Shaping the Ball

Hello all.

We may have covered this before, but it is still bugging me as the subject is talked about so often incorrectly, in my view.

To play our most excellent golf, shaping the ball at will is a necessity.

A comment on another recent thread has raised this bug-bear of mine again so I would welcome another discussion regarding this subject.

The comments were surrounding pushing, pulling, fading, slicing, hooking and drawing, and the differences between them.

To my mind, the difference between a draw and a hook is not the starting line of the ball (I'll go into this a bit more later). The difference, for me, is purely the distance the ball moves laterally in the air, and the level of control we have over it.

Using a draw as an example, it is highly possible (with practice) to play what many will refer to as a "slinging draw" where the ball may move many yards from it's original direction of flight and can end up almost landing sideways relative to the initial flight. Whilst the lateral distance the ball has moved could be as much as 40+ yards, it was intended and under control. A traditional draw would be probably no more than 2 - 10 yards of lateral movement.

A hook, for me, is an uncontrolled draw gone wrong, whether the player is intending to play a draw or not. And it comes form all sorts of faults.

The issue I have is regarding pull hooks/draws and push hooks/draws.

To my mind, the fact that pushing and pulling is discussed in the same breath as shaping the ball makes the process far more complicated and manipulated than it needs to be.

Why do so many people who play or want to play a draw (including pro's) want to start the ball right of target and bring it back from a square stance - i.e. making it their "natural" shot shape.

If your stance is square to the target and you hit a "push draw" back to the target, you're swinging too far from the inside. Why would you want to aim your body in one direction and swing and hence start the ball in another direction?

Any shot, whether intending to be straight or shaped, should start off down the line of our hips and shoulders at address (and will). Why do we take so much trouble to aim otherwise? Those with open shoulders and or hips will start the ball left.

To shape shots consistently, shape the ball away from your alignment. If you pull slice, for example, you swing across your alignment which leads to other faults and inconsistencies. If you can't consistently start the ball straight down your toe line, you have plane and alignment issues that need to be addressed.

The added bonus is that if you learn how to always aim to start the ball straight and shape it away from your alignment, most of your your misses will be straight if you swing down your alignment. After all, a chronic slice that puts you in trouble is due mostly to swinging across yourself and a chronic hook is the same with a shut clubface; has anyone ever seen a chronic hooker (excuse the phrase) that consistently starts well right of the target and alignment and misses 40 yards left? I bet there's less than 1 in 5,000 players that do this (I know one! ). And these players have practiced swinging too far from the inside with a square to shut clubface. Good luck holding a firm fairway, let alone a firm green.

That's why working on swing plane and alignment is so crucial.

__________________
Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.

hi Neil
very interesting post and i do agree with most of what you say. i still feel hitting a draw or a fade as your standard shot is more likely to put you on the fairway more often then if you try and hit it straight down the middle every time.
like you say if you can grove a swing plane then most times you will be swing down the line with your aim but this is true if you Draw or like me fade the ball.
if you come into the ball with the club even 1% open or closed and are trying to hit the ball straight then the ball will move away from your target. if you play a fade then it is only the amount of fade you get if your face is not square and the ball is always going towards its intended direction.
i do agree the the amount of fade don't really matter as you can intend to hit a big fade to get the ball to land softly with a long iron and the ball can turn 30 feet in the air.
i do vary my set up to set the amount of fade i get, opening or closing my stance from about 10% open to about 45% open and by changing where my club face looks at set up.
i do feel have have control with the ball and adjust the hight and amount of fade with where i set up.
i do have me feet set diffrent to my hips and my shoulders but that is how i adjust the flight of the ball with my type of swing.
if i was to set up square (feet hips and shoulders) i would have to use my hands more in changing the flight of the ball and i find it harder to control my hands when moving so fast, where with my Trevino system the set up of the body sets how the ball reacts and its easy to repeat over and over as the hands don't turn over and its always a push shot.
like you said you have to be able to work the ball and have some control over it but there are a number of ways to do this i am not good enough to do this using my hands to turn the club over to draw the ball with any consistency so thats why i use the Trevino system, it does work but it would not work for everybody.
do you have a preferred way in working the ball.
cheers
bill

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Neil,

If I understand your post correctly you are saying:

We need to shape the ball in our games but why would we want to deliberately shape it on our standard shot?

