Fixing a fade

hayam · June 27, 2007

what Mikpga says about club patch and face angle is not going to change until the cows come home by themselves. and is fit for any swing.

kinneywhat · June 27, 2007

I would love to take lessons, but at my club they're $25/15min. Were it the old club pro, I may have considered it, even though I think that's a bit high. Our club pro left this year and we have a new one, which I rarely see and am not impressed by when I do see him.

Maybe I'll look into some lessons elsewhere. Lessons would be ideal, as many have said, but again, I'd want 5-6 one hour long lessons to fine-tune my game and my wife would kill me if I spent $500+ on lessons this year.

leekgolf · June 28, 2007

....result is the effective hitting area your driving to is now 60 or 70 yards wide instead of 2 35 yard wide "halves"......I CANNOT tell you how MUCH easier competitive golf becomes when you have TRUE control over the golf ball and KNOW where it WILL "start" relative to your body lines
If I get this right...rather than aim down the middle and hit a draw or fade, which will go +/- 30y either way...aim down the left and hit it straight or fade...with zero risk left and 40-50y room to the right.

=/- 30 yards is not a fade or draw. It's a slice or hook.

Stunt101 · June 28, 2007

another classic informative GolfWRX thread! I love this place.

leekgolf · June 28, 2007

I would love to take lessons, but at my club they're $25/15min. Were it the old club pro, I may have considered it, even though I think that's a bit high. Our club pro left this year and we have a new one, which I rarely see and am not impressed by when I do see him.

Maybe I'll look into some lessons elsewhere. Lessons would be ideal, as many have said, but again, I'd want 5-6 one hour long lessons to fine-tune my game and my wife would kill me if I spent $500+ on lessons this year.

I'm not sure where Waverly, NY is. Are you at all close to Long Island? Mike Jacobs is on Long Island and is a truly gifted instructor.

kinneywhat · June 28, 2007

I would love to take lessons, but at my club they're $25/15min. Were it the old club pro, I may have considered it, even though I think that's a bit high. Our club pro left this year and we have a new one, which I rarely see and am not impressed by when I do see him.

Maybe I'll look into some lessons elsewhere. Lessons would be ideal, as many have said, but again, I'd want 5-6 one hour long lessons to fine-tune my game and my wife would kill me if I spent $500+ on lessons this year.

I'm not sure where Waverly, NY is. Are you at all close to Long Island? Mike Jacobs is on Long Island and is a truly gifted instructor.

Well, I'm about a 3-3.5 hour drive from Long Island. Basically, I'm straight south of Syracuse along the PA border. Plenty of golf courses in the area, but I'm not so sure about the ability of some of the PGA professionals in the area. We're playing at the club our old pro went to at the end of July. I'm tempted to set up a lesson with him before we play.

I'm off to the range today to continue my efforts for an inside-out swing. I spent my lunch today swing a driver inside out from knee height on my backswing through. Stillnotquitenatural,but getting there.

diablojoe · June 28, 2007

=/- 30 yards is not a fade or draw. It's a slice or hook.

Agreed -- I was thinking about what happens to misses. Aim down the middle, and a 30y push or slice goes off the fairway. Aim down the left, and it's still playable.

I'm more willing to aim left these days since I've largely eliminated the hook-miss.

tim270679 · June 29, 2007

Kinney can't really answer the question about the inconsistencies between the 5,6,7 iron and your hybrids without seeing you and your set.

But what i can tell you from the comfort of my home is that what you experience with your short irons 7,8,9,pw etc is normal for a slicer. The clubs are shorter with more loft so is harder to impart side spin, easier to impart backspin. As a result you may have the same error in the swing but it will be less easily detected in your short irons. ' ever heard the phrase its hard to hook a SW' - this is why.

As you move to the longer clubs esp. the driver the face is less lofted and the shafts longer this allows for a lot of side spin to be impacted. In your case the over top move (by way 90% of ameutrs do this) creates clockwise spin = fade/slice.

Where the ball starts is the the clubpath. If the ball left then you have come from the the outside, starts straight = down the line , starts right = from the inside.

The key is to fix the over the top move (where your shoulders spin to the left before you start the down swing) = pull slice or pull straight left or pull hook depending on whether you release the hands/ clubface. Jack Nic used this tip= he felt like he had a iron bar across his shoulders pointing 15-20 degrees right with the driver through impact. Remember the hips and shoulder are separate turning them together is a killer. At impact hips open, shoulders closed will create the right path - then just practice your release.

What i would recommend for you are keep practicing the drills (when you use the tennis drill, i want you to imagine the club head is the face of the racquet, this will allow the correct body positions, notice that when you hit the shot in tennis you come from the inside with your right hand over taking your left and at the moment of impact you feel as if your behind the ball with your hips open).

slicefixer · June 29, 2007

The key is to fix the over the top move (where your shoulders spin to the left before you start the down swing) = pull slice or pull straight left or pull hook depending on whether you release the hands/ clubface. Jack Nic used this tip= he felt like he had a iron bar across his shoulders pointing 15-20 degrees right with the driver through impact. Remember the hips and shoulder are separate turning them together is a killer. At impact hips open, shoulders closed will create the right path - then just practice your release.

Most of your post was spot on and 100% of your post is FANTASTIC IF the player is an "Old School/2 Plane/Classic" type swinger of the club..........but the paragraph above is loaded with problems IF the player in question is a "Modern/Big Muscle Rotator".........IF he is and follows the advice in this paragraph he'll ruin his swing.......or at least foul it up for quite awhile......:)

Fact........the average PGA Tour player is 26 degrees OPEN to the target line at impact (they started 5 degrees open) with some as much as 50 degrees open.......(picture a baseball player at impact)

- Nicklaus was an "inside to down the line slinger" and they are a rapidly declining "breed" amongst good ballstrikers/players nowadays........as this fellow is a good player he might well be more "big muscle" oriented......(need video to determine)

- Hogan (and a LOT of other great ballstrikers as well.....Toms/Cabrerra come to mind immediately) rotated his entire body through the shot with his shoulders opening up RAPIDLY........the "separation" idea, while not necessarily a bad idea for some, causes the player to train his lower body to "run off and leave his upper body" in the downswing.......for most this is a VERY bad idea........

(tennis racquet idea is GREAT........I drilled out the handle of one and epoxied an X-100 into the racquet.......use it ALL the time........works GREAT for ALL levels of players)

kinneywhat · July 2, 2007

Well, after a couple rounds at two different courses this weekend, I'm still not getting very far with this. On Friday, I was getting frustrated with not being able to draw the ball and finally just started playing my fade and that worked out ok, but I'd rather not play a flaw. On Sunday, I played at a course I'd never played before and I started out great. I was just one over after the first 5 holes (that didn't last long). I tried taking a small backswing on my fairway woods and driver and that seemed to work really well. I had to swing through faster to get my distance, but I was hitting the ball straight as ever (slight draw to slight fade). I took my normal swing with all my other clubs and played the 5-10 yard fade with my hybrids, which worked out extremely well.

I think I'm getting my problems narrowed down, but I agree that some lessons would help and I'm in the process of ifnding a suitable instructor. My problem seems to appear somewhere between the start of my downswing and when the club head gets to somewhere near hip or knee height. Something I'm doing on my downswing is pushing the club head outside. When I was only bringing my club head to around hip height on my backswing I was getting great results. It felt a little akward and I was having to swing through the ball a little harder, but it was working well. Until I can get some help, I think shortening the backswing is what I'll have to do with my wood until I can get use to keeping the clubhead inside.