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Shot Shaping/Adjustments
- Set Up Changes
At this point, you should have a fairly established “stock” swing. But unfortunately, that stock swing is all you need for the driving range. Your stock swing with each club will produce a certain distance shot with a certain predictable curve. The bias for this swing is a slight draw to a straight shot. When you start talking about playing golf, then, on occasion you must learn to adjust your stock shot to hit different distances and account for different lies.
For a fade. Keep in mind that for hitting a stock fade you are going to have to get the clubface open to the path, and the path going left of the target. OR you can have the path open to the target and use your normal draw path. The advantage of this is you don’t have to make very many changes, the disadvantage, is that it will result in a push fade, which can be a hard shot to hit low and could be tough for getting out of trouble.
Set up changes for a fade. You can get the right results by either strengthening or weakening your grip. To hit a pull fade or a true fade, you are going to want the ball to start left, so closing your grip a hair can help with that, and you are going to want the path to be even more left than where the ball starts, so moving the ball position up a little bit will help. If you are going to keep most things the same and hit push fades, then weakening your grip a hair can do the trick as well.
The set up changes to hit a draw would be to move the ball back a bit, and strengthen or weaken the grip accordingly, and to close (aim right) the body to the target line
As a summary, this video helps you learn how to hit draws and fades on command.
Tags: Not Straight Enough, Draw vs Fade, Beginner
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In this concept video, we're going to talk about fine-tuning your stock full swing for certain
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shot shapes.
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In this particular video, we're going to talk about set-up changes that can affect
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the curvature.
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Now, the dangerous thing here is, with set-up changes, we're assuming that all L's
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is equal, meaning you're making the same general movements as your stock full swing.
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So, as a refresher, the golf ball is going to start roughly where the face is pointed
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at impact.
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So, if I put a little magnet there showing where the face is pointed and this steel shaft
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on the ground is going to represent my target.
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Well, wherever this is pointed, when I make contact with the golf ball, so if it's pointed like
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this, it would start to the right, pointed like that, it would start to the left.
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Then the curvature is going to be dictated based on the path of the club.
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So this orange stick is going to represent path.
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So here's my target.
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If I had the path going across like this, this would be a slice.
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If I had the path going across like this, this would be a drawery hook.
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Okay, so our stock full swing is going to roughly, if I can make a good one here, we're
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going to have our one piece takeaway.
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We're going to set the club.
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We're going to have the Jackson 5 transition.
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We're going to come down as we're coming down what you'll see is it tends to favor
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a path that is pretty close to the neutral or just slightly out to the right with a face
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that is pretty close to square or just slightly to the left of it.
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So it will cause you to hit pretty much a straight shot or a slight draw or a slight fade,
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depending on your grip strength and your motorcycle.
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So now if I have a slight draw and I need to curve the ball, say, around a tree or to try
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to take advantage of a dog leg or to attack a pin that's tucked behind a bunker, I'm
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going to have to make changes.
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Let's talk about the setup changes that we can make to cause it to curve more left to
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right for a right hander or right to left for a right hander.
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So to make it go more left to right for a right hander, we're going to adjust things
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to the left.
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So in order to make it curve, I'll just put the orange line to represent the path that I want
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the club to go on and then this white stick here or the yellow one, that's roughly where
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I want the face pointed, that will make a ball that will curve and the difference between
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these two is going to adjust how much.
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So if I take my normal setup, the things that will make me curve the ball more to the
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left with setup would be to open my stance.
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So now I've got my stance roughly pointed in the direction that the club is going to be
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swung.
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But if I didn't change anything else, I would just now have a new straight shot.
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So I would have to move the ball slightly forward and open the club face.
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Or the way to think about it easy is to get the ball to curve to the right, you're going
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to shift things to the left.
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So you're going to move your stance to the left, you're going to turn your hands to the
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left on top, which is a slightly weaker grip, and you're going to move the ball
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slightly to the left or towards the target.
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If you wanted to make the ball curve to the right, you would do the opposites.
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So now I would have a club for a path that was coming more into out like so with a face
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that's pointed right of the target, but left of the path.
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So if I want the ball to curve right to left as a right hand golfer, I'm going to move
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stuff to the right.
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I'm going to shift my stance slightly to the right, move the ball a little bit back
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or to the right, and I'm going to turn my hands to the right or get a little bit stronger
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grip.
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The reason that the stronger grip is going to make the ball curve more to the left is when
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my arms extend out in front of my body because of the speed of the club, it's going to
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have a certain alignment like so.
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The more that I turn my hands to the right, when it straightens out, like so, it's pointed
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more to the left.
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So that guarantees my curve to the left.
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The stance adjustments will help me control where the swing direction is, the difference
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between the two is going to create the curve.
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So those are some of the easy ways you can play around with shot shaping just from setup,
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but again the assumption here is that everything else in your swing stays the same.
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In the advanced video we're going to go over the movements that we can do to help curve
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the ball even more.
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And these are what you can practice during the famous nine shot drill to dial in what
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your neutral is.
