Understand Draw and Fade to Fix Your Swing

You will never be a good golfer until you understand what is causing a draw or fade. Of course it’s wonderful to control a draw or fade and avoid a hook or slice because the last two can be deadly for your game. More important is understanding the cause so that you can make very small changes in your setup to ensure that you are controlling or even minimizing your draw or fade.

Hitting from a Sloped Surface:
Anything that you do to setup for a draw or fade is exaggerated by the slope of the ground that you are standing on. ALWAYS look for perfectly flat ground when you are setting up for your drive between the tee blocks. A slight slope to the left will naturally pull your shot to the left and a slope to the right will naturally fade to the right. If the slope on the tee surface makes a difference then you can understand how the uneven ground on the fairway should even be more dangerous for your shots.

FADE: During your setup, open your club face from the direction that you are setting up to hit the ball at your point of impact.

To Fade Your Shot:
Tee up slightly higher and slightly forward than your normal position. Setup with a target line to the left of your target landing area (for right handed golfers) and slightly open your club face to point at your target. Your ball will launch up the line of your stance and then fade back to your target point.

[NOTE: Your open club face caused your ball to spin clockwise for your fade to the right.] Practice this on the range to understand how much fade you create with your open club face and make adjustments to ensure that you never create a major slice by swinging across the face of your ball.

Draw: During your setup, close your club face from the direction of your swing at the point of impact.

To Draw Your Shot:
Tee up slightly lower and slightly back than your normal position. Line up your shot to the right and slightly close your club face to create a counter-clockwise spin on your ball.

[NOTE: The direction of your swing path at the point of impact creates the path of your ball. The side spinning rotation of your ball with an open or closed face causes your draw or fade.]

Considerations for Your Draw or Fade
1/ The same rules apply when hitting with your irons (but of course you don’t use a tee to assist your setup).
2/ You can also create a draw with a slightly “stronger grip” with both hands (with the V formed by your thumb and first finger on both hands pointing to your trailing shoulder instead of your trailing arm pit). Jack Nicklaus swung with his elbow-IN during the down swing and called it his “palm-up-grip” (referring to his right palm swinging up his swing path).
3/ Swinging over the top and outside-to-in across your ball will always create a SLICE. Avoid the over-the-top swing by taking your club straight back in the backswing and using a slight loop toward your back at the start of your downswing to help you hold your lag and swing from the inside.

Practice with your GOLFSTR+ for your straight leading arm to learn the basics that cause your ball to start right or left and then draw or fade. Knowing what causes draw or fade will help you control more shots to land in the fairway. Buy your GOLFSTR+ today at www.golfstr.com

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