Whenever I Struggle To Hit Driver Straight, I Remember To Do This

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Transcript Summary-

The biggest reason you struggle with a slice or a hook is usually the relationship between your club face and your swing path. If the ball is curving, there’s an offset between those two things. With a slice, the path is generally moving left of where the face is pointing, and with a hook, it’s the opposite. The key is to understand that relationship rather than constantly trying to make the ball go straight.

One really simple way I get my students to understand this is by using a football analogy. If you’re slicing the golf ball, start visualising hitting a draw instead. If you’re hooking it, visualise hitting a cut. Then build that feeling into your setup. For a slicer, turn the club face slightly in, then square it back up by changing your shoulder and elbow positions rather than simply undoing your wrists. This creates the opposite relationship between the face and path and can immediately help you start hitting more draws.

But sometimes you can create that relationship at address and still lose it during the swing. That was exactly what happened with a couple of my students this week. They were setting up correctly, but during the backswing they were opening the club face again without even realising it. This is where HackMotion can be really useful because it gives you feedback on what your wrists and club face are actually doing, rather than relying purely on feel.

The key is to practise creating the correct face-to-path relationship and then maintaining that relationship throughout the swing. Start by exaggerating the feeling in your setup, get some feedback, and then gradually reduce it until you find the amount that produces your desired ball flight. Ultimately, hitting the driver straighter isn’t about finding one magical position — it’s about understanding and controlling the relationship between your club face and path, and developing a feel you can take onto the golf course.

Full Transcript- Do you sometimes find that no matter what you try and do, you cannot stop that ball slicing over to the right hand side or occasionally hooking to the left? Every so often you hit that lovely one that goes straight down the middle and you have absolutely no idea what you've done differently. Well, don't worry. You're not alone. We've all been there. And in this week's video, I want to share with you something that has been working incredibly well for many of my students this week. Eight of them actually were slices of the golf ball as you can imagine and they just couldn't get rid of it whatsoever until I introduced to them the concept of face the path. So whenever your ball is spinning i curving it's just simply spinning it's got some form of spin on it and all that basically means is that you have an offset between your club face and your path. So, if you're slicing the golf ball, your face could be actually aiming straight down the middle of the fairway. And you're looking down thinking, "Why? I don't understand. Why is it slicing?" Well, that means that ultimately the path is going in this direction. It's an offset as opposed to heading in the same direction to as where the the face is pointing. It swings across in uh to the left, slices the golf ball, puts that stab of spin on it, and curves to the right. And the opposite if you hook the golf ball. So, I explained this to um a couple of the guys and one of the guys, John, said, "Well, that's great, Danny. I kind of know that, but how do I fix it?" Well, let's just and it's quite topical with the World Cup being on, etc. So, I said, "Look, here's a back." This is we had a little practice bag. It's actually a basket of balls we had. So, I said, "Look, what would a footballer do?" Now, if you're slicing the golf ball, this is a really great thing to kind of visualize. Whatever you're doing, visualize the opposite. Okay? Super important. So, if you're slicing the golf ball, I want you to visualize hitting more draws. If you're hooking the golf ball, I want you to visualize more cuts. And that's what I said to the guys. So, I said, "Guys, if you're a footballer now and you wanted to kind of like curve the ball in the opposite direction to where you're slicing it, where would you stand?" And all of them stood more here. And where would you swing? Yeah, I'd be swinging this way. Absolutely. What else do you notice? Where's your foot pointing? It's pointing in that direction, isn't it? It's not pointing over here. So, as you swing in this direction, watch what happens to the this bag. It starts to turn in that direction, doesn't it? There's an offset between where the foot's aiming and where you're swinging. You need to create that offset in your golf swing, particularly if you slice. And the great thing is, we managed to make some unbelievable differences to their shots by just changing their setup. You can build much of this in setup first. Let me show you. So, as a lot of my students tend to slice the golf ball, we're going to start there. Now, they don't have a huge amount of time to practice. A lot of people that come and see me, so they need things that can they can take straight to the golf course and they work. This one really does that. So, all I'm do I ask them to do is take a golf club, grab it here, and point it out in front of you. So, the face is straight. I pointing at 12:00 on a clock. Then, all I want you to do is this. Turn that face to 11 o'clock or if you're a severe slicer, maybe even turn it to say 10:30ish. Okay? Just see it as an ingredient. Now, the face is aiming in the wrong direction. Yeah. What we're going to do now is we're going to straighten that face up. Not by undoing those wrists, but by changing our shoulder and our elbow positions. Can you see what I'm doing here?

Left elbow starting to point more out towards the target. Trail elbows pointing more towards the hip. There we go. Now they said that feels weird, Danny. Yeah, but what have you just done? You've created that vital offset, the complete opposite to what you used to. The face is still now pointing towards the target. Look, but if we actually look at like forearm, this left arm is higher than the right arm. So that means that we've created a swing like that with that that kicking action more to the right. If we are able to maintain that through this shot here, arrive at impact more like this, we're going to start to see a ball that sets off a little bit to the right of target and curves to the left. Completely opposite to what you've just been doing.

