My Favorite Videos
Day 5: How to Hit the Fade
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Hitting the fade in golf is one thing, I'm going to teach you the pro's PLAY the fade.
Okay. Now in the next day, we're going to work on hitting that fade. Now in this case, still the same tee box, but I have the pin, sucker side on the right. Got a bit nasty bunker here. Impossible to get up and down. You're guaranteed to make a bogey. Where do you go? I'm going to line up as close to the trouble as I can. Now, this seems counter-intuitive. Our instincts, our natural defense mechanisms says get away from that stuff as far as I can. Let's hit over here and then try to slice it 50 yards to get over there, or just aim at it and hit a little cut, or aim over there and hit a straight ball. But your instincts have to be overcome. You have to line yourself up as close to the trouble as you can get so that you can aim away from the trouble.
If I'm lined up on the right side of the tee box, and I'm aimed over here, well, there's nothing over here. The water is way the heck over there, so if I screw up and I hit it straight or it doesn't cut as much as I expect it to, where is it going to end up? The middle of the green. What's so bad about that? That's the whole point of shot-shaping. Shot-shaping is all about margin of error. Like you've seen in my chip shot videos, I'm very conservative. I want to do everything I can to make sure I never lay the sod over it, I don't get a lot of grass between the ball and the clubface, et cetera. This is the exact same thing. It's all about mitigating and controlling the margin of error.
I'm going to get as close to the trouble, the water hazard, as I can. I'm going to aim over here and I'm going to cut it. Now one little bonus trick with the cut that I want to talk about. Because you're learning RST, the natural default shot shape for RST is a baby draw. That is because we're teaching you how to allow the club to shallow out naturally. The tendency is when you make a little bit of a mistake, is for the club to come a little bit too far from the inside, a degree or two. If you make a mistake, the margin of error is saying that you're going to swing a little bit into out. That's far better than swinging out to in, in most cases, because that hits a really weak slappy cut in most cases.
You come a little bit too far from the inside, the natural tendency is for the momentum from the toe of the club to help release the club even more when you come too far from the inside. You tend to counter-balance with RST to hit a natural draw that will come right back to the middle. Now when you swing a little bit over to the top, the toe doesn't have the momentum because it's swung down steeper, it doesn't want to to rotate. It's being swung more like an ax. Then you just hit a bigger cut. That's not going to work out real well. We want that ball to always come back online. That's why, as I develop this stuff, the margin of error for RST is to come a little bit too shallow so that the toe still naturally wants to rotate over.
You hit a little bit of a push draw that comes right back to the middle. That's what's cool about it. With the cut, because you're tending to come a little bit from the inside as you make a mistake, and I don't want you trying to manipulate your swing plane and path, that's way too hard, you're going to make the exact same swing plane that you always do. You're just going to hold off the release to add that little bit of chest rotation and that is going to ensure that the ball's going to curve to the right. But what you have to keep in mind is that you may have to aim way further left than you think. That's what's hard for people. I may actually be with my feet lined up off the green because the path of my club is actually going toward the edge of the green. With the clubface being open, the ball is going to end up close to the hole.
As you understand the dynamics, the swing mechanics of RST, and how they're built to always, again, margin of error, as you're setting up to hit a cut, you may need to realize that you need to aim further left with your feet than you think because your path is going to tend to be a little bit from the inside. Now, that's a small amount, but it's still something to take into note. The goal when you're hitting the cut to the sucker pin on the right, don't look at the sucker pin. Don't even go for it. Your target's over here but you're aiming here and hitting the cut. When you work on these things, you're going to start hitting a lot more greens with way less effort and way less stress. You're going to start hitting some great shots on the golf course.
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