
One of the most common causes of hitting a golf ball left is an over-rotation of your upper body. In order to make proper club contact, your upper and lower body should move as a unit through the golf ball. If your upper body rotates out of your backswing before your lower body, your angle of attack will be aimed to the left at the point of impact.
Why does my golf club swing to the left field?
Ball Position: You might have the ball too far back in the stance. This causes you to make contact when the club is still swinging to left field. Backswing: You could be taking the club back too far inside, pulling the club away from the target line.
Why do I pull my golf shots?
Another swing error you might be doing which could cause pulled shot has something to do with your left knee and how it is used at impact. Some golfers lock their left – forward – knee at impact and while it is not necessarily a problem in itself it can lead to balls that shoots straight left.
What does it mean to hit a pull in golf?
Right-Handed Golfer Hitting It Left Is Hitting a Pull. A right-hander whose ball starts to the left and flies left with no additional curve left (a straight shot to the left of the intended target) is hitting a pull.
How to stop pulling the ball in golf?
How To Stop Pulling The Ball in Golf? The key is to ensure that your club face is aimed slightly to the right or is open at impact. The ball will generally start where the club face is aimed and we want the ball to start slightly right and draw back towards the target. Understanding the ball flight laws is essential to any golfers success.

What happens if you take a golf club too far inside?
As a result of taking it too far inside you have to over compensate by taking the club over the top to make decent contact with the ball.
What does it mean when a golf club is pointed in the right direction?
Alignment sticks (or a golf club pointed in the right direction) can show you the natural direction the ball should be taking based on where you are aiming. If you are aiming left, you may not actually be pulling the ball, you may just be hitting a good shot aimed in the wrong direction.
What Do I Need To Fix A Pulled Golf Shot?
The following section includes what you’ll need as well as step-by-step instructions for curing your pull.
How to fade a golf ball?
1. Pull Fade/Slice. A pull fade/slice is when the ball starts left and then moves back toward athe right. You may be thinking that this is what you want your ball to do, but the problem is when you pull the ball just to fade it back towards the target, you lose a lot of distance and accuracy.
What happens if your golf club shaft is too short?
If your shaft is too flexible or not flexible enough, you can pull the ball. Also, if your clubs are too short and make you reach or too long and force you to put the ball too far forward in your stance, you have the wrong clubs. I would suggest getting fitted for clubs and allow the golf pro to tell you which clubs fit best with your height, power, and swing.
What is the first move in golf?
Your first move when you start the swing, your takeaway, usually dictates how your downswing will go. Many golfers, when they are struggling with their golf game, immediately try to fix what is wrong at the top of their swing or during their downswing.
How to get a better grip on a golf club?
If your grip is too strong for your swing, you may just have to move to a more neutral grip. Simply rotate your hands backward on the club until the “V” shape between your thumb and index finger are pointing straight down or slightly backward. A strong grip helps players who slice the ball or who desire to draw the ball, but it can also cause your club face to be closed at impact.
What causes a golf club to make contact when it is still swinging to left field?
Ball Position: You might have the ball too far back in the stance. This causes you to make contact when the club is still swinging to left field. Backswing: You could be taking the club back too far inside, pulling the club away from the target line.
What is a pull in golf?
A right-hander whose ball starts to the left and flies left with no additional curve left (a straight shot to the left of the intended target) is hitting a pull. The divot, if there is one, will match the ball's direction. Here is Roger Gunn's checklist for a right-handed golfer hitting a pull: Grip: Not normally a factor.
What is the best way to hit a push golf ball?
Set-up: Make sure you aren't aiming too far to the left of the target line, or that your shoulders are aligned too far to the left. Ball Position: You might have the ball too far back in the stance.
What is the difference between right and left handed golfers?
Are you hitting lots of golf shots that start out left of the target and continue flying left, on a straight line, until they land left of your intended landing area? If you are right-handed, you are pulling the ball or pulling the shot; if you are left-handed, you are pushing the ball or pushing the shot .
What is a left-hander hitting?
A left-hander whose shots start to the left of the target line and continue flying left, on a straight line ( not curving left), is hitting a push. Again, the divot, if there is one, will match the ball's direction.
Where should the golf club be on the shoulder?
The club should be over your shoulder at the top, nor over your head. Downswing: Your arms might be pushing away from the body at the transition into the downswing. Keep your arms in so that they pass close to your right pants pocket on the approach to impact.
Who is the golf instructor who mishits?
