The post Bubba Watson taught me how to hit crazy hooks and slices appeared first on Golf.

The post Bubba Watson taught me how to hit crazy hooks and slices appeared first on Golf.

“Do you agree with that?” I asked. 

“…yessss,” he said. 

And it’s true, isn’t it? It would feel wrong to say any other pro has established a reputation for curving the golf ball as much as Watson has over his career. The most iconic moment of your career will do that.

The whole idea for complimenting Watson was to introduce our assignment for the day: can we use the workability intel of one of the game’s most imaginative players to help little ol’ ME work the ball as much as I could, too? Could a talented Pro teach this Joe how to do what he does best?

The short answer? Yes. 

The long answer? You can read below and check out our video of the action. 

My first question for Watson was simple: where do you start? 

Before we had turned the cameras on, he had already explained how the longer the club, the more curve you can create. At first, this felt counter-intuitive. The trajectory of a shorter club — like pitching wedge — means more time in the air and theoretically more time to curve, right? Watson agreed with that concept, but said the longer the club, the more speed you can enact on it and the more spin you can create. 

So the first answer to the question “where do you start” is another question: How much curve do you need? After that, Watson asked me to focus less on my hands and more about my feet. How your feet are positioned impacts your body’s ability to rotate, freeing you to exaggerate whichever direction you are hoping to start the ball. A closed stance — with your lead foot pushed a little forward and your rear foot pulled slightly back — allows you to play more of a draw, and inhibits a fade. The inverse — an open stance — allows your body to rotate through contact to create more of a cut. 

Before diving deep into his process, Watson wanted me to first prove I could work the ball in any direction, period. So we got my feet aligned properly, and then he had me crank on the clubhead slightly, turning it a couple degrees left in order to hit a big, roping hook. In Bubba Talk, this is called hooding the club, turning the face downward slightly. (It should be obvious, but in case it isn’t: without manipulating the clubface at impact, the work of curving the ball otherwise falls entirely on swing path. Think of the clubface as the curving vehicle and the swing path as its fuel.)

My first swing? A topped duff 30 yards forward. 

My second swing? A hard hooking shot that started straight and immediately exited left. A success! Yes, but only a minor one because we wanted to see the ball start right before turning back left. I was still swinging across that closed stance rather than along it, limiting the distance and height of my strikes.

With the ball just inside of my lead foot, I was doing a bit too much reaching for the ball. It felt awkward to try and turn my hands over with a 7-iron at a ball position more aligned with my driver swing. Bubba stepped in and moved the ball back to the center of my swing just to make sure I was more comfortable attacking the ball with a down-and-outward swing. And even though Watson admitted that placing the ball further back in my stance should lead to lower trajectory, the angle of the club did plenty of work, launching the ball high and drawing. 

Now, there’s a reason we’re doing this on a driving range. Because for Watson, hitting a draw is easy. He knows where the center of the clubface is at all times. He can implement changes to his game at any time. For me, I tell him, to swing along my feet on that outward path makes me feel like I’m going to introduce the hosel to the ball and create a shank. 

“That is the beauty between amateur golf and pro golf,” he chides, unfortunately very correct. 

But that’s step 3, or step 4, depending on who’s counting. We’d manipulated my stance, we’d figured out a comfortable ball placement and we got me turning the clubhead in the impact zone. The major missing piece was altering my swing path. 

Swing path is often the hardest part of this equation for amateurs to understand. An exaggerated swing path might just be a few inches of hand position from the norm, and for Watson, that comes down to a certain feel. When he visits PING Headquarters in Scottsdale, “they’re checking the numbers, and I’m looking at visual,” he told me. He prefers to see trees, flags or bunkers as elements that he can work off on the course rather than what a spin rate would tell you via a Trackman. 

