Another one of the most frequently asked questions in golf is… how to hit a draw with driver?
For most amateur golfers, this may be one of the more difficult skills to acquire. Most amateur golfers have a golf swing that causes them to slice the ball.
As I mentioned in a previous post dealing with hitting a draw with your irons, the first things you need to understand are the ball flight laws.
Based upon the ball flight laws, to hit a draw, you must be able to attack the golf ball with a swing path from inside to out.
In other words, if you are a right handed golfer, your swing path just before impact with the golf ball, must be from inside the ball, and not outside.
When you are standing beside the golf ball, you are swinging on a path that has an arc.
Right at impact, if your swing path is square to your target, and the club is square to the target, you will hit a straight shot.
Most people attack the ball from an outside/in path, as seen in the middle diagram. To hit a draw, your path must be inside/out, as seen in the bottom diagram.
Have a look at this next image, which shows various flight paths based upon swing path and club face angle.
The ideal ball flight when you want to hit a draw that starts to the right of your target is path G.
In this case, the path is slightly to the right of your target, but your club face angle is slightly closed to your swing path. This causes the right to left spin that will cause the ball to draw.
Golf Swing Plane
The reason most amateur golfers struggle to hit a draw is that their normal swing plane is too steep and outside in.
With that type of swing plane, it is difficult to release the club properly, otherwise every shot you would hit would be a smother pull hook.
The body compensates by holding the clubface open at impact, and this results in a big slice.
A flatter swing plane (think Matt Kuchar) will make it easier to release the club and hit a draw.
Ball Position
The other issue that makes it even more difficult to hit a draw with the driver is that we need to have the ball positioned more forward in our stance in order to get it into the air.
The driver has a very limited amount of loft. That is why we place the ball on a tee, and why we also want to strike the ball on our upswing.
With the ball more forward in our stance, our natural swing arc is already heading to the left of our target.
This is why most amateur golfers will slice the ball even more with their driver than with any other club.
How to hit a draw with the driver
If you want to be able to hit a draw with the driver, you are going to need to do some analysis of your game.
If most of your iron shots start out left of the target and finish off to the right (assuming you are a right hander), then you need to flatten your swing plane a bit and/or work on proper sequencing.
If most of your iron shots start to the right and curve more to the right, then you are already attacking the ball from an inside out swing path.
Therefore, you may need to modify your grip slightly to help you release the club better.
If you already have decent fundamentals, but you struggle to hit a draw with your irons, consider setting up with the ball a little further back in your stance. This will put the ball in a position where your swing path is inside/out, and allow you to hit a draw.
Final Thoughts
Similar to hitting a draw with the irons, there is no one size fixes all solution for you to learn how to hit a draw with the driver.
You simply need to diagnose your primary swing flaw and go from there.
As I’ve said before, the best advice I can give to any golfer is to get a lesson where they have their swing analyzed by video.
You can then get to work on your critical ball flight issue, and once that is fixed, get to work on some of the more minor issues that are affecting your ball striking.
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