In this video tip, Classic Swing Golf School’s Ted Frick and Stefany King go through the process of how to hit a draw – including measurement tools they use during practice drills that help find the proper swing path.
Ted Frick:
All right, so how to hit a draw. Do we really know how to hit a draw? What if I told you to hit a draw, your clubface had to be open? Would you believe that? Y'all, let me go back to about 1989, the first time I meet Dr. Tom Tomasello and got introduced to the golfing machine. He tells me on the draw that the club face is open at the point of impact. I was like, “What? This is crazy!”
Over time, by the time you get to 2012, here come the launch monitors, here comes Trackman, FlightScope, Foresight. I go to take my certification exams with the PGA and they go, where the golf ball starts out is a result of the clubface. Where the golf ball's ending up is a result of path. So to hit a draw you have to understand something. To hit a draw…
Watch this little setup we have here. The orange alignment sticks denote the target line going in the direction of the orange noodle. To hit a draw, the ball … Stephanie's going to have to start the ball through this window here on the right, that means the clubface has got to be open. Open to what? Open to the target line. But you must see, there is a path line. The path line is this yellow alignment stick. Now not doing a lot of plus fives and minus fives, but remember the number five with the launch monitor. Angle the inclination any more than plus five, no good with a driver. Angle dissension more than a minus five with your irons, no good. The same thing holds true within the out pass more than plus five or out the end with minus five. Let's keep it simple.
What I'm going to have Steph do is she's going to think about her in-to-out path, the yellow alignment stick, plus five. The white alignment stick is plus two to the target line. But guess what that means? That means it's minus three to the path. So if this is plus five and there's the target line, right here is the clubface. She's going to have to get her clubface closing relevant to the path, and that is the key. All right, Steph.
I’ve got the launch monitor out here. These things are helping us teachers, as long as we know how to use them and we know how to communicate. I hope I didn't really confuse too many of you. What you need to understand is that the draw starts to the right of the target, therefore the clubface has got to be open at the initial point of contact, and we've got to be swinging in to out, but her club face has got to be closing, relative to the path. Go ahead and knock it out, we'll take a look at these numbers.
All day long, first one. Beautiful. So we're going to take a look at these here in just a minute, but we've got a path number to look at, and then we got the face to the path, and then we got the face to the target line to look at. Good job, Steph.
All right. So what I'm looking at here, and you can see the total distance, I mean Steph is … She's 5'3”, 120. She's 25 years old. She's hitting the ball 212 total on that one, and here we are, it's a little chilly day. Take a look at the path. The path is a plus, that's in to out. What you're going to see as I scroll through here, is you're going to see that her face was definitely beginning to close to the path, FTP. Did you see that left? So she got her clubface closing relevant to the path. That's how you hit a draw. You've got to have an in-to-out path, at the same time your clubface is going to be closing relevant to the path, but you better appreciate, in order to get the golf ball to start out to the right, the clubface is going to be open to hit a draw.