How To Stop Hooking The Ball In Golf

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 even

00:06something that I struggle with here as well. We're going to talk about how the shot happens,

00:11so the physics of impact, how we can fix it throughout the swing and perhaps a little drill

00:16that you can go away to do to put into practice to reduce the left foot curvature in this golf

00:21shot. Now a hook it's a it's a shot which misses to the left for a right-handed golfer. If we talk

00:27about the impact now and just understand how this happens it's when the club face starts to move

00:32further away from the club path. Now if we're hooking the golf ball to the left the golf ball

00:37is going to start to take off closer to where the face is pointing so the club face is going to start

00:43to point a little bit more towards the left and the club path is going to move away from that club

00:48face angle so the face to path relationship is very wide. The wider the relationship between the face

00:54and the path the more curvature we're going to put on to the golf ball and a really interesting thing

00:59that happens for people that start hooking they move further and further right so they aim further

01:04out to the right and what that does it moves the path the swing direction further away from the club

01:09face and then we add more curvature so the problem gets worse. So let's break this down now so firstly

01:15we're going to start with a grip and what I most commonly see when I see people that hook the golf ball

01:20they get the hands really rotated clockwise around that club and you can see under motion under

01:26pressure when I start to release this club and the hands return to neutral you can see how far

01:31left that golf club is pointing so really really really simple thing that we can do at setup is set

01:38up with more of a 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 as well and give

01:48those hands a little bit of a squeeze together like you're wringing out a towel that's going to give

01:52you some good stability of that club face now that's the club face sorted what do we do with

01:58the path and what do we do for the club face throughout the swing well I've got a really good

02:03little tip that you can do if you take your regular setup here with a neutral hold and typically what we

02:09see with the stronger club face players is that they start to hood the club face and the club face starts

02:14to move around the body you can see where that club face is pointing it's pointing down towards the

02:20ground really good tip that you can do to sort that out start to put the trail hand out as if you're

02:25going to shake hands with someone behind you and simply swing that lead hand into it and you can see

02:30all of a sudden I've got that very neutral club face so if we think of the goal swing like a chain you

02:36you affect something further on earlier on in the chain at the start and it will affect where the

02:42golf club is throughout the backswing so let's just put those simple points into a bit of a hit here

02:47so normal setup I've got my neutral hold I'm just going to try and feel the club face is very neutral

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

03:03all something that I also typically see through the shot is that people's pivot stops and the hands

03:10start to overtake so the body's rotation stops and the hands do a lot of overtaking you see as I do that

03:17the hands start to cross over and this club face points even further left so another simple tip that

03:22you can do through the shot you're going to do a full backswing but then really control the pivot

03:28control how far the arms and the club head is swinging through we want no breakdown of the body

03:36and the arms here so keep that body working through I'm going to give you one more golf shot here so

03:41we're going to pop it on the tee and we're going to try and see if we can do a normal golf swing but

03:48control how far through we send the hands and arms so you can see almost that toby fleetwood-esque follow

03:56through there really controlling the pivot and controlling the hands two simple things that you

04:02can do there to reduce that hook shock