CalBoomer

My current project is perfecting a power fade with all of my clubs from driver to wedges. I must say that the amount of misinformation on this shot is mind-boggling (from professional teachers on down to rank amateurs). The absolutely biggest misconception is that it is a controlled slice hit with the usual out/in swing. In fact the shot used by most professional golfers is basically an anti-hook shot which includes the following common elements: (1) an in/out swing (along the stance line), which is what provides the "power," (2) an open club face (relative to the stance line) at contact, (3) a ball flight which is long and can be a slight pull, slight push, or dead straight with or without a very little bit of left to right movement. Done correctly it should be impossible to hit a significant draw or hook. There are different ways to produce such a shot. Two of the best documented are by Hogan and Trevino. The Hogan method was to use a very weak grip. The Trevino method is to use a very open stance, a club face open to the stance line but square to the target line, and controlled release. The Hogan method produces a long straight pull with slight left to right movement. The Trevino method produces a long straight push with/without slight left to right movement. After experimenting with both methods, I personally find the Trevino method more repeatable and bullet-proof. For those of you interested, I am quoting below an old article by Trevino published in Golf Magazine in December, 1979. Compared to some of the mish-mash you can read on this topic, it is a model of clarity. "YOU CAN LEARN TO HIT MY FADE Here is a simple method that will help you develop an accurate left-to-right shot By LEE TREVINO “There are probably as many different ways to draw and fade the ball, as there are tacos in Mexico I'm sure you've heard about many of them. Strong and weak grips. Opened and closed clubfaces. Inside and outside takeaways. Early and late releases. Light and tight grip pressures. But most of these methods are unreliable, particularly when you try to mix them up in your golf game. My theory is that you should have one favorite shot, either a fade or a draw, and use it almost all the time. I favor the fade. But not an ordinary fade, with an open clubface or weak grip or outside to inside swing. Those types are too fickle. One mistake in timing, one miscalculation and the fade you expected can become a blue dart into the left trees. No, I have my own technique, unlike anything you've heard of before. It has worked for me, and it can work for you. Even if you are a slicer, my technique will help you control your slice, and as a bonus, help you hit a draw, as well. I almost always "push" the ball. That's the easy way to think of my fade, as a push/fade to the target. Very little can go wrong: Your wrists can't roll over and surprise you with a snap hook. You don't have to worry about releasing early or late, because, in effect, you don't release at all. And you don't need to fret about a "double cross" aiming left and hitting farther left by mistake. With my method, the ball drifts to the right every time. To begin, make sure your shoulders, hips and feet line up to the left of your intended target with the shoulders slightly less open than the hips and feet. Aim the clubface at the target, open to your body alignment. Play the ball about one to two inches inside your left heel and start the club back along the target line. This will put the club on an inside path in relation to your body. On the forward swing, shift your hips laterally toward the target and swing the club down on the target line, holding your release and keeping the clubhead on the target line well after impact. You should have the feeling of swinging very much inside-to-outside and in fact, you are. "Inside out?" you might ask. "Doesn't that cause a draw?" Yes, it does, but only when your swing is inside out in relation to your target line. This swing is inside out in relation to the body alignment, but straight back to straight through in relation to the target line (see illustration). You won't draw the ball with this swing. If anything, you will contact the ball after the club has swung down and back to, the inside on the forward swing, thus putting a slight left to right spin on the ball . So you have two big pluses here: First, you have an inside to outside attack in relation to your body. This is much more powerful than the outside-to inside swings that many amateurs use to fade the ball. Second, you have the club moving down the target line, producing either a straight ball or slight fade. You can't beat that combination. Here's a trick that might help you understand this a little better. After you set up, imagine that there are three golf balls in front of the one you're about to hit (see illustration). For the fade, you want to hit through all four balls. This will force your right shoulder down rather than around on the downswing, with your arms extending toward the target on the follow through. Keep in mind that the right shoulder doesn't dip. That would cause fat shots. Instead, the shoulder simply swivels underneath the chin. As a result, you will hold your release, keep the club moving down the target line, and push the ball to the hole, with very little sidespin. I have, however, encountered one "problem" among people who have tried this method. They say to me, "Lee, when I swing your way, I hit the ball way to the right. I just tell them, "Aim farther left.” Don't open your stance more; just shift your entire orientation to the left. In other words, rather than aim the clubface down the fairway or at the pin, aim it at an intermediate target more to the left and shift your body alignment farther to the left as well. There's no rule that says you have to aim down the middle. Line up for the trees on the left and push it down the fairway. It's easy, when you know for sure that you can hit the push/fade. The beauty of the balls in a line image is that you can use it to draw the ball, too. For the right to left shot, line up your body parallel to the target line and aim your clubface at an intermediate target to the right, to allow for the draw. Then, simply think of picking off the first ball in line, the real ball, without touching the three imaginary ones. This brings the right shoulder and club up quickly in the follow through, and whenever the club and shoulder move up, they go counterclockwise as well, which closes the clubface. Result: a draw. Try my method. You'll see how easy it is to fade and draw the ball. You'll always know where the ball is going. And in golf, there's no substitute for accuracy. I can vouch for that. A key to hitting consistent, solid fades is to keep the right shoulder moving down under the chin through impact.” It is a very straightforward method. It works as stated. I am trying to perfect it with all my clubs. Anybody else working on the power fade?

