How Do I Hit a Golf Ball Straight?

Ever find your shots, especially your drives, start out in the same direction, either to the left or right? Even more frustrating, is when this happens unexpectedly during a round of golf. There’s no silver bullet to hitting the ball straight, but here’s a simple concept that will help you, I guarantee.

First, let’s change the question…

“Why does the ball start left or right?”

If we can understand this, and learn how to purposefully hit the ball left or right, then we can further teach ourselves some middle ground. Let us clear some things up first.

Before we progress, let’s ignore two factors we won’t address here: (1) miss hits; heal, toe or shank strikes, (2) ball curvature; slice, hook, fade, draw. We can discuss these in a separate blog. Comment or tweet if this is something you’d like to see.

Club Path

The key term here is club path. This is the main determining factor of your ball trajectory following impact (also known as address).

For right handed golfers, if the ball starts right, this will be due to a club path that starts closer to your body and moves outwards after impact. This is known as an in-out club path (image to be included). An exaggerated shot of this type would feel like you are pulling the club inwards in the back-swing (and downswing), and pushing your swing path out and away from you through impact. Using a clock face analogy, if 12 o’clock is your target line, your back-swing (and downswing) work towards 7 o’clock, your follow-through towards 1 o’clock.

If the ball starts left, this will be due to a club path that starts further away and tends towards your body after impact. This is known as an out-in swing path (image to be included). An exaggerated shot of this type would feel like you are forcing the club away from you on the back-swing (and downswing), then pulling the club towards you through impact. Using our clock face analogy, your back-swing (and downswing) would be 5 o’clock, your follow-through towards 11 o’clock.

How does Club Path help me?

My challenge to you, is to learn to force both of these swing paths. You can do this at home or in a local green space using a tee, or at the range. For a range session I suggest the following:

Start by trying an in-out swing path (7 to 1 o’clock). Concentrate on the initial ball trajectory rather than the curvature of the flight to determine how you are doing. Once you feel you have made some progress, switch to an out-in swing path (5 to 11 o’clock). This may feel really uncomfortable at first. But persist and it will pay off.

Once you feel like you have made progress, try alternating between the two, then…

Drill for improving club path and ball trajectory

Take three balls and repeat the following (for right handed golfer, reverse for lefties):

Ball 1 – force right, in-out swing path, 7 o’clock to 1 o’clock.

Ball 2 – force left, out-in swing path, 5 o’clock to 11 o’clock.

Ball 3 – somewhere in the middle, 6 o’clock to 12 o’clock, i.e., your best attempt to hit straight.

and repeat…

I promise you, having this feel for club path will help you and lead to more exciting things, like learning to draw and fade, which is the focus of another blog linked here.

Give it a go. Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment below. Use the Subscriber link to keep up-to-date with articles direct to you inbox. Follow us on X @HowIsMyGolf.com and/or Facebook.