How to play a consistant fade

[Youngun5]

ok, its time i eliminated half the course.

not to be brash or egotistic. i consider myself in the upper echelon of long hitters, especially for my age, so i can stand to sacrifice some yards off a draw which trying to play consistantly is giving me fits. but i need something more accurate and dependable. and it just seems it will be much easier to play a fade than a draw. i mean, just cut across the ball to an extent and hold off on releasing the club for a sec.

what do i need to do stance wise, weight shift wise, tempo etc. ? anything you'd think i'd need to know

thanks

[nsherman2006]

Not to rain on your parade, but the upper echelon of golfers our age hit the ball WELL past 300 yards. I will consider myself a long hitter, but the Junior Long Drive competiton was won at something absurd like 437 yards.

Anyway, i have started to make my draw a little more consistent too, and now find myself working the ball both ways. My advice is go to the range plenty of times and just experiment to find the way that makes it easiest for you to fade the ball. I just weakened my grip a little which caused a later release. I also didnt lose any distance, but not losing any tee shots today helped me shoot 2 under par, so it's definitely worth trying

[dave.]

Don't do big changes,you don't see pros aiming well left,swinging over their head and slashing across the ball,in fact,some just 'think' about a fade and it happens,they do nothing else.

In truth,its as easy as one ball width back in the stance,then the feeling of hitting against your left wrist.You are just holding off the release,hence the term hold-off, (Tiger did it all the time at Hoylake).Conversely,release fully for a nice draw.

Learning to hit against the left wrist and conjuer a fade at will was massively important to me,its now my stock shot.

[justsomeguythatgolfs]

I try to come down steep on the ball with irons and that seems to work great. It might be wrong but it works. I just cant hit a draw if my life depended on it.

[Youngun5]

make that upper echelon of kids my age around here....

had troubles with it on the course and couldn't keep the ball in play en route to an 85, yikes.

had a lesson afterwards, layed the groundwork for the fade, now i just need to practice it like crazy to get it locked in. but the pro said that a fade will work much much better with my tendencies and my misses will be in play much more often than if i was trying to play a draw

[P_102]

Simple.....line up slightly left but with clubface facing target....take normal swing.

[halifax_golfer]

Wondering how it worked out for you Young Gun, what did the pro tell you to do?

Anymore comments on the Fade?.. I used to play a nice fade with my driver, but it seems these days that it's impossible for me to hit anything but a draw / hook. . I guess I had some swing changes though and I'm currently not using a driver.

Chris.

[Don]

I'll have to go along with P-102 on this. I have the Jack Nicllaus video, and he tells you exaxtly how to hit a fade or a draw at will.
For a fade, aim the club face where you want the ball to end up. Then align your body where you want the ball to start out. That means you align you body left and the club face at the landing area. Then, just make your normal swing. Believe it or not it really work quite well. I've been doing it on most of the doglegs right I've played the last few months and I'm finding most of the fairways on a regular basis now. There's no need for any swing changes with this method and that's a good way to avoid trouble for sure. Same swing, different alignment, pretty simple really, and it works fine. Try it.

[Sandpiper3]

lol, trust me man, just because your hitting a fade instead of a draw wont make you "more consistent".... i can hit it both ways (but my natural shot changes every once in awhile) and neither is "more consistent". There are days where your guna hit one perfectly all day, then you will go extreme and be way left or right on everything. IF you want to feel special saying you can hit it a long way for your age (which isnt even really true, u probly hit it pretty good, but there are some kids that border mutant distances....) then learn how to keep your natural draw in better position. THAT is wat will bring your handicap down, making big swing changes to change your natural shot will hurt you more then help.

(BTW, am not saying im long at all, im 17 and only hit it like 260-280, maybe a little more if im really swinging good, but most kids my age agaisnt me in tourneys are all longer then me, LD in my last tourney for my age was 392!! :O)

[JEFF4i]

Well, the top tip I find for hitting a fade is to loosen your grip slightly and open your stance.