My opinion is that if you can hit a ball straight to a target then hit it straight, this will be the shortest distance the ball has to travel and will be a more efficient shot. An oblique blow with a club will depart less force into the ball than a square one.

There has been a misconception or myth that a draw imparts forward spin on a ball that will make it roll further, this is not true, no proper shot puts forward spin on a ball. A draw like a hook de-lofts the face thus creating a lower trajectory, this will assist the ball to roll more on landing but will also reduce carry. likewise a fade or slice will add loft and cause the ball the fly higher and reduce roll. If you can hit a ball straight then a miss will be less off target than a miss with a bending shot.

Now! I am not suggesting the all seeing answer is to hit the ball straight, not many can so they must use the least destructive method at their disposal and let their natural shot shape work for them as best it can.

A ball will travel in a direction somewhere between the swing path and the direction of the clubface at impact but biased towards the clubface. The less the clubface is off centre at impact the more the ball will start off straight before side-spin will pull it away, the more the cluface points away from the swing path the more severe will be the side-spin and the faster will the ball bend. To work the ball we have to understand this and make it work for us.

__________________
Best Regards
Brian

________________________________
Funny o'l game!

hi Brian
i think you mostly draw the ball dont you? when you want to draw it more or less how do you control it. i could never control my draw when i played that way it was more a hit and hope but i feel like i do control the fade.
what was it Trevino said, "You can talk to a fade but a draw never listens?"
cheers
bill

i'm not sure, but maybe what he ment, is the fact that a fade means an open face thus, higher loft meaning more backspin and higher arc and the ball can stop when it hits the ground. where as a draw has a closed face and lower arc and less backspin and has alot more roll, and i think roll is quite hard to control at any distance greater than a pitch or chip making a draw harder to "talk" to. that is how i interpret that anyway.

as far as when I shape my shot, I usually hit it strait unless i am going around a tree or a dogleg. But i don't like to change my plane by swinging out to in or in to out, all I do is change the face being closed or open. If I do want to hit a draw instead of hitting in to out and closing face, i would just AIM right hit with square plane and close the face essentially hitting a hook to the path i am in but because of alignment changes it startes right and goes left just as if i aligned up strait and hit a in to out closed draw.

Hi Bill,

The way I shape the ball is to always swing down my alignment with either a weaker grip to fade or stronger grip to draw (i.e. having the clubface aimed where I'd like to finish). It's no good just turning the clubface without moving my grip round otherwise my hands will come back to their natural position at impact and I'll stripe one straight left or right!

I certianly don't advocate using the hands to shape the ball. Holding it off to fade it or rolling the hands/wrists/forearms leads to me not knowing whether it's going straight or whether it's going to shape. Plus having such a quickly changing clubface angle means a consistently good strike depends on how clean your brain-hand connections are on any given day

It's a widespread misconception that ball-shapers roll their hands to draw the ball. Drawing the ball is done from swinging down the alignment line with a closed clubface. As we all know by the rules of the world, hit the ball with a closed clubface relative to the path and you have draw spin. So rolling the wrists is pointless and inefficient.

Most of the time I'm looking to put even a little shape on my shots, so I can judge my misses. If I over-draw or over-fade it at least I know which direction it's going!

__________________
Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.

Not quite Bri. I love shaping shots, and to me there's no standard shots in golf. I take my competent limit of each club then can work back through the set i.e. I can hit an 8 iron 150, but that doesn't mean I can't choke down on a 4 iron to 150 yards.

What I'm asking is why some players seem to want to aim at the target with shouders and hips, close their feet and swing along the foot line. If we aim to start the ball down our hips and shoulders and shape the ball away from our alignment by just having an open or closed face, it makes it so much easier.

