Should I Always Try To Hit The Golf Ball Straight? (Video) - by Pete Styles
Should I Always Try To Hit The Golf Ball Straight? (Video) - by Pete Styles

This is a question where the answer seems obvious but it’s not actually always as easy as that sounds, should you hit the ball straight. When you think of it, golf is a target orientated game so hitting the ball straight at target would be the most obvious thing. There’s a couple of reasons why that’s not always the best case. Certainly when you watch the golfers on -- that you watch on TV, they don’t always try and hit the ball dead straight. You see golfers like Bubba Watson, very prolific at the minor playing some great golf, very rarely does he ever even try and hit a straight shot. I’m sure he can if he wanted to but he just doesn’t see the ball flying straight very often. First you’ve got to consider that out on a golf course, the holes aren’t always straight. Quite often the holes will themselves bend and the hazards placed around the hole by the golf course designer encourage even more bend because we want to stay away from the pond, we want to stay away from the trees, we want to hit it to the big part, to the fairway and they are not always in a dead straight line.

The other thing is there might be some wind on the golf course, wind blowing in from right to left, left to right; another reason why we might want to shape the ball. So, let’s try and break this down and make it sort of relevant to the different category of golfer. Generally the higher the handicap a golfer, the more you should be trying to hit the ball straight and the harder you’ll probably find it. But actually as a higher handicap golfer, you need to worry less about driving it over the corner of the doglegs and that sort of thing. You’re better off just aiming straight so the 12 handicap and over probably better just hitting straight shots majority of the time. As the handicaps come down more towards a scratch level and certainly the tour pro level most golfers would try and see the ball shaped to some degree either drawing or fading it onto the wider parts of the fairway, drawing and fading it against the wind or drawing and fading into some tight flag positions. So it’s kind of a double answer from higher handicappers just keep focusing on trying to reduce the curve or shape in your shots and hit the ball as straight as you possibly can; for the lower handicaps and maybe 12 handicap and down, we start to see the ball shape a little bit. But shaped with some control, you can’t hit big slices of big snap hooks and trying to call that shape. Shape is a five to 10 yard movement on the golf ball either way under control and also having the option to hit the ball straight when it’s required. I hope that clears that up for you. 2014-08-13

This is a question where the answer seems obvious but it’s not actually always as easy as that sounds, should you hit the ball straight. When you think of it, golf is a target orientated game so hitting the ball straight at target would be the most obvious thing. There’s a couple of reasons why that’s not always the best case. Certainly when you watch the golfers on — that you watch on TV, they don’t always try and hit the ball dead straight. You see golfers like Bubba Watson, very prolific at the minor playing some great golf, very rarely does he ever even try and hit a straight shot. I’m sure he can if he wanted to but he just doesn’t see the ball flying straight very often. First you’ve got to consider that out on a golf course, the holes aren’t always straight. Quite often the holes will themselves bend and the hazards placed around the hole by the golf course designer encourage even more bend because we want to stay away from the pond, we want to stay away from the trees, we want to hit it to the big part, to the fairway and they are not always in a dead straight line.

The other thing is there might be some wind on the golf course, wind blowing in from right to left, left to right; another reason why we might want to shape the ball. So, let’s try and break this down and make it sort of relevant to the different category of golfer. Generally the higher the handicap a golfer, the more you should be trying to hit the ball straight and the harder you’ll probably find it. But actually as a higher handicap golfer, you need to worry less about driving it over the corner of the doglegs and that sort of thing. You’re better off just aiming straight so the 12 handicap and over probably better just hitting straight shots majority of the time.

As the handicaps come down more towards a scratch level and certainly the tour pro level most golfers would try and see the ball shaped to some degree either drawing or fading it onto the wider parts of the fairway, drawing and fading it against the wind or drawing and fading into some tight flag positions. So it’s kind of a double answer from higher handicappers just keep focusing on trying to reduce the curve or shape in your shots and hit the ball as straight as you possibly can; for the lower handicaps and maybe 12 handicap and down, we start to see the ball shape a little bit. But shaped with some control, you can’t hit big slices of big snap hooks and trying to call that shape. Shape is a five to 10 yard movement on the golf ball either way under control and also having the option to hit the ball straight when it’s required. I hope that clears that up for you.