Knowing how to hit a draw is a kind of holy grail for many golfers. A sign that you’ve officially made it. Most golfers grow up knowing how to slap a slice down the fairway.
But turning it gently from right-to-left? That’s the good stuff.
Which brings me to a really interesting article statistician Jake Nichols wrote last month, which you can read right here. Jake went through a season’s worth of Shotlink data on spin axis to identify the biggest draw players on tour. These were the results…
Given that these were the best draw players on the PGA Tour, and so many amateurs dream of being the best draw players at their home track, I decided to seek out some advice.
So, I talked to five of the players on this list—Chris Kirk, Eric Cole, Ben Hun An, Matt Fitzpatrick, and Michael Kim—to get some advice about how we can do what they do best.
1. Extend towards the target
Understand that ultimately hitting a draw requires one thing: Making sure that the clubface is pointing to the left of the direction your swinging. If your swing is moving to the right, and your clubface to the left, the ball will go left.
PGA Tour player Michael Kim says a feel that helps him swing more out to the right is taking the club away inside on the backswing, then stretching his arms out on the way through.
“After I take the club back inside, I feel like I extend my arms out towards the target,” Kim says. “I love the wide arms feel before and through impact.”
Justin Casterline
2. Ball position *a little* further back
The bottom of your golf swing works like an arc. It goes from high-to-low-to-high, and from in-to-out-to-in. If you’re struggling to swing more out to the right, Kim suggests moving the ball position slightly back in your stance. So, rather than in line with your left heel, move it a few inches further back. Kim says this will have the effect of moving your swing direction, at the time you hit the ball, out to the right.
“I feel like my ball position is slightly closer to my right foot than most,” he says. “That helps me hit the ball on a more inside path.”
3. Attack the inside of the ball
Of course, this can be a lot to think about before you hit a shot. If you’re looking for a more basic, visual cue (you can read more about the benefits of those here), then Chris Kirk has a good one: Feel like you hit the inside of the golf ball. Or, in other words, the part of the golf ball that is closer to you.
“I feel like I want to attack the inside of the ball to hit a draw,” he says. “I do pretty much all the time, and that gives me the feeling of dropping the club slightly under that original takeaway plane.”
Whenever I need some tempo inspiration one of the videos I watch is this one of Chris Kirk silking a draw at LACC 🧈 pic.twitter.com/tuUVRIchVK
— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) January 7, 2024
4. Get your arms wide on the backswing
You may notice a common theme is the feeling of throwing the club with your hands—that’s a common draw feel for lots of players. But in order to do that, you need to put your arms in a good position to throw the club. That means getting them wide, Byeong Hun An says.
“I try to feel my arms are stretched away from my body, and more around me,” he says. “That’s what gives me space to really throw and release the club.”
5. Get the clubface open—then roll it shut
Here’s a counterintuitive one, but it actually makes sense: Kim found that when he tries to hit draws, he likes to roll the clubface slightly open on the backswing. From there, he feels like he can roll his wrists aggressively through the ball, without feeling like it’s going to overdraw.
“It’s not scientific,” he says. “Personally, I prefer a slightly open clubface on the backswing so I can release it hard. I’ve always done much better that way. I think it’s much harder playing a draw with a closed clubface which might be counterintuitive.”
My (main) swing evolutions 2015 (rookie season)-2018 (week of my win)-2020 (shut clubface)-2023 (current)
Which one is your favorite? @LukeKerrDineen pic.twitter.com/i9tEV8FsI6
— Michael S. Kim (@Mike_kim714) January 5, 2024
6. Go slow in transition
Hitting a draw requires an inherent level of timing—as all golf shots do. It’s easy to overcook or undercook a draw when you don’t get it quite right. Eric Cole says the problems in that area usually occur when you’re trying to rush the transition from backswing to downswing. Rushed golf swings can tend cause an over the top move. A slower transition helps the arms drop.
“I wish my swing relied a little less on the timing. My timing is typically pretty good but when I get swinging too hard you can get out of sync really often,” Cole says. “I typically swing with pretty decent rhythm because I focus on not getting too rushed in transition.”
Andrew Redington
7. Use the tee height to control the curve
The height you tee up the ball can affect how much—or little—the ball moves from right to left. Higher-teed drives come off with less spin, higher launch and generally, more distance. High tees can make the draw more prouncounced. Lower-teed shots the opposite.
“Typically the lower you tee the driver, the driver will be more fade bias because you’ll hit more down on it,” he says. “For me if I tee it lower, it helps me hit a tiny draw instead of too big of one.”
8. Right palm facing the floor
Fitzpatrick switched from draw-to-fade and now back to a draw as his stock shot off the tee. He’ll often hone his draw by using a putter grip on his driver, which helps him feel that his right palm faces towards the ground through impact, which helps him close the clubface, and turn the ball over.
“With the driver in particular, I’m trying to feel a little bit more over the ball, with the club shaft a bit lower in my hands,” he says. “That helps me get my right hand more on top of the club.”
Boston Globe
9. Practice hitting shots left arm only
Part of being a good draw player is learning how to control your draw. It can quickly turn into a high hook if you’re not careful, because you start swinging too far to the right, or aiming the clubface too much to the left. When this happens, Kirk suggests a simple drill:
“My main drill that I would do to keep from getting the club stuck too far under was to hit a lot of shots with left arm only,” Kirk says. “It forces you to keep the club in front of your body a little bit more rather than getting stuck to the inside.”
10. Beware aiming too far right
Finally, Eric Cole says a tendency for draw players is to aim more and more out to the right. It fits their eye and can be comfortable, but it can subconsciously turn your tight draw into a sweeping draw, or leave you wondering why you keep hitting good shots that miss out to the right.
“I have a tendency to aim too far right, so I do a lot of work to try and make sure that I’m aimed where I want to be,” he says. “That’s pretty common for players who like to hit a draw…I think about my alignment every day, it’s part of my blueprint to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Bonus: Bryson’s draw tips
Bryson DeChambeau is perhaps the best draw player on the planet, and isn’t included here because he plays his non-major golf on LIV, so we don’t have his data. But, good news, we wrote a whole article about how he hits his draw which you can check out right here.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
