A game of opposites... I’ve mentioned before that this golf lark is a game of ‘opposites’ and I witness many golfers hurting their game by subscribing to some beliefs which are very common golf misconceptions. One of the most common ones which I come across every week during fitting and coaching sessions is this: ‘A lot of golfers are trying to play a game in which you aim straight, swing straight and hit the ball straight at a target.’ My comment is always that ‘I’m not sure what game this is, but it’s definitely not Golf!!’ The only aspect which comes close to ‘Straight Line golf’ is putting - everything else is played as a side-on game, with clubs which have oblique angular faces with differing lengths and lie angles, golf balls which don’t have smooth surfaces, terrain that is rarely flat to hit from or to hit to, and crosswinds aplenty. Interestingly roughly 50% of golfers, including PGA Tour players, play it as a more exaggerated side-on game and 50% play it as less exaggerated and the ones which play less pronounced (closer to a straight-line style) actually hit the ball with the most curvature of any golfers out there. This is where a lot of players come unstuck, if you hit the ball waywardly it’s easy to think that if you were to somehow swing ‘straighter, that the ball would follow suit but the opposite is actually true. Here’s the secret sauce for wayward shots - whichever direction the ball curves in, swing toward that direction to reduce the curvature. For example, a ball that slices severely to the right is caused by a club which is swinging violently to the left through impact. As unnatural as it feels, the cure is to swing the club more out to the right, in the direction that the bad shot is actually going to cancel it out. A lot of good players who hook the ball also get fooled by this, especially as long hitters tend to HATE the ball going left. They may swing off to the right and hit a ball hooking left, and the instinct would be to swing further to the right but this would only exaggerate the fault. *** Bizarre occurrence - I broke off from writing the newsletter at this point to conduct some coaching and guess what the golfer was struggling with? Swinging out to the right and hitting a hook, too much down the target line. We worked on swinging much more around to the left through impact and this cured the hook shot instantly (as it always will do). | 