We wouldn't line up a straight putt by pointing our feet toward the hole, lining our hips and shoulders left and then putting along our foot line would we? Good luck with rolling the ball to the hole on that one!

To me, when a ball is shaped, it either goes behing the shoulder line (draw) or infront of the shoulder line (fade).

__________________
Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.

Neil,

When I refer to a standard shot I mean the way you hit a shot to a direct target, that may be a straight ball flight, draw, fade hook, slice or whatever. The club selection and trajectory is a different matter and I was not referring to that. I agree that shaping shots plays an important part in the game.

Regarding the method you use to shape the ball, that is governed by the way a ball reacts to an oblique blow as I explained.

I explained in another post recently that I cannot line my feet and shoulders left parallel to the target, my shoulders sit naturally closed to my feet line by around 15 deg ( I am a bit twisted ) so I must line my feet open to get my shoulders square and IMO the shoulders are the rudder of the swing. People have to work with what they have.

__________________
Best Regards
Brian

________________________________
Funny o'l game!

hi Brian
you say about you being twisted i think what is more important to your swing plain is the alinement's of the hips and shoulders, i do feel you can open and close your feet alinement's but keep your hips and shoulders in line to the target and have your feet not affect your shot, but as soon and you move your hip or shoulders to the right or left then the shape of the shot is affected.
i think with your feet open it give you a bit more room and it makes it easer to turn the hips, i think with the feet closed you sometime get crowded and swing in an out to in to go around the hips.
i know with my strange system my feet don't matter where they line up anything like how important my hips and shoulders matter.
with the way i do it the hips sway and point to where i want to start the ball and my shoulders and arms swing towards the target and that set's up is where i want the ball to end up.
i swing down on a plane set by my shoulders and not my feet or hips as my hips sway then turn.
i know it sounds strange and complicated but once you understand how it works its so easy to do and its so repeatable.
my swing plane is determined by how my shoulders swing round my spine and my hips change the plane to an inside to out plane on the downswing due to the big hips slid.
this system works great for a fade and is very easy to adjust to increase the fade or to have it turn only a few feet in the air.
i have always found a draw harder to control in the air and you never knew just how much run you will get as sometime it bounds away and the next shot it only runs 10 feet or so.
i have not seen a pro that really has control using a draw as say Jack, Lee or even Monty did fading the ball, the pros that use a draw seem to find the rough more often but have the ability to get out of it most times so it don't cost them shots, think tiger does this a lot when hitting a draw and seemed to be on the fairway more when hitting a fade of the tee.
i do think i did hit about 10 yards longer with a draw than i do with a fade i have never hit a drive arrow straight to see if it longer than drawing as all my shots do turn a little, even if only a couple of feet so it has side spin.
hitting a drive bullet straight is something i have not done in 40 odd years.
cheers
bill

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Sorry to be a bit of a party pooper but I would say that most (90 percent?) of amateur golfers need to learn how to hit it straight and far consistently, long before they start trying to shape shots. Yes, let them break 80 first... then they can go on to shaping shots...

Like Singh said "What's wrong with hitting it straight?"

Sorry to poop your party pooping, but learning how and why the ball is shaped is the path to being able to hit it straight!

Let me quote some research...

http://www.sptimes.com/2008/01/17/Sp...reak_100.shtml

Depending on which study you read, 75-85 percent of golfers don't break 100 regularly.

There are other sources as well....

The Artful Golfer 10 Feb 2007 ... It's no surprise then that eighty percent of golfers don't break 100 on a regular basis if their efforts to improve are focused on twenty ...
www.artfulgolfer.com/labels/Success.asp - 21k - Cached - Similar pages


Mastering golf basics is key to cracking 100 barrier

Depending on which study you read, 75-85 per cent of golfers don't break 100 regularly. That percentage could go down if golfers made some basic changes to ...
www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/sports/story.html?id=37d083d9-da13-4c4a-9118-e20222451d00 - 67k - Cached - Similar pages

It is nice to find a website about bad golf. I would tend to say that 80 percent of the golfing population can't break 100. ...
badgolf.blogspot.com/2005/01/welcome-to-bad-golfer.html - 127k - Cached - Similar pages

What's so surprising about that, eh? It is probably even an understatement.
Others say that if you follow strict USGA rules, the percentage shoots up to 90
to even 95 percent. They should probably learn to hit all 14 clubs first-
even the driver and hit straight shots before going to an advance shot-making level.

