High angle of attack with driver = fade bias?

[harpua728]

I have a handful of bad tendencies with the driver that cause me to lose balls to the right (I’m a righty). I hang back too much and don’t get the face closed. If been working on swinging more out to right field, but during a recent lesson my pro mentioned that since I have such a high AoA (around +8), this promotes a fade and swinging out to the right with that AoA makes it really tough to hit the ball straight, or try to draw it. He had me work on pulling my body left in the downswing and swinging more left as this path would neutralize my ball flight - and it certainly worked for me. 
 

I haven’t seen much info which describes the relationship between AoA with the driver, and how swinging left could actually help straighten the ball flight. Has anyone come across any good videos that address this? 

[Ross_Albatross]

All else being equal, no gear effect, etc. the answer is yes since, with a positive AoA you are striking the ball after the low point, which usually means a face pointing left (righty swing) but that face is open to the path —> starting point is leftward and curvature is to the right side

[MonteScheinblum]

8* up is not very playable, but yes it’s fade bias.

 

If you hang back and are swinging up 8, it’s likely you are dripping your right side way too early.  Yiu need to rectify this, or whatever is causing the 8 up.

Edited May 6, 2024 by MonteScheinblum

[ezra76]

I was at +8 and what helped me was hitting a few thousand drivers off the deck. I'm now at +3.5 and as a bonus can hit my driver off the deck. 😄

[mgoblue83]

My experience is that most people who are excessively up with AoA are actually prone to overdraws and duck hooks because they achieve the attack angle by hanging back with a low right shoulder and flip the club out to the right.

[harpua728]

Thanks for the input so far. Like I mentioned in my original post, swinging left with the ball position more forward helped my ball flight (and lowered my AoA to around 4), but I love learning more behind “why” this works. If anyone has good insight on this I would love to hear it.  Thx. 

[Celeras]

I'm not an instructor but if you were +8 and you moved the ball FURTHER up to lower your AoA, I can only guess that you were falling back pretty hard in the original position. And by moving it forward, you're forcing yourself to dive towards the ball more or risk missing the ball completely.

 

If you post a video a trained eye (which isn't me) could probably diagnose in a split second... +8 is borderline crazy.