As we flipped the setup on everything, hoping to produce a major cut/slice, he offered some simple advice to dial in the proper swing path: the first few inches of your takeaway should just be the opposite movement of how you intend to come down and strike the ball. In other words, if you intend to hit a cut, and cut across the ball through the impact zone — for righties, creating a left-to-right spin — start by taking the club away to the right of the ball during your backswing. 

Ultimately, you’re just paving a backward path you will ultimately try to mimic on the way down when you turn back to the ball. The final question of the day, though, is … how much?

Watson watched intently as I hit soft cuts high in the air. I had created a cut-leaning path, but not a slice-leaning one. “You’re trying to hit my club out here,” he said, placing the head of his club a few inches back in my takeaway and at least three inches in his direction. That checkpoint was uncomfortably far from my body, I told him, and made me think of Jim Furyk’s loopy takeaway. But as is often the case in golf instruction, feel is not real. Movements are always going to feel much bigger than they are in reality. 

And that’s mostly the point, Bubba said. You want to over-cook a cut into a slice? You have to overemphasize the path. As you can see in the video, I had just two words for my teacher when I finally sent one, high in the air and slicing with 64 feet of curve:

“Wow, Bubba.”

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The post Lexi Thompson taught me how to hit a punch shot into the wind appeared first on Golf.

The post Lexi Thompson taught me how to hit a punch shot into the wind appeared first on Golf.

“Usually you just focus on more solid contact when it gets super windy,” Thompson says. “So a little slower speed, more center contact.”

Lexi Thompson’s 3 keys to success playing into the wind

To execute a lower, more penetrating ball flight into the wind, Thompson makes three adjustments to her setup, including changes to her grip, ball position and swing length.

1. Grip

“I already grip up a little bit on the club, but I do a little bit extra when I want to hit a controlled shot,” she says. “Usually about half an inch to an inch on the club for me.”

2. Ball position

“I play a little bit further back in my stance instead of middle to more up front,” she says.

Features

3. Swing Length

“I usually take one club more and swing about half to three quarters, especially when it’s windy,” she says. “You don’t want to have to over-swing or swing full in a club because it adds spin to the ball and it just will shoot up. So the key is less spin, the lower the ball will play, the more controlled.”

Thompson demonstrated hitting the shot with her 8-iron, which she said is usually her 150- to 155-yard club.

One thing to remember: it’s okay to club up in the wind. What you don’t want to do is try to hit the ball harder. Thompson suggests using a nice, even tempo with a shorter-than-normal swing. Also: pay attention to the wind direction. On our blustery day at Panther National, Thompson made sure to give herself a 10-yard aiming cushion on her target to account for movement from the wind.

On my attempt to incorporate Thompson’s tips, executing the shot felt natural. Moving the ball slightly back in my stance and taking a three-quarter swing helped the ball stay lower, with a more penetrating ball flight than normal, and no distance loss. I was delighted with the result after just one swing.

Lexi Thompson, master instructor. We’ll add that to her lengthy list of accomplishments.

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The post Maria Fassi explains each step of her green-reading strategy appeared first on Golf.

The post Maria Fassi explains each step of her green-reading strategy appeared first on Golf.

At the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur in 2019, Fassi — then a 21-year-old senior at the University of Arkansas — had a memorable final-round showdown with eventual champion Jennifer Kupcho, who triumphed by four shots.

But Fassi, as the runner-up, made a grand impression, hitting bombs, sporting copper lenses in her aviator sunglasses and smiling brightly at the cheering galleries. Fassi turned pro in the months following the ANWA, locking up big-name sponsors — a boon she says she attributes to the exposure she gained at the ANWA.

“I’ve got two sponsors that came significantly from that, and honestly other sponsors too, just from people that worked for those companies that were there and witnessed what Jennifer and I were able to do,” Fassi told GOLF.com last year. “Golf-wise, I think it was such a great booster for confidence for me then, and all the players who are doing it now.”

