To hit a perfect draw, your club must impact the ball from an inside club path with a slightly closed club face. This puts counterclockwise (for righties) spin on the ball and makes it a draw shot.
This is a coveted shot as it does produce more distance than a fade. You can use this to your advantage off the tee to get some extra roll.
Hitting a draw is not easy, though, and will take some time, effort, and practice (unfortunately). But if you stay focused, you too can be sending buttery draws cascading down the middle of the fairway.
There is nothing better than crushing an 8-yard draw off the first tee in front of the whole clubhouse. Your playing partners will be shaking in their boots.
Here’s how to hit a draw;
What Is A Draw?
A draw refers to the trajectory that the ball is on. However, the ball flight laws are different for a right-handed player than it is for a left-hander.
Rightie Draw Shot –
The ball starts RIGHT of the target and gently curves to the LEFT. Heading towards the center or left side of the fairway.
Leftie Draw Shot –
The ball starts on the LEFT side and gently curves to the RIGHT. Heading towards the center or right side of the fairway.
The keyword there is “gently.” The ball flight is never out of control. If it starts curving too much, then that is a hook.
What Are The Basics?
Learning to hit a draw will take some practice, especially if you currently hit fades or slices. Use these basics to get a solid foundation of the fundamentals and train your body to feel a different shot.
Swing Path Plays A Huge Part
You cannot hit a draw without an inside to outside swing path. This is the most important part, and all other changes to your golf swing will encourage this.
When you’re at address and begin your takeaway, make sure you take the golf club back a little more to the inside than normal. This will tell your body right from the get-go that you are trying to keep that club on an inside path the whole way.
Make It As Easy As Possible
Drop your right shoulder back a bit at address as well. By closing your shoulders, your takeaway can follow your bodyline to get the club inside. This will happen organically rather than forcing it with your hands or arms. Using your torso and bigger muscles will make it easier to repeat.
Really try to focus on your follow-through as well. After you make impact, exaggerate your outside follow-through position. Fully extend your arms and throw the clubhead to the right of your target. Even if you produce some ugly shots, your body will get used to this new change. Focus on the process and not the product.
Stance
To further encourage an inside takeaway, drop your back foot back a bit as well, just like your shoulder. This will close your hips to your target and will bring them square to your shoulders. Your back foot and back hip has now made enough room for your downswing to return along an inside track.
Bend your knees a little more than normal also. This will cause you to flatten your swing plane slightly so you can attack the golf ball from a more shallow angle. You may hook a few to start, so play around with this and find a comfortable knee flex for you.
Face Angle
This will be the toughest part to get used to. Having the right face angle during your golf swing is paramount to creating a consistent draw.
- If your club face is too closed, then you’ll produce a massive hook. With your in-to-out swing path, an overly closed face will put a lot of sidespin on the ball, causing it to spin out of control.
- If your club face is too open, then your ball will head right (for righties) and not spin back toward the middle. We call this “hanging it out to dry.”
When you first start working on how to hit a draw, you should see both of these shots as you try to find the happy medium. If you see one shot more than the other, you can easily identify the cause.
How To Hit A Draw High
When you hit a draw, it will cause your ball flight to be lower than your normal shot because you are closing the face. A closed face delofts the club and offers a lower launch angle. In most cases, this is what you want.
But what if there are some trees in your way, and you need to hit a draw that’s much higher than your normal shot?
This is arguably one of the toughest shots to hit in golf. It’s challenging if you’re new to drawing the golf ball.
The easiest way to gain some height on your draw is to adjust the ball position in your stance. Move the ball slightly forward, closer to your front foot. This will encourage you to swing up on the ball through impact with less of a descending path.
Exercise caution here as a lot can go wrong. If you swing up at the golf ball too much, you risk topping it or bottoming out too early and causing a massive chunk. Practice is the name of the game here. If you can’t do it on the range, you won’t do it on the golf course.
Which Clubs Produce The Best Draw?
When you are first starting, choose a longer iron. A club with less loft is much easier to produce sidespin than the shorter irons.
Start with your 5 iron; this will provide enough loft to gain some height. The length of a 5 iron also affords you a good amount of control so you can play around with your swing easily.
Don’t go for the driver until you are confident with your 5 iron. Most drivers these days are built to reduce spin. You want minimal spin with a driver, so it continues forward when the ball hits the ground.
Modern drivers are also good at reducing sidespin by the construction of their faces. This is to try and help golfers who are new and maybe have a problem with slicing or hooking.
Related: Best Drivers To Cure A Slice
Which Is Better, A Draw Or A Fade?
This is a tough question to answer as most golfers will have a different opinion.
