Help with aim and a pull/hook

[chern92]

Finished an impromptu lesson with a pro following a round I played with him. 

 

I am a lefty, so flip around for righties. 

 

Best way I can explain my problem...

 

Fairway is 50 yards wide. 

 

I want to play my shot shape which is a draw from left to right. I believe I am aiming the face at the left edge of the fairway, intending to start it there and draw it towards the middle of the fairway. 

 

In reality - according to the pro - my club face/eyes/body are aligned ~30 yards left into the rough and I have trained myself to pull the ball to try start it at the edge of the fairway. 

 

It's leading to a serious inside takeaway (at times) and in general everything pulling, over drawing and hooking into the right rough, a lot of times dead. The more I try aim left to align it, the more I block it dead straight and left. The more I try to aim to the middle, the more I miss dead right. There is this point where trying to play the hook and aiming a fair amount left, leads to a block way left, and trying to hit straight in the middle is just dead right the opposite way, and if the hole does not align, it's like nothing I can do to keep it from ending up in the right rough or dead when trying to play a reasonably aimed shot. 

 

Heading to the range tomorrow and will begin working with alignment sticks to try get this sorted as he recommended, but is there more I can be doing to fix this? I am getting to an unbearable spot with a hook. Variance in my rounds is huge, and I can never hit targets. 

Edited July 28 by chern92

[Valtiel]

26 minutes ago, chern92 said:

In reality - according to the pro - my club face/eyes/body are aligned ~30 yards left into the rough and I have trained myself to pull the ball to try start it at the edge of the fairway. 

This is pretty common...the over-drawer with a poor concept of where they're actually aiming, so it's good this was identified. 
 

Quote

It's leading to a serious inside takeaway (at times) and in general everything pulling, over drawing and hooking into the right rough, a lot of times dead.

Can you confirm for sure that it is only "at times"? Based on what you're describing you're likely struggling with managing an overly inside path and a shut face which is often accompanied/preceded by an inside takeaway. I would be surprised if you're only inside sometimes and not others...most people don't flip around like that. It might *feel* like you are, but it's usually not the case. However there might be an alignment related reason for this which i'll speculate about below. Video would be needed to say for sure regardless of my guesses. 
 

Quote

The more I try aim left to align it, the more I block it dead straight and left. The more I try to aim to the middle, the more I miss dead right. There is this point where trying to play the hook and aiming a fair amount left, leads to a block way left, and trying to hit straight in the middle is just dead right the opposite way, and if the hole does not align, it's like nothing I can do to keep it from ending up in the right rough or dead when trying to play a reasonably aimed shot. 

This is what supports the "overly inside path" guess as this is exactly what happens (combined with some alignment stuff that i'll touch on next). You're swinging the club too far from the inside and you're hitting your limit as to what you can manage. The further away you are from "neutral" in terms of club path coming into the ball, the more you have to generate extreme face to path relationships, and the more extreme the more likely you get the nasty two-way miss you're describing. I'd wager you're managing a very shut face throughout the swing as well. 

Regarding where you're aiming and how that is changing the results, i'll make another guess based on the most common reason for this. We've already established that you're inaccurate when it comes to assessing where you're actually aiming as identified by the pro, and i'd wager that when aiming either further to the left or more "middle" that you're not actually changing your whole body alignment, but rather just your foot alignment. It's a common mistake as we tend to want to maintain some kind of "connection" to where we want the ball to end up, so we jostle our feet around while keeping our head/shoulders more pointed at where we want the ball to end up. All this does is muck with your swing plane as there is a tendency to take the club back along our foot line and swing down on our shoulder line, which as you can imagine creates problems in proportion to how disconnected those two elements are.

If you're managing a shut face and your "stock" shots are aiming 30y left into the rough and kind of pull-drawing it back into the fairway then i'd guess you already have a bit of this misalignment there (shoulders likely open relative to feet, the most common alignment issue). When you aim more down the middle you're potentially squaring this up and the straight shot you're hoping for isn't going to happen because you're delivering a shut face less from the inside, ergo dead pull to the right. When you attempt to flip this and aim way further left and you separate your foot/shoulder alignment even more then you get into the "stuck inside/under" territory coming down and block it way right. 