Sorry. When I responded to you initially, the picture of Jack hadn't come up on my computer. The fact is, I had seen the similarities previously, but thought commenting on it would be a stretch, causing more laughs. Fact is, Nicklaus is using Diegel-lite. I would suspect I now look like something in between, minus any greatness, of course.

Awesome picture. I hope I don't look quite that extreme.

Weird, yes. Funny, definitely. But also remarkably effective in limiting the putter face from turning. So I'll just keep sinking putts while the people I'm playing with are laughing too hard to line up their own putts.

Let's break this down a bit and consider only the physics of the situation. In the end, the only meaning of "efficient" for the golf ball is whether or not the ball is hit on the optimal sweet spot of the club (any club) with a square club face and an optimal launch angle. How that happens is irrelevant to how far the ball goes. The only other factor is clubhead speed. Pros of either sex hit the ball longer because they make better and more consistent contact and have a faster swing speed.

Obviously one of the major goals in putting well is keeping the putter face exactly perpendicular to the target line while striking the ball. Leo Diegel, one of the great golfers of the early 20th century, used a putting technique which was unorthodox and the butt of many jokes. The elbows are extremely bent with the forearms forming almost a straight line parallel to the target line. To get the elbows and forearms in such a position one has to be bent over and looking almost straight down at the ball. However funny looking the position, if it is used with a pendulum motion, it is very hard to twist the putter face out of perpendicular during the stroke. And the line of the forearms is very helpful in maintaining the stroke on the target line. I tried it for fun and had the best putting day of my life. I think I'll keep using it for now.

The term "fade" is almost misleading since it suggests a minimal slice. In most cases done well, "fade" is merely the amount you expect the ball to land off the target line. If you aim left 10-20 degrees and hit the ball with a slightly open club face and an in-out swing, the actual flight of the ball may be dead straight. So maybe it would be best to just call the shot a mild push. But then that doesn't have the verbal cache of "power fade." And I didn't mean to imply all pros hit such a shot. Obviously many hit draws. But the "power fade" many pros do hit, is pretty much as I described.

For me personally, trying to "limit release" never produces consistent results. Extreme limiting of release or "blocking" really cuts down on distance. Two suggestions easy to implement. Make your swing a little more vertical. Open the clubface slightly at address. This may produce a mild push fade or power fade, or even a mild push draw, but prevents extreme hooking.

I really agree with this. For me, it's a sensation of starting the swing by dropping my hands--with the left arm straight of course.

Power fade, push fade, same thing. Inside-out swing, slightly open club face. The purpose is to avoid hooking the ball. When you do it right, there is nothing to fix. It's an awesome golf shot. This is the shot I usually set up for, but my longest drives wind up as high push draws because I get the face slightly closed. My best drives are usually 250-260. Last time out, though, I hit one perfect fade (about10-20 degrees) straight as as arrow that went 290+ yards (no wind or elevation change). That is the shot the pros use. Sure wish I could do it more often.

