Three Benefits of the Power Fade (Video) - by Pete Styles
Three Benefits of the Power Fade (Video) - by Pete Styles

Let’s start by looking at three benefits of a power fade. Why is it useful and how we can take it onto the golf course? One of the first elements of a power fade is it generally will take out one half of the golf course. For a player like Bubba Watson, he can look down a fairway and if there’s danger on both sides or particularly danger for him, it’s admittedly it’s the right side of the fairway as a left-handed golfer. But if you’re a right-handed player, danger down the left side. If we can set the ball off towards the left half of the fairway and then move that ball back from left to right. As soon as we’ve got that ball turning back from left to right, we can relax. We know the ball is not going to go further left. So we can actually set up a left half of the fairway, I’m not advocating aiming at the intended danger. We move away from the danger. We setup slightly to the left of fairway, then we keep the face open through impact. That ball starts to move left to right in the air. We can pick the tee peg up and relax.

Well, a lot of golfers actually aim away from the danger even more but then intentionally hooks the ball back in then it starts to move towards the danger. This is another element where the power fade is better for us. A power fade will move left to right and have a controlled run out. It won’t necessarily land and then scoot on for a 100 yards. It’s going to land quite softly. Now if you’re playing a golf course, it’s quite narrow, you’ll often find that you’ll hit the ball and land on the fairway and then it will bounce and roll and roll and roll into danger. But a power fade generally has a slightly softer landing approach and it doesn’t scoot on when it lands. So particularly if you’re playing hard golf courses, narrow golf courses, little bit of a left to right movement, a little power fade lands nice and softly. So we can take out at the left side of the golf course. We can control the landing run out and how far it goes. One other area where a power fade can be quite useful for us is it can allow us to be very aggressive or very assertive with our swings because we like to swing the ball aggressively and hard. We can turn hard into the left side, open up and bring the club across our body to the left. And as long as we don’t shut the face down too much, you can pretty much hit a power fade as hard as you like and it’s just going to move further and further left to right and go further down the fairway. It’s not necessarily difficult to time as a draw swing where we’ve got to swing from the inside and work the hands over and hook it back in. So lot of golfers like to hit that little power fade as their sort of stock shot, their go-to shot. If they’re a little bit anxious, little bit nervous, they can setup down the left side, swing at it hard and aggressively and hold it off and actually find the ball quite nicely cutting back to the middle of the fairway. So that’s three reasons of how a power fade can be useful in someone’s game and why we’ll often see good players being good advocates of the power fade. 2015-08-12

Let’s start by looking at three benefits of a power fade. Why is it useful and how we can take it onto the golf course? One of the first elements of a power fade is it generally will take out one half of the golf course. For a player like Bubba Watson, he can look down a fairway and if there’s danger on both sides or particularly danger for him, it’s admittedly it’s the right side of the fairway as a left-handed golfer. But if you’re a right-handed player, danger down the left side. If we can set the ball off towards the left half of the fairway and then move that ball back from left to right. As soon as we’ve got that ball turning back from left to right, we can relax. We know the ball is not going to go further left. So we can actually set up a left half of the fairway, I’m not advocating aiming at the intended danger. We move away from the danger. We setup slightly to the left of fairway, then we keep the face open through impact. That ball starts to move left to right in the air. We can pick the tee peg up and relax.

Well, a lot of golfers actually aim away from the danger even more but then intentionally hooks the ball back in then it starts to move towards the danger. This is another element where the power fade is better for us. A power fade will move left to right and have a controlled run out. It won’t necessarily land and then scoot on for a 100 yards. It’s going to land quite softly. Now if you’re playing a golf course, it’s quite narrow, you’ll often find that you’ll hit the ball and land on the fairway and then it will bounce and roll and roll and roll into danger. But a power fade generally has a slightly softer landing approach and it doesn’t scoot on when it lands.

So particularly if you’re playing hard golf courses, narrow golf courses, little bit of a left to right movement, a little power fade lands nice and softly. So we can take out at the left side of the golf course. We can control the landing run out and how far it goes. One other area where a power fade can be quite useful for us is it can allow us to be very aggressive or very assertive with our swings because we like to swing the ball aggressively and hard. We can turn hard into the left side, open up and bring the club across our body to the left. And as long as we don’t shut the face down too much, you can pretty much hit a power fade as hard as you like and it’s just going to move further and further left to right and go further down the fairway. It’s not necessarily difficult to time as a draw swing where we’ve got to swing from the inside and work the hands over and hook it back in. So lot of golfers like to hit that little power fade as their sort of stock shot, their go-to shot. If they’re a little bit anxious, little bit nervous, they can setup down the left side, swing at it hard and aggressively and hold it off and actually find the ball quite nicely cutting back to the middle of the fairway. So that’s three reasons of how a power fade can be useful in someone’s game and why we’ll often see good players being good advocates of the power fade.