Below, golf instructor Roger Gunn gives us a checklist of possible causes for these types of mishits, but the faults and fixes differ depending on the golfer's handedness.
Why does my golf ball go left?
In this situation, the most likely culprits of your ball going left are an improper alignment at address or an over-rotation of the upper body. If your ball starts out straight and hooks to the left, then you are imparting spin to the ball and a closed club face is probably the cause.
Why does my golf ball curve left after hitting it?
Even if your body is in proper alignment at the point of impact, your ball may curve to the left after you hit it. Known as a hook, this is due to a closed club face. A closed club face is one in which the toe of the golf club, or the point furthest away from you, reaches the ball before the inner half of your club. This will impart a right-to-left spin to the ball, causing it to curve towards the left as it heads away from you.
What direction should your feet point when hitting a golf ball?
When you line up to hit your golf ball, your feet should point in a perpendicular line to where you want the ball to go. If your alignment at address is to the left, a correct golf swing will send the golf ball to the left as well.
What causes a bad golf shot?
Club Face Contact. Regardless of the swing mechanics that may cause a poor golf swing, the ultimate cause of any bad golf shot lies in the way the club face hits the golf ball. Any correction you make to your golf swing should have proper club fact contact as its ultimate objective.
What is the objective of golf?
By: John Csiszar. Published: 08 July, 2011. The objective of golf is generally to hit the ball in a straight line in an effort to achieve a low score. Hitting the ball right or left of the intended target is one of the fundamental causes of bad golf scores.
How to make proper club contact?
In order to make proper club contact, your upper and lower body should move as a unit through the golf ball. If your upper body rotates out of your backswing before your lower body, your angle of attack will be aimed to the left at the point of impact. As you finish your swing, the ball will fly in the direction you are now pointing, ...
What happens if you rotate your golf ball to the left?
If a golfer has good rotation to the left, but then activates his arms too early by trying to apply clubhead speed with the arms , the arms will often be thrown over the top of the swing plane causing the ball to be pulled to the left.
How do arms stay in a golf swing?
The arms stay passive in a proper Rotary Swing. The proper golf swing, in a one plane swing, the proper motion of the arms is simply for them to stay passive and relaxed. They don't require any effort. This golf swing should feel very, very effortless when you use your body correctly.
Why is it important to release your arms during the downswing?
It is critical for the arms to stay more passive in the early stages of the downswing so that the slower moving body can be in control of the golf club. The arms will release naturally at the right time in the swing with no conscious effort on the golfers part if they stay more passive.
What is the most common miss in golf?
One of the most common misses in golfers learning the one plane swing is pulls or misses to the left. This is a very, very common cause. I see it all the time, every day that I teach. It's a very, very simple thing to fix, but you just have to understand what's causing this. When you swing to the back of the one plane swing, ...
What swing method do tour pro use?
More TOUR PROS Use RST Fundamentals Than Any Other Swing Method!
When you swing to the back of the one plane swing, when everything's on plane as you look down the line?
When you swing to the back of the one plane swing, when everything's on plane as you look down the line here, if you start to go hard with the arms - if you start to swing down with the arms rather than letting the arms stay passive and letting the body drive the arms through the shot - your arms will start to release out over the plane and the club head will get thrown too far outside.
What happens when you swing down hard with your arms?
Swinging down hard with the arms causes them to release, shutting the club face & causing a miss to the left
What is a pull fade in golf?
Answer: The ball will start to the left and curve to the right. This would be a pull fade or pull slice. Keep in mind that even though the face is closed to the target line, it is open to the swing path and the ball will curve away from the swing path.
What Are the Fixes For A Pull Shot in Golf?
This will take patience and allow the club to drop down to te inside and keeping your head behind the ball.
What Are The Fundamentals of the Golf Swing?
The Stack and Tilt Instructors said it best when they described what they believed were the fundamentals of golf. They explained it somewhat similar to this:
What is pull shot?
The pull shot occurs from when the club face is closed to the target line and the swing path is somewhere around the same amount closed. For example, if your club face is 3 degrees closed or left of the target line the ball will start in that direction.
What is the key to golf?
The key to any golf game is hitting the ball from the inside and being able to control the curve of the ball (see fundamental 2 below).
What does it mean when a pull shot creeps into your swing?
When the pull shot starts to creep into your golf swing it can be a scary miss as you have essentially created a two way miss and there is potential for some high scores.
How many degrees does a ball stay on the target line?
If the path is also around 3 degrees closed or left of the target line the ball will stay on that line.