When you put down alignment sticks at the range tomorrow do this while taking video; have one on your feet, take your stance, then place one across your shoulders (you can use a club for this too, anything straight). Go back and check on video where the alignment sticks are pointing. You'll want to then recreate those course conditions too via changing your alignment in the ways you described to reproduce that pull/block two way miss. Ideally you'd video all of this first before checking alignment though just so we can see what's actually going on, then mess with the sticks. 

[chern92]

On 7/27/2025 at 11:01 PM, Valtiel said:

This is pretty common...the over-drawer with a poor concept of where they're actually aiming, so it's good this was identified. 
 

Can you confirm for sure that it is only "at times"? Based on what you're describing you're likely struggling with managing an overly inside path and a shut face which is often accompanied/preceded by an inside takeaway. I would be surprised if you're only inside sometimes and not others...most people don't flip around like that. It might *feel* like you are, but it's usually not the case. However there might be an alignment related reason for this which i'll speculate about below. Video would be needed to say for sure regardless of my guesses. 
 

This is what supports the "overly inside path" guess as this is exactly what happens (combined with some alignment stuff that i'll touch on next). You're swinging the club too far from the inside and you're hitting your limit as to what you can manage. The further away you are from "neutral" in terms of club path coming into the ball, the more you have to generate extreme face to path relationships, and the more extreme the more likely you get the nasty two-way miss you're describing. I'd wager you're managing a very shut face throughout the swing as well. 

Regarding where you're aiming and how that is changing the results, i'll make another guess based on the most common reason for this. We've already established that you're inaccurate when it comes to assessing where you're actually aiming as identified by the pro, and i'd wager that when aiming either further to the left or more "middle" that you're not actually changing your whole body alignment, but rather just your foot alignment. It's a common mistake as we tend to want to maintain some kind of "connection" to where we want the ball to end up, so we jostle our feet around while keeping our head/shoulders more pointed at where we want the ball to end up. All this does is muck with your swing plane as there is a tendency to take the club back along our foot line and swing down on our shoulder line, which as you can imagine creates problems in proportion to how disconnected those two elements are.

If you're managing a shut face and your "stock" shots are aiming 30y left into the rough and kind of pull-drawing it back into the fairway then i'd guess you already have a bit of this misalignment there (shoulders likely open relative to feet, the most common alignment issue). When you aim more down the middle you're potentially squaring this up and the straight shot you're hoping for isn't going to happen because you're delivering a shut face less from the inside, ergo dead pull to the right. When you attempt to flip this and aim way further left and you separate your foot/shoulder alignment even more then you get into the "stuck inside/under" territory coming down and block it way right. 

When you put down alignment sticks at the range tomorrow do this while taking video; have one on your feet, take your stance, then place one across your shoulders (you can use a club for this too, anything straight). Go back and check on video where the alignment sticks are pointing. You'll want to then recreate those course conditions too via changing your alignment in the ways you described to reproduce that pull/block two way miss. Ideally you'd video all of this first before checking alignment though just so we can see what's actually going on, then mess with the sticks. 

Thank you for the amazing reply and for going into so much detail. I went to the range today and did my best to get this swing video. This was an 8 iron at less than 100%. The stick in front is about 10 yards ahead. I was well right of it - typical - and ended about 25 yards right on a dead pull. I’m glad I got this specific clip with the miss. 

Edited July 29 by chern92

[sundaypins]

On 7/27/2025 at 11:59 PM, chern92 said:

Heading to the range tomorrow and will begin working with alignment sticks to try get this sorted as he recommended, but is there more I can be doing to fix this?