Fassi has thrived as a professional in the years since she made history at the ANWA, posting eight career top-10s on the LPGA Tour. Putting is one of Fassi’s strengths, and at a recent LPGA tournament, she explained her green-reading process and how she approaches each putt she faces.

How Maria Fassi reads the green

Fassi starts her process by looking at the putt from behind.

“Just trying to figure out what the slopes are and stuff,” she says. “I also have notes in my book of little subtle breaks that I’ve seen during the practice day. So I always tend to look at that.”

Next, Fassi takes a walk around the putt to get a feel for the slope, taking mental notes of any runoffs. The walk will ultimately take her to the other side of the ball, so she can look at the putt from that angle.

News

“I try to read my putt from both sides, but I get most of my information, I think, from when I’m on the other side of the ball,” Fassi says. “I can see like a visual of what I’m thinking the ball is gonna do.”

Fassi says looking from the other side is important for her, but if you opt not to, you should at least get a feel for what the terrain is doing around the hole.

“Just by walking, I think you get a lot of very valuable information,” she says.

Once the research is complete, it’s time to line up. Fassi says she tends to use a line on her ball only on shorter putts. On longer putts, she picks an intermediate spot to focus on.

On the putt Fassi hit while on camera, her line was superb, but the ball rolled about two feet past the hole.

“I was trying to make it for you guys,” she said with a smile, before tapping in.

To see Fassi’s routine in its entirety, check out the full video above.

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The post The secret to escaping a fried egg lie, according to an LPGA pro appeared first on Golf.

The post The secret to escaping a fried egg lie, according to an LPGA pro appeared first on Golf.

Even for the pros, these shots are anything but automatic. In 2023, the PGA Tour leader (Matt Kuchar) in sand saves got up-and-down just 68% of the time, while the LPGA leader (Mi Hyang Lee) topped the tour at 64%. And those are the best players in the world. For the average Joe, getting up and in from the sand is a much less likely proposition.

Short Game

One of the most difficult aspects of bunker play is the unpredictability of the hazards. In the sand, you can get any number of lies, which affects the difficulty of the shot. Even perfect lies aren’t easy, but when you have a tough lie, getting up-and-down becomes all the more unlikely.

One of the most difficult lies from the bunker is the dreaded fried egg. For help with that shot, we enlisted 2016 U.S. Women’s Open champion Brittany Lang. Check out the video above, or read below for her tips.

How to escape a fried egg lie

When the ball is partially buried in the sand, you can’t use your typical bunker technique. Because of the way the ball is sitting, you have to make a few adjustments to make sure the clubhead interacts with the sand in the correct way.

“I usually try to aim a little bit to the right,” Lang says. “Because I shut the clubface.”

On a typical bunker shots, you’d use the exact opposite setup — open stance and open clubface. But because of the lie, these adjustments are necessary.

Like with normal bunker shots, you want to use an out-to-in path. But instead of using the bounce to let the clubhead glide underneath the ball, you want to hit down and let the ball explode out of the sand.

“It just gets that pure contact,” Lang says. “I just kind of chop it out of there.”

From there, the only thing you need to remember is to keep your speed up throughout the entire swing. If you can do that, the ball should pop right out of the bunker and onto the green, giving you a chance to save par.

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The post Pros Teaching Joes: Marina Alex shares the keys to reading Bermuda greens appeared first on Golf.

The post Pros Teaching Joes: Marina Alex shares the keys to reading Bermuda greens appeared first on Golf.

All of the sudden, you not only have the usual speed and break to think about, but also the grain — the direction the grass is growing — and that grain has a huge effect on the putt’s speed and break.

Bermuda grass is prevalent in states with warm climates, so if you’re planning to travel for some winter golf, familiarizing yourself with the nuances of Bermuda greens will help you play your best.

As a 10-year LPGA Tour veteran, Marina Alex knows a thing or two about navigating Bermuda greens, so at this year’s Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in Orlando, Fla., I decided to ask her for her best tips.

