to hit towards our intended target with a little bit of commitment instead of aiming the wrong way and then trying to hook it back to the target, or setting up to the golf ball and then second guessing and doubting ourselves and then we end up kind of steering it and poking it quite weakly down there. If we don’t use the bottom half, we know that’s a big sin for hooking the golf ball and a big cause of the hands overtaking and hooking it left. So to work on improving your hook, understand it is part mental, part physical. The mental side of things, aim straight, have a good routine and commit to the club and the shot that you’re going to play and hopefully that will help reduce the hooks on the golf course. 2015-08-11

It’s really important that when you’re fighting against any fault that you have on the golf course, you understand that part of that fault is mental and part of that is physical. Now we’ve already looked at the physical aspects of the hook; let’s look at the mental aspects. Why we might be making mental mistakes and bad decisions that could be creating the hook? One of the first areas I see quite common is people miss a line to the golf ball. They aim in the wrong place therefore they create the hook. So if we’re playing a standard golf hole where we’ve got trouble down the right side, ironically lot of right-handed golfers aim to that right hand side. So if I’m aiming towards these trees down the right hand side of my golf hole, I’m actually initiating a hooking reflex in my setup. So I’m aiming too far right and then almost encouraging and forcing myself to whip my hands over and to try and hook the ball away from that side and to hook it to safety. And that isn’t really any good because if I actually hit the ball straight, I’m in trouble, but also if I over hook it, I’m in trouble down the left hand side as well. So I’ve got to be a little bit smarter about this. I’ve got to aim really carefully at a desired target and have the confidence to hit towards it.

That really leads us nicely into the second part of this tip is make sure you’ve got a good target and you have the confidence to swing at it. We often see people make bad decisions in terms of club selection. Particularly when they may be thinking they’ve got too much club, so if we setup to a ball and you know we’ve got a 5 iron, we think it could be a 5, 6, or 7. We take 5 but then you don’t commit to it. You think, well I’ve got enough club, I’ll be able to reach but you don’t commit to it. Your legs slow down, your bottom half slows down, your hand action overtakes, we end up hooking the golf ball.

So if we can aim at the desired target and then swing with a decent degree of confidence that we’re going to hit towards our intended target with a little bit of commitment instead of aiming the wrong way and then trying to hook it back to the target, or setting up to the golf ball and then second guessing and doubting ourselves and then we end up kind of steering it and poking it quite weakly down there. If we don’t use the bottom half, we know that’s a big sin for hooking the golf ball and a big cause of the hands overtaking and hooking it left. So to work on improving your hook, understand it is part mental, part physical. The mental side of things, aim straight, have a good routine and commit to the club and the shot that you’re going to play and hopefully that will help reduce the hooks on the golf course.