How to Shape Golf Shots Like a Pro with GOLFTEC

🌳 Curving your golf shot around obstacles like trees can be achieved by adjusting your setup and ball position.

↩️ To hit a draw (right to left), close your shoulders, aim your stance to the right, and move the ball further back in your stance.

➡️ To hit a fade (left to right), open your shoulders, aim your stance to the left, and move the ball slightly forward in your stance.

⛳ Changing ball position affects club loft, so you may need a longer club when curving shots from left to right.

🏌️‍♂️ Most professional golfers stick to their stock shot and only curve the ball when absolutely necessary.

00:00:00 - This is an interesting situation we have behind us. There's a big tree in front of you. >> It's a little intimidating. >> So, if you've ever been in a situation like this where you need to curve the ball one way or the other and you didn't know what to do, Lexi and I are here to help you. We're going to talk about some ways to intentionally curve your shot either right to left or left to right depending on what you're trying to do. This should help you go a long way to

00:00:19 - creating those balls that curve around different obstacles and land back in the fairway. So, stay tuned.

00:00:28 - Hey Josh, how do I hit a draw? >> So Lexi, to hit a draw or a ball for you that curves from the right back to the left, there's a couple things you can do in your setup that can make this a little bit easier. Um, so the first one would be when you set up to the golf ball. I would align your shoulders so that they're a little bit more closed to the target. So basically point your chest and your hips towards the back of the room back there. Uh, the second thing I would do is I would aim my

00:00:53 - stance more to the right. So, I'd shift my feet so that I start that ball a little further that direction. Okay? And then the other thing that uh can help you is just changing your ball position in your stance. So, we obviously play golf from the side. We swing on an arc. As you move your golf ball further back in your stance, what that actually does is it helps to shift your path more into out. >> Wow. That would be the other thing that I might do is move that ball a little

00:01:17 - further back in my stance in my setup if I was intentionally trying to hit a draw. Okay. >> Okay. So, take your take your normal setup. >> Normal setup. >> Okay. >> So, the three things we're going to do, remember, we're going to close our shoulders. We're going to aim more to the right with our feet and our hips. There you go. >> And then that ball position is going to move a little further back in your stance than normal. >> Okay, >> that should go a long way to helping you

00:01:38 - curve this ball from right to left. So, let's see. >> Perfect. Let's see. >> Nice. >> Look at that. >> Starts to the right, curves back to the left. >> That might be the best draw I've ever done. Now I know you're lying, but that was really good. That was really good. So you can see uh your club path into out probably more than you normally are. You're almost uh like 7.2, so close to 8°. Your face was closed. That ball had a bunch of leftward spin. >> So that's perfect. That's exactly what

00:02:07 - you're trying to do. You find yourself in behind a tree like Lexi is right here. You need to hit that shot. Easy way to do that. >> Awesome. >> Now, let's talk about curving it the other way. >> Okay. >> So now we need to curve the ball the other way. Yep. So, similar situation. Again, this is the beauty of kind of understanding how to move the ball both ways. Um, but let's say we got a tree in front of us and we need to curve this ball from left to right. So, we just

00:02:29 - talked about how to curve it from right to left. I'm going to spoiler alert you here. How do you think we're going to do the opposite? >> I'm going to take a wild guess. I think instead of moving the ball back, we're going to move it a little forward in our stance. Yep. >> Open our shoulders a bit and maybe cheat this way so that your back foot is slightly in front of your front foot. >> Those would be some easy ways in your setup to do it. Okay. Um, so keep in

00:02:49 - mind obviously as you move the ball either forward or backwards in your stance. That can change the loft of the club. So when you're trying to curve the ball from left to right, you may need to take a club more than you typically would cuz if you're moving the ball forward, that's going to add loft. That could make it harder to get the ball to go the distance you want. So just something to keep in mind. If you got to keep something low, like under tree limbs, that's another thing to kind of

00:03:08 - pay attention to. Okay. Uh, some of the things in like your follow through that you can do to help you if you're trying to curve this ball from left to right. When I'm teaching players to do this, it's minimizing the amount of supenation in your arm or the amount of rolling that you have. Okay? That's going to limit how much the club face will close. So, keeping your lead arm on top of your trail arm for a little bit longer, that can keep the face a little bit more open. That's one way to do it.

00:03:31 - Obviously, if you have a grip that's rotated too far away from the target, you hear people refer to that as like more strong. You could move your hands more towards like a neutral grip to help with keeping the face a little bit more open. And I'm not a huge proponent of like changing your grip to get different shots, but that is one way you can do it. Okay. So, what we're going to talk about is really just how to change the setup. So, you covered it perfectly.

00:03:52 - Change where your feet go. Change your shoulders and your hips and where those are aligned. And then change the ball position. Let's see you hit. >> Awesome. Okay. >> So, normal stance, move it slightly forward. I'm going to take a step forward and open my shoulders more.

00:04:12 - Oh, there you go. >> Let's go. >> So, you can see that ball started to the left of the tree. That this is again why I was talking about maybe taking a longer club with the seven iron, but you see how it went a lot shorter. >> So, that's due to the additional loft, the additional uh >> open club face that you have. >> It's going to cause that ball to go a little shorter. But, >> that's a really nice way to do that. Um, I know on the screen it doesn't really show the curvature that much, but you

00:04:37 - can see the amount of spin that it has here. It's definitely to the right. Like that ball definitely had a rightward axis tilt. >> Exactly what you want. So, those are just a couple ways if you're behind an obstacle or trying to curve the ball intentionally that you can do that. >> Awesome. >> Okay. Uh, one thing that I would just leave everybody with, the best golfers in the world are typically not trying to curve their shots every single time they hit it. They have a stock shot that they

00:05:00 - hit. That's what they play the majority of the time and then they're only really trying to curve it if they have to. So just because you know how to curve it now, Lexi, doesn't mean on every single shot you need to try to plan to hit it one way or the other. Yeah. Like play whatever stock shot you have. If it's absolutely necessary to curve it, these are some ways to do it. >> Awesome. Thanks, Josh. [Music]

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