How to read Bermuda greens, according to Marina Alex

“With putting, there are two things you focus on: the break and the speed,” Alex says. “With grain, you have to incorporate in how that’s going to affect both the speed and the break, because it will.”

Alex says there are a few steps to take in order to read a Bermuda green properly.

Instruction

1. Look at the cup

“If you look at how the cup is cut, you can see which way the grain is going,” she says. “The part of the cup where the grass is grittier and not as smooth is the grain direction.”

If you discern that your putt is down grain, that means it will be a bit faster than it would be as a flat putt.

“That may also impact how much it’s going to break,” Alex says. “You have to play it a little softer than you would normally, so you have to increase your break.”

2. Look for dark vs. shiny areas

Another trick to reading Bermuda greens involves assessing your line for dark or shiny sections of grass.

“When we’re looking at this putt, you can see it’s pretty shiny,” Alex says. “So it’s going to be, again, down grain.”

If you find yourself on a shiny part of the green, you can further confirm the grain by assessing the green as a whole, locating the pockets of dark and shiny areas.

Down-grain and down-slope don’t always align, Alex says. That’s why it’s always important to check.

“Sometimes you will be putting either on a flat surface or even uphill but the grain could be going in the opposite direction of the slope,” Alex says. “That makes the read a little bit more difficult.”

Instruction

3. Look at your putt from both sides of the hole

Many players employ this green-reading tactic on every putt, but Alex says that it’s an especially good idea on Bermuda greens.

“You have to take a look from both sides. Because I think, A, seeing the color change in the grass, but also taking a look at that cup can kind of reinforce where you want to aim it and how hard you want to hit it.”

Alex then demonstrated her keys on a down-grain putt. It was way faster than it looked. We both missed it, underscoring Alex’s points about how much grain can effect both speed and break.

“That is the tricky part of Bermuda,” Alex concludes. “Some putts become very, very quick, some putts can become very, very slow. Look for the shiny grass, and take a quick peek at the cup.”

For more from Alex, check out the full video of our lesson above, and for more tips from the game’s best, browse our entire collection of Pros Teaching Joes videos.

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The post 3 keys for hitting off a downhill lie, according to a Masters champion appeared first on Golf.

The post 3 keys for hitting off a downhill lie, according to a Masters champion appeared first on Golf.

This is true even at the most famous courses in the world. Take Augusta National, for example. Although the grounds are pristine as they come, the land has some funky contours. Even in the fairway at Augusta, you’ll rarely have a flat lie.

The 10th hole is a prime example. With a routing that takes players from the high point of the property near the clubhouse down a hill to the green, the second shot is typically played off a downhill lie. If a player wants to claim a green jacket, they must have success off all sorts of awkward lies.

Instruction

Trevor Immelman knows this fact well. During his march to a Masters victory in 2008, he was forced to hit off numerous uphill, downhill and sidehill lies from the fairway — and he had a fair amount of success, too. By Sunday night, he was donning the green jacket after holding off Tiger Woods and a host of other contenders.

With such success on the awkward slopes of Augusta National, we asked Immelman to give us a few tips for hitting off downhill lies in this edition of Pros Teaching Joes. Check out the video above, or read below for more.

3 keys for hitting off downhill lies

1. Low — and long — takeaway

With your ball on a downhill lie, it’s easy to get your weight over your front foot and forget to finish your backswing. To combat this, Immelman likes to focus on a takeaway that’s low to the ground, putting an emphasis on making sure to finish the backswing.

“Try to make sure that the takeaway stays nice and low,” Immelman says. “Because then I can still complete my turn and not rush the transition. What I would find, like I said, is pick it up, not turning enough, you’re hanging on your left side, and then as you start to transition you’re way in front of the ball and clubface management becomes difficult.”

