Shaping the Ball

[MyrtleBeachGolf]

I found a training facility at a course near here that has a FlightScope. I booked an hour on it on Friday morning to map out my shot zones as well as get an in depth report on club path, club face and AoA, etc. Lets see what the FlightScope results show pertaining to this current pull draw I'm working with.

[JonMA1]

If this post is too far off-topic, I'll apologize in advance and please feel free to move it.

I had a situation yesterday where my drive left me behind a tree and in order to have an approach shot I had 3 choices... (1) punch out then layup, (2) thread the needle with a low shot between trees, (3) hit a very strong cut. I opted for the third choice.

As shown on the image, I aligned my feet and shoulders left of my start line, my club face left of the target and just took an easy 3/4 swing (3w out of the short rough). I made better contact than I'd anticipated and the ball launched high, missing the tree along the line of my club face.
Any time I've tried to hit a cut in the past, the ball launched low with an immediate curve. This shot didn't. It looked like it was destined to go straight into the trees. But at the last second it broke really hard to the right. The ball did exactly what I wanted. It missed the obstruction then curved right to leave me with what should have been a very short approach.

Spoiler

 

Sadly, I hadn't checked my gps and used too much club. It reached ridge and rolled down into the swamp. But everything else went as planned. The 1 stroke penalty didn't really hurt as I would have been hitting my 4th had I taken the safe choice of punching out and laying up.

 

My question is, did I do everything right with my alignment and club face? Are these types of shots worth practicing? Or is this above my skill level and I just got lucky with the ball flight?

[9wood]

I can easily hit a straight shot, and I can easily hit a pull fade, but have difficulty when I attempt to hit a push draw shot.

[Lihu]

9 minutes ago, 9wood said:

I can easily hit a straight shot, and I can easily hit a pull fade, but have difficulty when I attempt to hit a push draw shot.

To hit a push draw you need to come inside out and your hand path needs to be straighter with an open club face. Straight club face will just draw.

Your path is likely a typical outside in swing which makes the pull fade easy to hit. I'm also guessing that your straight shots have some fade on them. You can tell by the way the ball rolls.

 

[9wood]

5 hours ago, Lihu said:

To hit a push draw you need to come inside out and your hand path needs to be straighter with an open club face. Straight club face will just draw.

Your path is likely a typical outside in swing which makes the pull fade easy to hit. I'm also guessing that your straight shots have some fade on them. You can tell by the way the ball rolls.

 

When I line up for for a pull fade it's quite amusing, at least to me. I'll line up and aim at a tree that's 150 or so yards out on the left and then hit my ball. When I do this it looks like my ball will hit the tree but then starts turning back to the right just before it hits the tree. And yes, often times my straight shots have an ever so slight fade to them. It's cool to watch. You say that in order to hit a push draw one of the things I need to do is to open the club face. If I do that with my driver then won't I experience a certain amount of loss of distance on my drives.

Edited April 19, 2016 by 9wood

[Lihu]

6 minutes ago, 9wood said:

When I line up for for a pull fade it's quite amusing, at least to me. I'll line up and aim at a tree that's 150 or so yards out on the left and then hit my ball. When I do this it looks like my it looks like my ball will hit the tree but then starts turning back to the right just before it hits the tree. And yes, often times my straight shots have an ever so slight fade to them. It's cool to watch. You say that in order to hit a push draw one of the things I need to do is to open the club face. If I do that with my driver then won't I experience a certain amount of loss of distance on my drives.

Yes, more open for the push.

The first thing is to swing from inside out. This means the path of the club head is going away from you at the time of impact. To hit a push from this path, the face needs to be more open, as shown in the ball flight laws in the first post. The draw comes from the fact that the face is facing out away from the path as described in the same ball flight laws.

These are the parameters that Erik uses to get a gentle push-draw with his 6i.

Quote

Face: 2°

Path: 4°

AoA: -3°

That produces a gentle push-draw.

 

[9wood]

2 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Yes, more open for the push.

The first thing is to swing from inside out. This means the path of the club head is going away from you at the time of impact. To hit a push from this path the face needs to be more open, as shown in the ball flight laws in the first post. The draw comes from the fact that the face is facing out away from the path as described in the same ball flight laws.

But won't I lose distance with an open face?