If a golfer can't even control his straight shots then he certainly won't be able to
shape shots consistently. Of course he should know what factors affect ball flight
but should concentrate first on the basics.

What is needed is a better understanding of golf fundamentals. Not advanced
shot-making. That will come later.

Funny, but I don't see any golf magazines that advice the amateurs to break 100 or
even 90 to shape their shots... Normally this advice is for golfers to break 80.

Sorry, nothing personal but I do not believe anyone should learn to run before learning
to walk, except for perhaps the latest comic movie hero, Iron Man.


Just my humble opinion which may or may not be wrong.

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Imagine winning nowadays using rusty old clubs!

hi
hitting the ball straight consistently is the hardest shot in golf and even the top pros cant do it and thats why the play the percentage game by playing a fade or a draw as there bread and butter shot.
if the pros with all there skill cant hit the ball consistently straight then what chance the high handicapper who only plays a round a Sunday.
when i started to play golf i went for lessons and was taught to hit it straight and my game did not get any better, it was only when i read Trevino's book and started playing a fade did my score start to come down.
even when i was playing of 4 i could not hit the ball straight off the tee but i knew i could hit a draw and have a better chance of being on the fairway. and now hitting a fade i know i hit the fairway most of the time.
i spent years trying to hit the ball straight and my game did not improve it was only when i shaped the ball to a fade did i start playing with a level of consistency.
look at the top teachers now like Leadbetter and he teaches you to set up for a draw in almost all his instruction dvd, if you look at Monty he has you set up for a fade and the same with Hogan and Trevino.
if you want to cut your handicap then learn to hit a fade or a draw and see some consistency come into your driving and your handicap falling.
there are a lot of top instructors that talk about hitting the ball straight but when you see the shot they talk about it fades or draws, they talk about it being straight when it leaves the tee and fades to land on the middle of the fairway.
Trevino is on record as one of the straitest drivers in the history of golf with a percentage of 5.20 error in fairways hit in his 30 years of playing and he never hit the ball straight but almost always faded the ball.

cheers
bill

__________________
ping zing2 metal driver
ping zing2 metal 3 wood
ping eye2 1 iron
ping zing2 3/9 irons
ping ist 47% wedge
ping zing2 52% s/wedge
ping mb 56% wedge
ping c10 G2I broom handled putter
top flight "T" golf balls
white ping bag

I'm not really a stats man, so I can't come back with any numbers.

From my experience, however, most (if not all) golfers I have played with don't know how to hit it straight, will never know how to hit it straight, and will invest an incredible amount of time and money in order to find this out.

What I see is most golfers having a dominant shot shape, but they continue to try to figure out how to hit it straight. Even the people who try to hit it straight on the course and/or range only do so probably one out of every 50 goes, but they can fade it almost every time. Trying to learn how to hit it straight is a waste of time.

Learning how to start it down your alignment is a good practice, but given the size of the ball and clubface and the distance the ball has to travel, a straight shot from start to finish is an absolute rareity and born out of luck rather than judgement. There are too many variables to learn to do it consistently. Even a machine couldn't pull it off. But most people already shape it consistently, but for some bizarre reason they want that bullet straight ball.

If the best in the world don't want to hit it dead straight, why should us amateurs try to figure out what is essentially useless to us?

Learn to control the shape any and every shot has. If we continue to try and figure out how we hit it straight first, we'll never get to "that other stuff".

__________________
Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.

Point well taken. Come to think of it, off the tee, I tend to hit a slight fade but on the fairway and especially on approach shots with short irons, I hit mostly straight shots..