Day 7: High and Low Draw

Rory Mcilroy's go to shot is the high draw with any club in the bag. I'm going to show you how to put it into your arsenal.

Alright guys it's graduation day you've made it this far you've learned a ton about how the pros learn how to manipulate ball flight while still giving themselves the biggest margin of error it's not just a ton of talent and hand -eye coordination out there building in things that are going to make it easier to repeat the shots consistently and in today's final video about this we're going to talk about how to hit the high and low draw now yesterday I talked about high and low fades and we talked about the wrist positions and ball positions and all those things today the good thing about hitting a draw is it's very natural with RST there's a couple things I want to point out they're going to make this shot more repeatable more consistent for you so number one the biggest thing that I think about I don't really talk about what I think about or what I feel in my swing like to be very objective but shaping shots is more of an art form than just science it's a combination of the two of course the ball is not going to defy the laws of physics but some things that you learn over years of practice and playing is certain things that feel consistent across the board for most golfers and the one thing that I found when I'm going to hit a draw and I want to hit it high is that the more I slow down the more consistent I can hit that shot when I say slow down I mean everything but particularly my chest rotation if I'm really aggressive with my hips it's going to pull my chest around it's going to be very hard for me to get that clubface to rotate and release because now as we're trying to hit not only a draw but we're trying to hit it up in the air I need that clubface to get back close to in line with my hands as hot depending on the trajectory that I want to hit I can't have my hands way leading so if I'm real aggressive with my chest and shoulders my hands are going to be really ahead of the ball and clubface is going to tend to stay open that's how you hit the cut so now what I want to do when I hit this high draw as I want to be syrupy smooth and nice and relaxed understand that the worst thing you can try and do with a draw especially a high draw is try and hit it hard the ball is going to go further anyway because you're de-lofting the clubface and hitting a draw with hook spin on it the ball is already going to go further don't try and make it go further if anything try and hit it less you're going to hit it more consistent more pure when you do that anyway so try to take a little bit out of it and let the clubface and the mechanics or what how the ball is going to be compressed a little bit more and it's going to have a little more spin on it hook spin on it that's going to help it bite through the air is going to get you the extra distance so slow it down a little bit make get the feeling of being really nice and smooth and release let that clubface release that's the critical thing when we're doing this we're trying to get the club face to release but also rotate we've got to get that toe pointed over even though we're rehinging it's really important that you slow everything down to buy time for that to happen with the club so when I try to hit a high draw I try to picture Ernie Els in my head just nice and buttery smooth to buy time for that to release the ball position for the high draw as you might have guessed can be up in your stance just a little bit because what's that going to do it's going to allow the club a little bit more time to get the shaft more vertical and the clubface more closed those are the two prerequisites for hitting a high draw right it's not rocket science so if I move the ball up a half a ball with or maybe a full ball with it's pushing it but about half a ball with I'm just buying myself a couple extra degrees of rotation which is all I need now when I go to hit the low draw now is where things get a little bit tricky that's why I started with the high draw first that one's pretty simple the low draw the tendency is for people to put the ball way back in their stance and in this case to some degree it's okay believe it or not so a couple things I'm going to do and it depends on the severity of the low draw typically a low draw tends to be more of an exaggeration shot because it's not very often that you're going to hit this is just a standard golf shot so typically when I think of hitting a low draw I'm thinking about taking a longer iron a three iron or even a two iron moving it back in my stance and really hitting a low runner that's going to only fly half the normal distance but it's going to roll an extra hundred yards is typically where this shot is used in real life now it doesn't mean you can't hit seven irons that fly 125 yards in the air and fly really low but not very often that you do this is more of a tee-off shot think of kind of Tiger Woods old stinger shot in that case as we move the ball back in our stance what's going to happen to our path I want you to think about this if the club is coming in still from the inside like it normally should be it's going to be working out to the right so as it's working out to the right the tendency is going to be for the ball to want to start right you got to hit a huge draw to get it to come back and that's a lot of work so but we do need the ball to be back a little bit in order to deal off the clubface enough to really get any value out of this shot now of course there are varying degrees here if you're just trying to bring your trajectory down a little bit then the low draw is a pretty simple straightforward shot you keep the ball in the same spot as normal and move it back maybe a full ball with and then just bow your wrist and really release it and that's where you're going to be looking like this and your follow through like we did in our first day drills so that's where this shot really comes in but I'm really going to talk about this again it's more of a tee shot kind of weapon that you can put in a windy condition and get the ball to roll a lot so this one's a little bit different I'm moving the ball back more so than I normally would and here's where things are going to get a little bit interesting I'm going to change the way that I take the club back now again if you're hitting a seven iron normal shot you don't have to changing this though you're taking a two iron three iron four and even a three wooden trying to do this shot things need to change a little bit so here's what happens as I have the ball further back in my stance I have less time in space for the club to square up so what do you think I should do in order to get all this stuff to work well here's the secret as I move the ball back on my stance I'm going to take the club face back a little bit more close so as I get to the top of my swing I'm going to have this wrist already pre bowed slightly so that as I come down even though the club is traveling more from the inside than normal it's severely delofted this coming from the inside makes it easier to draw the ball because the toe is going to want to naturally rotate over and then taking the club face back a little more shut allows me to really hood it coming down and get my wrist really bowed again this is a severe specialty shot you're trying to hook a five iron under the woods it's got to fly very far fly very low those types of things so that's where the shot really comes in handy so move the ball back in your stance a little bit you can play with this that's what I want you to do so you may go out and practice moving it back quite a bit this is back of center take it back a little shot and that ball was super low and a little bit left it's going to draw quite a bit as you start adding speed to this you'll start finding the balance of how to put the ball just in the right spot to how much to take it back closed and how to find that perfect little sweet two iron stinger out there