2. Don’t try to help the ball up

It can be hard to get the proper height on your shot from a downhill lie. With the club delofted a bit and your weight so far forward, the ball will tend to come out low. But that’s ok. As Immelman explains, you don’t need to try to help the ball up. That, he says, will only lead to even more issues.

“Don’t try and help it up,” Immelman says. “Because a lot of times then you’re going to be moving backwards and you’re going to hit behind the ball and lose all of that contact.”

3. Move with the slope

The final thing to keep in mind when hitting off a downslope is to swing with the slope. This means your weight should be shifting with the slope to keep the low point in your swing consistent.

“Once you’ve done that stuff we spoke about with the backswing and you come down here, move with the slope,” Immelman says. “Don’t be afraid to drive it a little lower. It’s going to come out a little lower. As soon as you hang back, you’re going to lose the low point in your swing and your contact is going to suffer.”

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The post 3 tips to improve your short putts from an LPGA pro appeared first on Golf.

The post 3 tips to improve your short putts from an LPGA pro appeared first on Golf.

Once you miss a few shorties, your confidence will plummet. Self-belief is everything in golf — especially on the greens — and keeping it high is a must.

GOLF.com’s own Jessica Marksbury knows this fact well. Despite being a former collegiate golfer, her confidence on short putts has been shaken in recent years, and it’s had a detrimental effect on her putting — and her scorecard.

To help get her confidence back on the short ones, Marksbury teamed up with LPGA pro Angel Yin for a quick lesson to improve her short putting. Check out the video below, or continue reading for more.

1. Find the line

This might seem obvious, but sometimes when we get closer to the hole, it’s easy to ignore. Even when you’re within three feet of the hole, your line is immensely important. Short putts can have plenty of break to them, so you want to make sure you’re starting the ball on the correct line. Yin suggests standing behind the ball first to read the putt and then going into the rest of your routine.

Putting

“Maybe just outside of [left edge],” Yin says. “Because it’s downhill, it’s gonna be a little faster so it’s gonna break a little more.”

2. Aim club down the line

Once you find the line you want to start the ball on, you need to aim your clubface properly. Even if you have the correct read, if you can’t aim correctly, it won’t matter. Yin explains that she likes to get her clubface aimed first and then step in and get her body aligned after that.

“I address first,” Yin says. “And then I square up my body.”

3. Focus on stroke

Instead of zeroing in on the hole, Yin likes to focus instead on the apex of the break on the putt. The intermediate target allows her to free herself up and make a committed stroke. From there all you need to do is focus on rolling the ball over the intermediate spot and watch as the ball breaks toward the hole.

“I will focus on that part and the speed it needs to reach [the apex],” Yin says. “So instead of looking at the hole, my point of focus is going to be a little further back.”

If you can follow these three steps, it should make holing the short putts much simpler.

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The post I was terrified of my 60-degree wedge — until I got this lesson appeared first on Golf.

The post I was terrified of my 60-degree wedge — until I got this lesson appeared first on Golf.

But after a quick lesson with Parker McLachlin, aka Short Game Chef, my mindset completely changed.

In today’s Pros Teaching Joes, McLachlin not only shows me the proper setup and swing to use a lob wedge, but, by doing so, gives me the confidence to make it my go-to club around the putting surface.

So if you’re someone who just always grabs pitching wedge, 8-iron or something else near the green, take a look at the video above to see why you could be costing yourself shots — and why the lob wedge can help you hit crispier chips with pro-style backspin.

McLachlin’s tips for using a lob wedge

As McLachlin mentions in the video, my short game has always been “a little bit one dimensional.” That’s because I wasn’t expanding my horizons and just figured that pitching wedge was the safer club to hit.

He adds, “I don’t think you’re alone in that. I think there’s a lot of amateurs that do that.”

So how can you gain trust in the lob wedge? The first thing McLachlin does is explain the benefits of the higher-lofted wedge — especially for a shot that I was about to take, which had a steep hill that I needed to clear to reach (and stay) on the green.