[Lihu]

3 minutes ago, 9wood said:

But won't I lose distance with an open face?

Yes, but the draw increases the distance so it ends up being roughly the same maximum distance you can get on a decent shot. Pull draw is your longest shot but is usually not desirable.

[Golfingdad]

16 hours ago, JonMA1 said:

If this post is too far off-topic, I'll apologize in advance and please feel free to move it.

I had a situation yesterday where my drive left me behind a tree and in order to have an approach shot I had 3 choices... (1) punch out then layup, (2) thread the needle with a low shot between trees, (3) hit a very strong cut. I opted for the third choice.

As shown on the image, I aligned my feet and shoulders left of my start line, my club face left of the target and just took an easy 3/4 swing (3w out of the short rough). I made better contact than I'd anticipated and the ball launched high, missing the tree along the line of my club face.
Any time I've tried to hit a cut in the past, the ball launched low with an immediate curve. This shot didn't. It looked like it was destined to go straight into the trees. But at the last second it broke really hard to the right. The ball did exactly what I wanted. It missed the obstruction then curved right to leave me with what should have been a very short approach.

  Hide contents

 

Sadly, I hadn't checked my gps and used too much club. It reached ridge and rolled down into the swamp. But everything else went as planned. The 1 stroke penalty didn't really hurt as I would have been hitting my 4th had I taken the safe choice of punching out and laying up.

 

My question is, did I do everything right with my alignment and club face? Are these types of shots worth practicing? Or is this above my skill level and I just got lucky with the ball flight?

I see that you bumped this thread with your questions and nobody has helped you yet, so I'll give it a shot.  Assuming that your swing path was along your body line and assuming that the clubface was aligned right of the trees you were trying to avoid, then generally, you set up correctly.

Are these type of shots worth practicing?  Certainly.  The ability to advance the ball from poor situations like that is really advantageous ... provided you do it judiciously.  For me to allow myself to attempt this type of shot, I weigh the risk vs. the reward.  I am confident enough in my setup that I can get it out past the trees in front of me, but even if I make good contact, sometimes it just doesn't curve.  I wouldn't have tried your shot with a 3W, because the penalty if it went straight is too severe.  I would have probably tried something with a mid iron that I could hit hard enough to get it to curve, but not so hard that it goes into the other trees if it doesn't curve.  My goal would also have been much less daring.  I would have gone for the safest target (i.e., shortest shot) that would put me in position to see the green for my next shot.  Somewhere around the tail of the arrow that is furthest left in that picture.

The bottom line is that any shots that you can hit to get out of trouble - low curves, high curves, low and straight, etc - are advantageous in the right circumstances, so it's nice to practice them a bit just in case you need them.

[iacas]

I agree with what @Golfingdad had to say to you @JonMA1.

Unless the lies are bad (sloped, divot holes, whatever) I would advance the ball as far as possible, but not, as Drew said, too far that would punish an accidental straight shot (shots from rough don't always spin as much as we'd like) or a shot that you just caught clean and which flew too far even though it curved properly.

[9wood]

1 hour ago, Lihu said:

Yes, but the draw increases the distance so it ends up being roughly the same maximum distance you can get on a decent shot. Pull draw is your longest shot but is usually not desirable.

How can it possibly be that I lose and gain distance at the same time?

[Lihu]

30 minutes ago, 9wood said:

How can it possibly be that I lose and gain distance at the same time?

The push will lose distance with the open face as you stated, but by putting a draw on the ball will gain that distance back so there's roughly a net loss of zero distance. Just watching a lot of people, fades and pushes tend to go shorter, and draws and pulls tend to go farther

I tend to hit all kinds of trajectories, not intentionally, and on good strikes the same things happen. Pulls are longer and pushes are shorter, but not by much.

 

[JonMA1]

2 hours ago, Golfingdad said:

I see that you bumped this thread with your questions and nobody has helped you yet, so I'll give it a shot.  Assuming that your swing path was along your body line and assuming that the clubface was aligned right of the trees you were trying to avoid, then generally, you set up correctly.