Now, as a natural drawer, I might have overcooked that a little bit, but you can see here. Look, face the path. the face is aiming a little bit left. That's what that minus figure is there and it's created a draw instantly. Okay. Now, just to show you the kind of the opposite to that, if for instance um somebody was hooking the golf ball really, really badly and we said, look, get the face aiming kind of towards the camera here, but we did the opposite to that. Just watch what happens. So, this is where most people are when they're slicing it. We're going to now move that more towards let's say one to two. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to straighten that up. Now look at this by doing this. Now suddenly right I've got my forearms in the opposite direction. This would be slice territory. Watch what happens to the shot here just from changing that one movement.

Wow. That felt like a real exaggeration. Yeah. Take a look at that big slice to the right hand side. And look at this faceto path relationship. 9.8. That is a positive number. That means that face was aiming in to the right and my path was going left. We kind of knew that. We'd set that up at the start. So all this is is this. You know, a lot of people might be asking, well, how do you hit it straight, Danny? Well, what you're trying to do first of all is understand the feeling of this relationship. And if you happen to be, like I said, in the slice camp, you overdo this to start with, create that offset. If, and only if, then you start to start to hook the golf ball, then just reduce it. Maybe this time turn it to maybe just 11 or even 11:30 and tweak it. Okay? So, they're just ingredients to feel. This is the elusive feel, the relationship between your path and your face. But for John and Tom, two of the people in my group this week, this on its own didn't work. They needed something in the golf swing because despite setting up in a great place, they started to lose it with a very, very common flaw. Let me show you what we did. So, playing around with the face and forearm relationship is just for me the best way and the simplest way to start to hit the driver much straighter. But sometimes you could do all of that. You could be in a great spot to hit a beautiful draw down the fairway, but still slice it. And this was the case for Tom and John this week. In fact, they said, "Daddy, look, your tip doesn't work. I'm still slicing it. Look." And sure enough, they went through the meticulously, by the way, Tom particularly was turning the face in. He did this and then he sliced it. And I said, "I see what you're doing." He said, "What?" So I said, "Make a swing, but this time what I'm going to do is I'm going to put hack motion on you." So got hack motion um which is is a device basically that kind of measures and tracks your fierce to path relationship. And this happened gets himself set up and sure enough goes through his routine in place swings like this.

Gets to the top of his back swing and hears that sound. And he goes, "Danny, that doesn't sound too good, does it?" It doesn't, does it? Something's changed to your face the path. So you had faced the path at the start but you've changed the relationship. What had he done? He'd open the face and ultimately messed the all up. So he got this relationship at the start but then during the swing has started to open his club face and he didn't feel it. [snorts] And this is where Hackmotion comes in. Before I go any further, by the way, I'm I get paid um a small commission if you ever purchase a Hack Motion. I just want to disclose that right up front. But I just really believe it's such a great tool at helping you feel this relationship throughout the swing. So, um, we let's just get that out the way. So, as I get myself set up here, all I said to Tom, I said, "Look, go through exactly as you've done before. Turn your face in, get yourself set, swing to the top." When you hear that noise,

that's now it really feels like my wrist is in a very different place. It is, isn't it? Exactly. That's the sensation. So somewhere on the line, I said, "Look, I got him to sell." Somewhere on the line, you've done this in your back swing. You've done that. You've changed it. Let's keep that wrist where it is all the way back. Look here into the back swing. That's all I've done. this would have changed it and he said it feels very very different. Absolutely. But by doing this in repetition, go through the meticulously here. Turn it. Turn it. Get yourself set. Swing all the way back. I've still got that noise. And all I've done is simply just kept my wrist where it was. I haven't just I haven't changed the face to path relationship. And I want that feedback. Now just hit golf balls. Simple as that. Meticulously here. Turn it in. back. You've now got a bit of a feel. Get myself set and away we go.

Hey, presto. Nice and straight. First of path. Now just one out. That's basically it. So sometimes, like I say, you can get a wonderful face to path relationship. Build it up at setup. That is where it start. You'll get the most benefit. But sometimes you can lose that relationship during the golf swing. And if that happens to you sometimes and you want to figure out where in your golf swing you lose it, just check out Hack Motion. It's just a great tool to uh to help you find and discover things that you can't actually feel. But once you've got it, you can start developing those feels and figuring out a way to maintain that face to path relationship throughout your entire golf swing. Now remember, full disclosure, if you do click a link somewhere around here, I get a small kickback, which really helps the channel, but I really do believe in this product. It's super super cool because it more importantly, it promotes feel and feel is what you take to the golf course. So, if you really hope this video is going to help you hit driver straight, give it a thumbs up, maybe share it with one of your friends, and just for sticking around this long, I'll put a discount code to hack merchant in the top comment below this video. And you know what? I'll even if you purchase one, I'll even throw in a free uh course to show you how to driver and how to use it. So, hope you enjoy. If you want to know how this applies to irons, just click this video right here. But until next week, have a wonderful golfing week.