“The other disadvantage to using this pitching wedge is that we are going up the hill,” he tells me. “So if you don’t get it up this hill, and you don’t carry it over the hill, there’s a good chance this is rolling back to your feet. This could add 1-2 more strokes to your game.”

Short Game

After reassuring me that hitting a pitching wedge is actually riskier than hitting a lob wedge, McLachlin has me hit a few chips to analyze where I can improve.

“Here, try the 60-degree [lob wedge]. I think there’s a lot of good things in your motion,” McLachlin says. “You don’t have to put the ball position so far forward. With that pitching wedge, you had to put that ball forward to add loft to it.

“Let’s use the 60-degree, and put the ball position a little more middle; closer to your sternum. You don’t have to open the face as much, feet are closer together, and the ball position can go a little bit more to the middle. Weight position is pretty neutral. Now make your normal swing from there.”

After I hit my first shot with the lob wedge, the ball sails on me a little bit — with McLachlin saying I just hit the ball first a little too much. This is where he wants me to focus on turf interaction on my next attempt.

“Overall, that actually wasn’t that bad,” he says. “You should feel like you’re just brushing this grass here on the way through.”

Taking his advice, I hit my next shot just like the pros do — and put some killer backspin on it to sit perfectly on the green.

“Beautiful! Oh my god, look at that thing stop on a dime!”

After hitting a shot that felt more natural, I voice a little concern over getting accustomed to my swing power with a 60-degree lob wedge. McLachlin shuts down those concerns and says the hardest part will be trusting my club choice by incorporating more turf interaction.

Bunker Shots

“The power part is going to be easy, right? I want to make sure that your turf interaction is good. Because you have a higher-lofted club, the leading edge can sort of pay you a visit more than you want it to,” he says.

“I felt like, with the pitching wedge, you had the ball so far back in your stance that you’re trying to lean back to try and get some loft on it.”

This is where it comes down to trust and confidence, relying on the lob wedge’s loft to hit the shot I want.

“Use the loft from the 60-degree [lob wedge], make your normal type of swing, and you saw the thing come out high, land soft, and it actually spun for you. So that adds another dimension to your short game, which is exciting.”

Remember, seeing a successful shot with a lob wedge boils down to setup and club positioning. And, in many cases, less is more — so McLachlin reminds me that I don’t need to do anything extreme.

“Just because you have a 60-degree [lob wedge] doesn’t mean you need to set up really wide and open the face. With a 60-degree, you can still have feet close together, and you can have the face fairly square. You don’t have to feel like you need to go to the extreme just because you grabbed your 60-degree.”

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The post Pros Teaching Joes: Leona Maguire’s keys to hitting fairway woods that soar appeared first on Golf.

The post Pros Teaching Joes: Leona Maguire’s keys to hitting fairway woods that soar appeared first on Golf.

Even though I’m in full tee-it-forward mode these days, I find that fairway woods still comprise a good percentage of my shots — especially now that I carry a 7-wood.

There’s only one problem: Fairway woods can be a difficult clubs to master. My misses tend to be thin shots or drop-kicks — never a fun feeling when you’re already a fair distance from the hole, and likely have a hazard of some kind to clear en route to the green.

That’s why I enlisted Leona Maguire for some guidance. The 28-year-old Irishwoman knows a thing or two about solid shots, having just claimed her second career victory on the LPGA Tour on Sunday at the Meijer LPGA Classic in Michigan.

Maguire gave me four simple keys to focus on to ensure I hit a high, soaring shot with my fairway woods every time.

How to hit high, soaring fairway woods, according to Leona Maguire

Instruction

1. Let the club’s loft do the work

“The biggest thing with this club, it has so much loft, I don’t have to help it in the air,” Maguire said.

2. Move the ball slightly forward

Maguire recommended using a neutral setup, with the ball positioned slightly forward in the stance.

“Then I’m just able to swing it normally like I would with any of the woods,” she said. “And it just pops right in the air for me, which is nice.”