You should always choose the shot you are most comfortable with. That will give you the most confidence, and you won’t be doubting yourself in the middle of your golf swing. Self-doubt is the biggest enemy in golf. Anything you can do to avoid that will improve your score.
It’s Nice To Have Both Shots In Your Golf Game
Obviously, if a hole bends to the left, a right-hander will want to call on their draw. But these shot shapes can come in handy all over the course.
If you find yourself in trouble, then drawing or fading it out of the trees will be a huge advantage to you.
Also, if there is a pond to the right of the target, then you may want to work your ball away from the trouble. This is why you’ll want to work on both a draw and a fade. You can have some pretty scary tee shots if you only know how to hit a draw, and all the trouble is on the left.
Drills To Help You Hit A Draw
Proper setup is only half the battle, and you must practice a few things first to start hitting a draw. Use these drills to steepen your learning curve so you can consistently hit a draw.
Alignment Drill –
If you are a right-handed golfer, choose a spot on the range that is all the way on the left side. This will give you ample space to swing in to out without fear of hitting it on the adjacent road or backyard.
Oftentimes many golfers do not aim far enough to the right (for righties) to allow their club path to swing in to out.
- Start on the left side of the range.
- Choose a target that is straight in front of you where you want your shot to end up.
- Choose another target that is about 20 yards right of your target to swing to. This will encourage a stress-free, in-to-out swing.
Embedded Tee –
To further encourage the proper swing path, all you need is a tee and a grass tee deck. (See below for a modification if you’re on a mat.)
Choose your intended target, where you want the ball to end up. Then choose a spot on the turf that is about 2 feet in front of your ball. Push a tee in the ground until it’s flush with the surface. This tee represents your target line.
Take another tee and push it into the ground about 1 foot to the right of that tee. This second tee will represent your swing path.
*On a mat? just lay the tee down with the sharp end pointed down your lines*
Focus On Your Golf Swing
From there, take your normal swing but ensure that your club head travels over the second tee when you follow through. If your club is passing over the first tee (target line tee), then your swing is not in to out enough.
By having these visual cues, your body will easily understand what you are trying to do. Even if your shots don’t turn out perfect, make sure you focus on your clubhead swinging towards that second tee. Eventually, your muscle memory will take over, and your body will start to figure it out naturally.
Stay loose and relaxed. Never underestimate the power of your subconscious.
Toe In The Pillow –
For this drill, you will need a pillow. You can practice this one at home as you will not be hitting any balls. You can also use a den caddy (mini-golf bags usually found on driving ranges to store range balls) or an actual impact bag.
- Set your pillow up where you would normally have the ball when you hit your driver. It should be towards the front of your stance but not outside your front foot.
- With your pillow set up, grab your 5 iron and make light swings into the pillow. To create a draw, we know the face must be slightly closed. So when you swing into your pillow, ensure that the toe of your club is the first thing to make contact with the pillow.
Doing this will loosen up your hands and arms to allow natural rotation. You will never hit a draw with an open club face; it’s impossible by the laws of physics.
Keep your swings small as you don’t want to rip the pillow and have feathers flying everywhere. Take note of the feeling you have in your arms and even the rotation of your body. This is a new move for you, so it will sink in faster by consciously thinking about a feeling rather than a technique.
Learn From The Best –
Next time you are watching golf, pay attention to the draws they hit. Professional golfers rarely hit a straight shot. They always favor one direction or another. This is a safety feature. So if they miss, they know which side their ball will miss on, and presumably, that side won’t be that bad.
Most PGA pros use a fade for their drivers now as it is more controllable on the super-fast fairways that they play. That doesn’t mean that their natural shot shape is a fade, though.
Players That Hit Great Draws;
- Rory McIlroy
- Jordan Speith
- Matt Kuchar
- Kenny Perry
- Lucas Glover
- Adam Scott
For a great visual representation, watch videos of or grab a golf magazine featuring Matt Kuchar. You will be able to see how flat his swing path is. He has an exaggerated way of getting the club to work from inside to out to create his draw.
Conclusion
If you are new to the game, then hitting a draw will be hard work. If you have been playing for some years without knowing how to hit a draw, then learning will be even harder for you. But VERY possible.
At the end of the day, you need to be in control of your clubhead and be able to direct it where you want.
This is why they invented driving ranges.
Don’t be afraid to hit some ugly shots in the process. You may produce some terrible ball flights. Golf is already hard enough to hit one shot, and now you are adding another shot to your arsenal. This is a difficult task for anyone.
With practice and focus, you’ll be able to hit a draw on the golf course within a season.
Have fun and hit ‘em straight.
