How To Stop Hooking The Ball In Golf

Golf Monthly

Advice from Golf Monthly's Top 50 Coach: Try Niven on how to fix hooking the golf ball.

Transcript

00:00Hooking the golf ball, it's something that the world's best golfers struggle with, it's

00:06even something that I struggle with here as well.

00:09We're going to talk about how the shot happens, so the physics of impact, how we can fix it

00:14throughout the swing, and perhaps a little drill that you can go away to do to put into

00:18practice to reduce the left foot curvature in this golf shot.

00:22Now a hook, it's a shot which misses to the left for a right-handed golfer.

00:26If we talk about the impact now and just understand how this happens, it's when the club face

00:31starts to move further away from the club path.

00:34Now if we're hooking the golf ball to the left, the golf ball is going to start to take

00:39off closer to where the face is pointing, so the club face is going to start to point

00:44a little bit more towards the left, and the club path is going to move away from that

00:48club face angle, so the face-to-path relationship is very wide.

00:52The wider the relationship between the face and the path, the more curvature we're going

00:56to put onto the golf ball, and a really interesting thing that happens, for people that start

01:01hooking, they move further and further right, so they aim further out to the right, and

01:05what that does, it moves the swing direction further away from the club face, and then

01:10we add more curvature, so the problem gets worse.

01:13So let's break this down now, so firstly we're going to start with a grip, and what I most

01:17commonly see, when I see people that hook the golf ball, they get their hands really

01:22rotated clockwise around that club, and you can see under motion, under pressure, when

01:27I start to release this club, and the hands return to neutral, you can see how far left

01:32that golf club is pointing.

01:34So really, really, really simple thing that we can do at set-up, is set-up with more of

01:39a neutral hold, so the lead left hand is going to be a little bit more on top of the club,

01:43and the trail hand there, the thumb, is going to be a little bit more on top of that club

01:47as well, and give those hands a little bit of a squeeze together, like you're wringing

01:51out a towel, that's going to give you some good stability of that club face.

01:55Now that's the club face sorted, what do we do with the path, and what do we do for the

02:00club face throughout the swing?

02:02Well I've got a really good little tip that you can do, if you take your regular set-up

02:05here, with a neutral hold, and typically what we see with the stronger club face players

02:11is that they start to hood the club face, and the club face starts to move around the

02:16body, you can see where that club face is pointing, it's pointing down towards the ground.

02:21Really good tip that you can do to sort that out, start to put the trail hand out as if

02:25you're going to shake hands with someone behind you, and simply swing that lead hand into

02:30it, and you can see all of a sudden I've got that very neutral club face.

02:33So if we think of the golf swing like a chain, you affect something further on, earlier on

02:39in the chain, at the start, and it will affect where the golf club is throughout the backswing.

02:44So let's just put those simple points into a bit of a hit here, so normal set-up, I've

02:48got my neutral hold, I'm just going to try and feel that the club face is very neutral

02:53in that early phase, and we can see very neutral golf shot there, not much left curvature on

03:03that one at all.

03:05Something that I also typically see through the shot is that people's pivot stops and

03:09the hands start to overtake, so the body's rotation stops and the hands do a lot of overtaking.

03:15You see, as I do that, the hands start to cross over and this club face points even

03:20further left.

03:21So another simple tip that you can do through the shot, you're going to do a full backswing,

03:26but then really control the pivot, control how far the arms and the club head is swinging

03:32through.

03:33We want no breakdown of the body and the arms here, so keep that body working through.

03:39I'm going to give you one more golf shot here, so we're going to pop it on the tee, and we're

03:44going to try and see if we can do a normal golf swing, but control how far through we

03:50send the hands and arms.

03:54You can see almost that Tommy Fleetwood-esque follow through there, really controlling the

03:59pivot and controlling the hands.

04:01Two simple things that you can do there to reduce that hook shot.

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