I’ll say!

Maguire made it look so easy. I decided to give it a go myself, and invited Maguire to roast me.

The shot was okay — not my best, not a complete hack. It was solid but a bit snipey, something that may have ended up in a bunker. It certainly lacked the gorgeous, soaring trajectory of Maguire’s.

“The tendency with those woods is, we kind of lean back and try to scoop it up into the air, try to help it up,” Maguire said. “But actually the club has enough loft that you don’t have to do that.”

3. Stand closer to the ball

Instruction

Maguire thought I was standing a bit too far away from the ball, so she encouraged me to scoot a tad closer.

4. Drop the hands

Because I was standing a bit far from the ball, I was also reaching — another no-no. Maguire suggested dropping my hands a bit, which happened naturally when I stood the correct distance from the ball.

I addressed the ball as Maguire told me to, and wouldn’t you know it: I smoked it! Amazing!!

The trajectory was high, just like I wanted.

“One and done,” Maguire said with a laugh. “I think that’s enough for my teaching.”

My sudden improvement was unsurprising for Maguire, though.

“Little tweaks to your setup, then you have to make manipulations throughout your swing,” she said. “It might be a little awkward to start, but it actually should be a lot more natural and comfortable position.”

Well hey, when you’re spot on, you’re spot on. Maguire clearly knows what she’s talking about, and hopefully you can benefit from her instruction the same way I did. For more from Maguire, check out the full video of our lesson above, and for more tips from the game’s best, check out our entire collection of Pros Teaching Joes videos.

The post Pros Teaching Joes: Leona Maguire’s keys to hitting fairway woods that soar appeared first on Golf.

The post How to hit a draw (and a fade!) with simple setup tweaks, according to an LPGA winner appeared first on Golf.

The post How to hit a draw (and a fade!) with simple setup tweaks, according to an LPGA winner appeared first on Golf.

There are two basic shot shapes in golf — a draw and a fade. The former moves right to left, and the latter left to right. Simple, right? Well, yes and no.

Most golfers — even novices — can reliably curve the ball in one direction or the other. The difficulty comes when trying to hit the ball the other direction. If you can hit a fade (or a slice), hitting a draw isn’t easy, or so it seems. In reality, though, shaping the ball both directions is simpler than it appears.

In this episode of Pros Teaching Joes, we’re joined by three-time LPGA Tour winner Celine Boutier, who shows us the basics of shaping the ball both ways. Check out the video above, or read below for more.

How to hit a draw

The high draw is a shot that every golfer wishes they had in their bag. Not only is it a beautiful shape, but it’s also useful for accessing pesky tucked pins. And while hitting a draw seems like it’d be difficult, in reality all it takes is a few setup tweaks.

When you step up to the ball, you want to aim your stance a bit to the right of the target. Next, you’ll need to aim your clubface at the target, meaning it will be a little closed in relation to your stance. Once you have the setup down, all you need to do is swing along your stance line and make sure you release your hands as you swing through impact.

“You’ll aim a little bit more right and have your stance a little bit more closed,” Boutier says. “Then swing where your feet are aimed. And then during impact you want to release your hands a little bit.”

If you follow these steps, your ball should start right of the target and draw back toward the pin.

How to hit a fade

Hitting a fade is much easier for most golfers, but the issue is they can’t consistently control it. Much like a draw, though, all you need to do to hit a controlled fade is change a few things in your setup.

The setup for a fade is basically the exact opposite of what you do for a draw. Line up with your stance open to the target line and then aim your clubface at the target. Once again, you’ll want to swing along your stance line, but this time, hold off your release a bit longer as you swing through impact.

“Just like a normal swing with my stance,” Boutier says. “But I will try to keep my hands a little bit more passive towards impact so I can leave the clubface a little open.”

If done correctly, the ball should start just left of your target line and work back toward the pin.

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