A Simple Strategy to Improve Your Golf Shot Shaping
A lot of times when a player is out on the golf course and he has a tree in front of him where it is going to obstruct his direction to the green he just pitches it out and takes his penalty. Well you don't have to do that, you can shape the ball around the tree, right to left, left to right. All you really have to know is how to do that, and it is pretty simple.
How to Shape a Shot
I am going to shape this shot around our imaginary tree, my Mizuno umbrella, and I will show you how to do it in a very simple fashion. Whenever you go right to left we need to close the clubface down, and when you close the clubface down you take loft off of the club. So when you use a right to left shot and you don’t have too much distance to go take a more lofted club.
I am going to use an 8-iron on this first one and show you how I can spin the ball out around this Mizuno umbrella here and hook it around to the green.
- First of all I take my line and point the aiming line well out to the right.
- Then with my body aimed well to the right of the target I take the clubface and close it so that it faces where I want the ball to finish. In this case I want the ball to finish out here on this green right in the middle. So I am putting the club down at a right angle to the target.
- Then I set it down to the ball and I simply swing right out along my target line and let the ball go ahead and turn over around that umbrella and coming back to the target.
There it is perfectly done. Right around to the middle of that green. If you want the shot to go left to right you are going to be adding loft to the club as you open the face, so I am going take a 4-iron here, much less loft, and I am going to change my aim position way over to the left side. With my clubface I am going to set my clubface where I want the ball to end up.
How to Aim a Shaping Shot
I am going to swing way out to the left here because the reason you have to swing a long ways to the left is that is not going to go where you are aiming to start with. It is going to go between where you want it to end up and where you are aiming. You have to give it plenty of room. The face is wide open. My clubface is aiming where I want the ball to finish. I am going to swing out to the left and down that line, and watch the ball it will curve right over and again back to the middle of that green.
There we are, around the target, over to the green. Really simple. That is all you have to do, but you have to trust it. So many people set the club down closed and then gradually get it back to square, back to square, and all they do is push it out to the right. Trust it and make your normal swing.