Hitting the Golf Ball Straight – Tips for When You Can’t Afford to Curve It

Let’s clear one thing up right away – hitting the golf ball straight is hard. As in, really hard.

There is a reason pro golfers don’t typically try to hit the ball straight, as they know just how difficult this task truly is. Things have to come together just right at the moment of impact in order to produce a straight shot, and it’s difficult to make that happen when the club is swinging through the hitting area at a high rate of speed.

So, in general terms, you’ll be better off by trying to curve the ball slightly in one direction or the other, rather than trying to hit a straight ball.

That doesn’t mean you need to hit a wild hook or slice, of course, as those kinds of ball flights are hard to manage. Rather, the best plan is to play a slight draw or fade, which is what you’ll find most professionals doing round after round.

But what about those occasions when you really need to hit one straight?

Occasionally, you’ll find yourself in a situation on the course where you simply need to hit the ball straight.

Maybe you are trying to play between a couple of trees in the distance and really can’t afford to turn it left or right.

Or, maybe you are trying to access a tough pin location on a sloped green, and only a straight shot will do the job given the circumstances.

When the need for a straight ball arrives, it’s good to have a plan in place. In this article, we’ll offer a few tips that we hope will help you hit straighter shots.

Turn Down the Speed

The first adjustment to make when you want to hit the ball straight is to turn down the speed of your swing a bit. Yes, this is going to come at the expense of some distance, but you can’t have everything.

If you want to hit is as straight as possible, you will usually need to accept the fact that you’ll be hitting the shot a little shorter than normal.

As part of turning down the speed of your swing, you may want to think about choking down on the grip at address. This will naturally help you swing a bit slower, since the effective length of the club will be shorter, and you probably won’t make quite as big of a turn.

It does take some practice to get comfortable with choking down on the grip at address, so be sure to practice this adjustment on the range before you give it a try on the course.

Work Against Your Normal Pattern

As mentioned earlier, nearly every golfer has a general ball flight pattern that they use on most occasions. Even if you aren’t as consistent as you would like with your ball flight, you still probably know which way the ball is likely to turn once it leaves your club.

For instance, you might know that a standard swing for you is likely to produce a slight fade. Or, maybe you tend to play a big draw. Whatever the case, you should have some idea of what ball flight pattern dominates in your game.

Starting from that knowledge, you can make subtle adjustments in order to encourage your ball to travel straight toward your target.

Let’s work through an example assuming that you hit a small fade as your normal shot…

For a right-handed golfer, that means the ball curves a bit from left to right as it flies. You are trying to get rid of that left to right turn for this shot, so you’ll want to adjust your address position to change the spin you put on the ball.

To take fade spin off the ball, you would have a couple of options.

For one thing, you could move the ball a bit back in your stance, changing the contact point and hopefully moving to a neutral spin as opposed to one that turns from left to right. Or, you could close your stance slightly, hopefully changing your swing path to again alter the spin pattern and straighten out the flight of the ball.

Experimenting with these options on the range should reveal which one works best for your game.

Quickly, we should state that this works the same going the other way.

For a player who usually hits a draw, moving the ball forward in the stance or opening the stance a bit could help to produce a straighter shot.

No matter which way you usually turn the ball, making address position changes to work against that pattern can help you land on the straight shot you need in a certain situation.

Don’t Try this Too Often

Ideally, you’ll be able to avoid trying to hit the ball straight too often. Not only is it a challenge to do so, but usually the need to hit it perfectly straight arises from having put yourself in a bad spot.

It’s fine to work on this on the range so you can attempt it when necessary, but golf is an easier game when playing an intentional curve of some kind.

It’s usually easier to predict whether the ball is going to turn right or left, rather than trying to hit it straight and hoping that you succeed. When you aim right at the target and try to hit the ball straight, it’s possible that you could miss in either direction – and a two-way miss is never good news on the golf course.

To really make meaningful progress with your game, work on improving the consistency of the main ball flight that you use for most of your shots.

Not only should you know whether the ball is going to draw or fade before you make your swing, but you should also have a rough idea of how much it will turn. Nailing down these details is going to make you a far better player moving forward.