Beyond that, don't worry about how far you're hitting it. Shoot, I average 300, played with person from a fellow college who averaged 330. Anyway, I beat him, easily. Why? My iron/short game is solid, which will get you to scratch faster than anything else.

[cypressperch]

that might be of use to you. Regardless of what shot shape you end up with as your regular shape, it will always pay off to be able to work the ball right or left and even to try to hit the ball straight. Also, hitting the ball higher or lower than usual is an important skill.

Vjay and Rocco M. were on the Golf Channel today and it was interesting that Vjay said that he rarely hits anything other than fades, and Rocco rarely hits anything than draws. Then Gary Player was on and he talked about drawing the ball to pins on the left side of the green and fading the ball in to pins on the right side of the green. In the days of wound balls and wooden heads, shot shaping was a more widely practiced art and Player was a good shot maker, indeed. It is still a great thing to be able to do.

I would ask myself this simple question, "What shot shape is easiest for me to hit when I swing my most natural swing?" If I tended to draw the ball automatically, I am not sure that it would pay to go against my natural tendencies, especially if I had been playing for a while.

One reason it is good to be able to hit different shapes is because certain lies you run into can be even more tough than they have to be if we have locked ourselves into one shape.

The method I discussed of producing different shapes is to me a good one in that you actually use the same swing to produce a variety of shapes. You just pick your target line, then open or close the club face (or keep it square), then REGRIP and swing smooth making the clubhead go on the right path and making sure the clubface makes contact at the proper quadrant.

Why REGRIP? If you merely point the clubface in a closed or open fashion, that all comes out when the club is swung. Grip determines club face position at impact, and to change that requires regripping.

The very best of luck to you with your game. Sincerely, Cypressperch

[Youngun5]

its still a work in progress... but i'm starting to get more confident in my abilities with it...too bad school starts tomorrow and i won't really get much time to play anymore.

the only thing i've been changing is my alignment, i aim where its supposed to end up with the club, and feet just off to the left maybe 10 yards, and just swing along my feet holding the club towards the desired line. been working pretty good, much better contact and oddly a more solid ball flight.

i was stiffing pins all day the other day with it with my irons and wedges, but my woods were terrible so i'm not sure.

whats been getting me some is where exactly to aim and how far left to align my feet and just trying to get in the fade mentality as to where i want to bring the ball in etc.

easy to get shot down about distance on here eh??

well its the one thing i've never had to worry about, really the only thing i had going for me for awhile. problem was accuracy, if i had it, i could go low quickly, but the days it was on were far outshadowed by the days it was off. holes where i'd slice one and hook the next leading to just some nasty scores.

i wasn't bragging about my distance, even said so, i'll be the first one to say i suck compared to sooo many other golfers. all i want to do is improve, isn't that all anyone can ask?

[Sandpiper3]

your skool starts on a friday??? thats diff....

Im not tryin to bother you aboot ur distance, i believe you can, then i believe it even more when you say your innacurate (no offense). But when you really do look at it, 300 avg isnt "long" anymore, sure it is a hell of a way out there, but when you look at wat we get to play with, and the kinda ppl that are now takin up the game, i dont wana know wat my kids generation will be avg-ing off the tee...

[ezra76]

What never ceases to amaze me is how I can hit a fade almost every time when I have to get around a dogleg. It is the vision of a target that makes it so much easier. I make sure to set my clubface at the landing zone of the target and then open up to a starting target. It's taken a lot of practice but now I look for a "window", an area where the ball should go through in order to fade into the target area. I tend to limit my weight transfer a bit, play the ball back further and hold off on the release or reverse release. My 2 biggest mistakes are getting the ball too far forward and hitting too big a fade (slicing it) and not hold off and double-crossing it. Do you practice these shots with irons too? I find that working on these shots with say a 7iron helps to lay the groundwork to hit them better with a less accurate club. I've been working a lot on fades and draws with the irons that don't cut hard. They merely drift 5-10yds. throughout the flight rather than hooking or slicing hard 2/3 of the way there.