Fade vs. Draw
My whole High School career I hit a very low fade while trying to hit a straight ball. Made All-District, played in the State Tourney, but was the biggest underacheiver in High School Golf History.
In my very last round of High School golf, I started double-bogey, OB. I had enough of the straight ball fallacy, I decide to try to slice it about as far as I could on every shot.
I hit every green the rest of the way except one fringe, and if I would have puttted a lick, I would have shot under par. As it was, I turned a disaster into a 77 and decided I was going to be the next Lee Trevino.
I read his book, and played my next 100 holes right at par...then...I started hitting an off the earth slice and really short....yuck.
I tried everything and was lucky to de-Slice my game back to the ridiculously roundhouse shoulder turn pull-fade. I started playing with the really good players in town and I think I shocked them at how good I could play looking THAT bad swinging the club.
A few months later, an old pro at the Driving Range named Al Jewel, told me to "swing my orms." As I have said before, I got 5 shots better in about two buckets of balls.
But now I hit a pull
-DRAW!
That was February of 1980. Before that the lowest handicap I had was a 4. By that May I was a 1.
In January of '81, I walked on at Southeastern Louisiana and was the #4 man on the team. By that October I was no worse than the #2 man, has a +2.5 handicap and won the team's match play event.
All of this because I learn to hit a draw and learned to putt a lick.
But, as the story goes, I wasn't happy with my pull-draw-hook and tried to learn to hit it straight doing all the stuff that was "supposed to be right."
I couldn't break 85.
Between Novemeber of 1981 and January of 1982, I broke the all-time record for reading golf books. I actually started to make sense of it, and thanks to Jimmy Ballard's book, by February I was back to a 0 handicap.
But I hit a mini-draw mostly, and a fade with the driver off the deck, & I lost distance and didn't get my handicap below that +2.5 until September of 1983.
All my pals would say, "Boy you hit it better when you hit a draw."
They were right, but I was teaching and working as an assistant to the pro and didn't have the nerve to try to go "back."
My playing from those post-Ballard days, to my "Absolute Golf" days as a young teacher, never approached that Snead-like pull-hook game at SLU.
Why?
Because with that pattern
I knew where the ball wasn't going.
And the draw with a flip was more "trapped" than the fade with a flip.
I went to see Ben in 1987 and got 40 yards longer with the Driver and 25 with the irons. I just hit it straight and long.
But, it was TRAPPED correctly.
When I went to the fade exclusively in early 1994, I was playing in a club with my High School pals and my big brother, I had a handicap to play in the money games and got it as low as a +5.2
It was LESS trapped, but it was NEVER going left.
I may have never changed...but...in 2000 I had all of this access to Valhalla and MOST OF THE PROS I SAW HIT A TRAPPED HOOK.
I switched over and played great, except under pressure.
I had attempted to go back to the fade, but, the feel of that 1994-97 pattern was long gone.
Now with my new pattern, It wants to draw, so I'll keep you folks posted.
The moral?
Easier to control a fade, draw goes further and more solid. Pick your poison.