There is no best anything in golf. Whatever works for you.

Wedges are for finesse shots at shorter distances. What is the point of de-lofting them and getting greater distance? Makes no sense to me.

Picking a wedge is like picking a putter. It all comes down to personal preference and what works best for you. Vokey wedges are heavily advertised and used by a lot of pros. But then so are Cleveland wedges. If someone made you play with a different set of wedges and your game fell apart, I would say you game was not very robust.

The range is study hall. The golf course is the exam.

Dave Pelz. Dave was a NASA engineer before he became a rich golfing guru.

Outside 60 yards I use my range finder. At or inside 60 yards, I visualize a throw from home to 1st base (30 yards) and decided if I am 30, 45, or 60 yards out. No point in my cutting it finer than that.

When you say "Off the tee," I'm presuming you mean your driving. IMO there is no one simple tweak or tip that can solve this problem. I would make a different suggestion. You have to decide whether your basic and most consistent shot is a fade or a draw. Then you have to look at what your most common miss is. Then you have to work on adjustments to minimize that type of miss. For example, Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus initially hit a draw as their basic shot. Their most serious miss was an uncontrolled hook. Both made changes to their swing and grip to prevent a hook and eventually wound up hitting a power fade. I'm paraphrasing, but Nicklaus allegedly said something to the effect that "I changed my set-up and grip so that even if I tried to hit a hook, I couldn't." That is the essence of the power fade. And since their tendency was to draw the ball, they also couldn't hit an extreme fade or slice. The bottom line is you have to figure out how to eliminate half of the fairway as a potential miss. This not simple or easy. The pros work on it all the time.

Just another way SnT makes the game easier.

This is probably just idiosyncratic to me, but it was a big help. With my old, more conventional swing, I could not get much shoulder turn because of my age and lack of flexibility. When I slowed my backswing too much, I had a jerky start to my downswing. So I did better with a faster tempo. A while ago I switched to stack and tilt, and now I get much better shoulder turn. Now I can have a slower backswing because my downswing starts more smoothly with better hip and body turn. Overall a big improvement.

This isn't really anything new. I've been driving sitting down in my car for fifty years!

This is getting a bit dicey. Do we assume from the "data" that LPGA golfers aren't among the best players. Without data, I would dare say that the top women pros outplay 99% of the folks on this forum. Should all of us amateurs aim for exactly the same standards as the best men pros with their extreme swing speeds? Or to get more technical, what is the standard deviation of that minuscule -1.3* average attack angle. Simple statistics would argue that even the best players probably hit the ball with a positive attack angle a fair percentage of the time. Making a strong suggestion to amateurs that they should be hitting "down" with their driver, when many of them are fitted with 14* clubs does not exactly make a lot of sense.

I'm not surprised by this information. I'm a 66-yr old doctor. I had trouble getting shoulder turn without hurting my back using a more conventional swing. With SnT, I get much better shoulder turn and it doesn't bother my back at all.

What he said. Of all the clubs we use, the putter is the most personally idiosyncratic. Jim Furyk is currently leading the FedEx Championship with a putter he bought at a garage sale for $35. So much for fitting and expense. Whatever works best for you is what is best for you. Simple.

Pure strength has little to do with how far you you hit a golf ball. The essentials are purity of contact, clubhead speed, and launch angle. I played a week ago with a very good golfer who was about 5'6" and 140 lbs. 220-240 yard drives straight down the fairway every time. The women pros regularly hit it 270, and they are about the same size as he is.

I do not think what Snead is talking about has anything to do with squaring up the clubface at the time of contact. He is talking about "whipping" the club face through the ball at release to increase speed and distance. Nobody would advocate "dead hands"--which I would equate with limited release--for most full swings. As for Snead's advice, I doubt it is very good for amateurs and would likely result in lots of bad hooks. He was a phenomenal athlete who did a lot of things unconsciously--almost the exact opposite of Ben Hogan--and I doubt he would have made a very good golf instructor.