 

Maybe a question needing personal examination is:  if one uses a stick on the ground for aiming a ball going airborne, does it make sense using the sky for aiming a ball that rolls on the ground during a putt.  Not disparaging sticks on the ground by any means but there are other ways of aiming that are arguably better, some even aim the shaft visually.  Have a listen to one of those good ideas about different options.   Good luck, aiming is a tough nut to crack for many. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[chern92]

13 minutes ago, sundaypins said:

 

Maybe a question needing personal examination is:  if one uses a stick on the ground for aiming a ball going airborne, does it make sense using the sky for aiming a ball that rolls on the ground during a putt.  Not disparaging sticks on the ground by any means but there are other ways of aiming that are arguably better, some even aim the shaft visually.  Have a listen to one of those good ideas about different options.   Good luck, aiming is a tough nut to crack for many. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your reply and video went over my head. I dont follow either. 

Edited July 29 by chern92

[MonteScheinblum]

Looks like good swing and just getting to lead side a hair late.

[sundaypins]

2 minutes ago, chern92 said:

Your reply and video went over my head. I dont follow either. 

  

That's fine, I tried.  Again, good luck. 

[chern92]

25 minutes ago, MonteScheinblum said:

Looks like good swing and just getting to lead side a hair late.

Any advice on working on that?

[rsballer10]

26 minutes ago, chern92 said:

Your reply and video went over my head. I dont follow either. 

I dont blame you

Edited July 29 by rsballer10

[MonteScheinblum]

1 minute ago, chern92 said:

Any advice on working on that?

Here’s a drill I give people, but it’s just something you have to do until you can do it.  

 

How do you ride a bike?  You get on it and do it until you can do it.

 

The shift is the last move of the backswing, not first move of downswing.  

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CnHtR2hoW-W/?igsh=MXYwMDN2Mm1qb3k3ZQ==

 

[chern92]

1 minute ago, MonteScheinblum said:

Here’s a drill I give people, but it’s just something you have to do until you can do it.  

 

How do you ride a bike?  You get on it and do it until you can do it.

 

The shift is the last move of the backswing, not first move of downswing.  

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CnHtR2hoW-W/?igsh=MXYwMDN2Mm1qb3k3ZQ==

 

I appreciate the help.

[Mungbean]

Ain't no instructor....but I went through a similar thing....I probably still aim stoopid!  But....

 

Seems like aiming right for a righty can have more of an adverse effect on your motion than aiming too far left (over the top and face flashing)

 

A few things that may help...

• Get you one of them face magnet thingies so you know what "square" looks like.
• Also if you can find the back edge of a mat or a board or something and get your leading edge up against that it will help you see what square is.  Square looked open to me so I was hitting face pulls too much.
• Also, I have a strongish grip and a face that was looking left (I'm a righty).  So my thought was I want the face to be square when the ball separates from the face which would mean the face would need to be "open" at address.  So I kept my grip the same but sorta took it in front of the ball then lifted it up over the ball and soled it and it looked "open"....I don't hit no face pulls any more much.  My miss is more pushy.  So experiment with an open face and just hit some shots.  See what you get.  Your action looked pretty dang good to me!  Experiment with open and see what it produces for you.  It may take you a small bucket to get used to it.  But I feel like open face gave me some margin.
• One last thing...look up golf parallax on YouTube.  There are some good videos out there.  Put you a stick in the ground about 10 20 yards down range and then lay another stick on the ground pointing right at it.  Then set up to all that stuff square and look at the stick.  Depending on your eye dominance and stuff that stick may look way right to you as a lefty?  Which may be causing your alignment issues.  It's pretty interesting to see how that works.
• If you got a pretty flat range you can get you a bigazz long tape measure and stretch that thing out way down range it helped me to see a bright green line.
• Last but not least...I feel like golf is hard because in most "swing the stick" sports the shaft is the face.  I golf club is like a spatula with the face offset.  So I try to think of a portion of the shaft as a "proxy" for the face so I can just swing the shaft like a bat and not really worry much about the face.  I feel like the loft on the face sorta runs up the target/front side of the shaft up my left arm.  So I kind aim and swing the SHAFT and not really the face so much.

Bottom line you got a nice action...experimenting with getting how you see the face/target as a new "normal" may help you out.