Are these type of shots worth practicing?  Certainly.  The ability to advance the ball from poor situations like that is really advantageous ... provided you do it judiciously.  For me to allow myself to attempt this type of shot, I weigh the risk vs. the reward.  I am confident enough in my setup that I can get it out past the trees in front of me, but even if I make good contact, sometimes it just doesn't curve.  I wouldn't have tried your shot with a 3W, because the penalty if it went straight is too severe.  I would have probably tried something with a mid iron that I could hit hard enough to get it to curve, but not so hard that it goes into the other trees if it doesn't curve.  My goal would also have been much less daring.  I would have gone for the safest target (i.e., shortest shot) that would put me in position to see the green for my next shot.  Somewhere around the tail of the arrow that is furthest left in that picture.

The bottom line is that any shots that you can hit to get out of trouble - low curves, high curves, low and straight, etc - are advantageous in the right circumstances, so it's nice to practice them a bit just in case you need them.

Everything you've described seems perfectly logical - both the strategy and the practice advice. Great explanation.

2 hours ago, iacas said:

I agree with what @Golfingdad had to say to you @JonMA1.

Unless the lies are bad (sloped, divot holes, whatever) I would advance the ball as far as possible, but not, as Drew said, too far that would punish an accidental straight shot (shots from rough don't always spin as much as we'd like) or a shot that you just caught clean and which flew too far even though it curved properly.

Yep. That was the wrong club as Drew suggested. I should have checked the distance to the trees straight in front and used a club that wouldn't have reached. That way if the shot didn't break, I can still lay up and I'm no worse off than if I were to take the safest option in the first place. (Also, note to self... easy swings with a 3w often result in really good contact).

Thanks for the replies, gentlemen.

[Golfingdad]

4 minutes ago, JonMA1 said:

(Also, note to self... easy swings with a 3w often result in really good contact).

Funny how that works, huh?  A bit of a golfing Murphy's Law thing going on.

Want to make solid contact and hit it far?  Better try and cream it!

Want to hit it short?  Swing easy and smooth, and hammer the snot out of it.

Flag is up on the little shelf in back?  100% guarantee that my ball will be on the lower tier.

Flag is in the valley down below?  Hey, look at that - it is easy to hit my approach onto this upper tier. 

[dchoye]

One of my habits is to walk into the ball holding the club with my right hand . Then when I'm addressing the ball put my left hand on the grip. This is my usual routine and ends up draw or push draw. 

For whatever reason when I want to deliberately push fade the ball I will come into the ball holding the club with my left hand and then put my right hand on the grip when setup behind the ball. 

Of course the fade or draw doesn't come all the time but this works for me most of the time 

[Lihu]

10 hours ago, dchoye said:

One of my habits is to walk into the ball holding the club with my right hand . Then when I'm addressing the ball put my left hand on the grip. This is my usual routine and ends up draw or push draw. 

For whatever reason when I want to deliberately push fade the ball I will come into the ball holding the club with my left hand and then put my right hand on the grip when setup behind the ball. 

Of course the fade or draw doesn't come all the time but this works for me most of the time 

I don't understand how this procedure will promote a fade or draw?

[rehmwa]

19 hours ago, Lihu said:

but by putting a draw on the ball will gain that distance back

This doesn't make sense - the ball doesn't know whether a curve to the left is a draw from a right handed golfer or a fade from a lefty.

One theory is that a draw goes farther because it can come with a delofted face (unintentionally) and even more of a strong AoA (hands can lead a bit extra with a draw swing thought).

So then the response to the poster is:  the open face shortens your flight, but it's balanced because the draw closes the face.  !!??

 

I think it's coriolis effect - right handed golfers in the northern hemisphere would define an overwhelming set of observations....

[Lihu]

10 minutes ago, rehmwa said:

This doesn't make sense - the ball doesn't know whether a curve to the left is a draw from a right handed golfer or a fade from a lefty.

One theory is that a draw goes farther because it can come with a delofted face (unintentionally) and even more of a strong AoA (hands can lead a bit extra with a draw swing thought).

So then the response to the poster is:  the open face shortens your flight, but it's balanced because the draw closes the face.  !!??

 

I think it's coriolis effect - right handed golfers in the northern hemisphere would define an overwhelming set of observations....

The physical reason I was trying to give is that a push or fade is usually in the opposite direction of your hand motion, while a pull or high draw are in the same direction. De-lofting would reduce the carry distance.

The stronger AoA might be because your hand is naturally moving that way, unless you can dislocate your shoulder every swing.