How does a golf club work on an arc through impact?
This exists because you are swinging the club around your body so it stands to reason that if the ball is forward in your stance the face will be slightly closed at impact.
Why do I pull my iron shots?
It's a question many golfers often ask themselves: why do I pull my iron shots? The first thing to understand is that the clubface, by and large, dictates the start line. So, if you're consistently starting your irons left of target, that's probably why.
How to know if your alignment is good?
If your alignment is good, check your ball position and if it is too far forward set it further back in your stance and that should help.
How to pull a golf ball?
Loosen your grip; it should be firm, but not tight. Take an entire knuckle out of the grip on your front hand. For more on this, check out our breakdown on How to Grip a Golf Club Like the Pros.
What happens if you hit a golf ball too far ahead?
If your ball is too far ahead of you, you’ll double down on pulling because not only will you strike it with a closed club face, but you’ll be hitting it with the part of your swing that should really be part of the follow-through. I.e., you won’t make square contact with the ball.
What happens when you land on a sidehill?
If you land on a sidehill, you run the risk of swinging down the hill and basically scooping the ball back towards you. Butch Harmon tells his golf students to lean towards the slope and swing up the slope.
How to keep your golf shot clean?
This results in a pulled golf shot. Keep your right shoulder in a bit as you start your downswing. Don’t let it flare out more in the direction of the ball. This will help you maintain your swing line to hit the ball cleanly.
What is a pulled golf shot?
A pulled golf shot is one that beelines off the tee to the left like a hard-hit line drive to left field. A regular pulled shot doesn’t curve in mid-air; that’s an even more serious problem with more mechanics involved. We’ll talk about cuts and hooks later, but for now, let’s talk about left-side misfires in general.
How to get your golf club to flush with the ball?
Address the ball with your natural grip. Then , rotate your back arm a bit such that the sensitive part of inner elbow is facing more towards the ball and upwards, without moving your hands from their position on the grip. This will pull back the head of the club and open the face up to be more flush with the ball.
How to pull shot golf?
The only way you can even achieve a pull shot is by striking the ball on the outside face first. That is, the face of the ball that’s pointing away from your body. The ball can’t have any spin on it for it to stay on a straight flight path the way that it does. This means you’re hitting the ball at a squared off angle with the face of the club.
Why do golfers hook the ball?
Many golfers hook the ball because they flip their wrists through impact, which closes the clubface.
How to flatten your lead wrist?
Once you have that down, try rotating your hips open and pushing the board straight down the line with the clubhead. This will help you flatten your lead wrist—the opposite of that flipping motion. Add this into your practice routine to stop losing shots to the left.
Why do golfers flip their wrists on the downswing?
By failing to rotate fully on the backswing, golfers don’t shift their weight properly and tend to compensate by flipping their wrists on the downswing, striking the ball with a closed club face that may cause a hook. Woods suggests that players visualize the triangle created by their hands, arms and chest at address, then make sure that relationship “remains intact throughout the swing.”
How to avoid hooking the ball off the tee?
To avoid hooking the ball off the tee, all-time golf great Jack Nicklaus recommends playing a controlled fade, a shot which moves from left to right. To hit this shot take a smooth backswing “with very little wrist action,” Nicklaus says. At impact, be sure the palm of your right hand faces the target, and keep your right hand below ...
What is a hook shot in golf?
When a right-handed golfer’s tee shot curves to far to the left, the shot is described as a “hook.”. This shot typically occurs when the club head moves across the ball from left to right, imparting side-spin on the ball.
How to avoid hooks in golf?
To combat a hook, Spearman suggests widening your stance on the tee by moving the right foot back -- away from the target -- several inches. Also, as a drill, take a 6-iron to the practice tee and grasp the club near the bottom of the grip. Hitting the ball properly will require keeping your hands low and your rear end down, Spearman explains, rather than straightening up.
What does Rick Smith mean by "keep turning"?
Teaching pro Rick Smith says a slow body turn is often the culprit when a player hits a hook. He advises players to “keep turning” on the follow-through. Smith says the midpoint of your body -- he refers to the “shirt buttons and belt buckle” -- should be aimed to the left of your target when you’ve completed your follow-threw.
Can a golfer throw a curve ball to the left?
This is the same method by which a baseball pitcher throws a curve ball, but in the golfer’s case the excessive spin is unintentional. There are mechanical fixes that can help prevent a right-handed golfer from hooking the ball to the left, or a lefty from driving the ball too far to the right.
