Tip #36: Shotmaking Strategies

It was always my ambition to win my first major championship by a wide margin, so I'd be able to savor the final moments of triumph. In the 1986 British Open I got my wish. My five-stroke victory allowed me to enjoy the 17th and 18th holes at Turnberry, secure in the knowledge that no one could catch me.

If you can understand the way spin influences the flight of the ball, you have a head start at learning how to impart that spin.

Hole number 16, however, was another story. On the tee of that 415-yard par-4 known as Wee Bum, I let my drive get away from me. Off it sailed into the darkest reaches of the right-hand rough.

Granted, I was five strokes clear of my closest pursuer, but 16 is no place to spray a tee-shot, regardless of how big your lead may be. The approach must be played to a green that is tightly guarded by the only water hazard on the course, a small stream for which the hole is named.

Hit the ball short or right and you're in the drink, facing the loss of at least one stroke and likely more. Hit it long and you'll likely catch the back bunker, leaving a downwind, downhill explosion with the bum staring you in the face. It's a challenging shot, even from a good lie in the middle of the fairway-something I most certainly did not leave myself in that final round.

They say, however, that major championships are won with a combination of talent, tenacity, and luck. If that's true, then without question my share of good fortune occurred at 16 on Sunday. As Pete and I tramped across the hay and gorse en route to my wayward drive, I had no idea what to expect. But when we shouldered through the last circle of spectators, I beheld one of the prettiest sights imaginable.

There was my ball, sitting smack in the center of a gallery path. Amid some of the most daunting terrain in linksland golf, I had somehow found a gorgeous lie. One hundred thousand people had been trampling that area for a week, so instead of being buried in tangled grass, my ball was sitting cleanly on hard, bare ground. I couldn't have dropped it in a better place.

I looked at Pete and my first three words were, "Perfect, perfect, perfect." My next words came almost immediately. "I've got the shot," I told him.

The wind was coming at us from about two o'clock angle. And with the clean lie I had, I knew I could put plenty of spin on the ball. My plan was to hit a big, high fade and send it at the center of the green, knowing that its left-to-right movement would be more or less canceled out by the right-to-left wind.

The shot came off just as I had hoped. My ball hung up in the sky, fighting against the wind but not drifting a bit either right or left. Down it came, 10 feet from the hole. It was precisely at that moment that I knew I'd won the championship.

Good luck gave me an opportunity. But good shotmaking enabled me to make the most of it. The ability to play fades, draws, punches, and lofting shots is what marks true players. Combine this ability with an aggressive overall game, and you can lift your talent to the peak of its potential.

The Basics

Every shot stays on the clubface for a millisecond thus imparting backspin on the ball.

Shotmaking is fundamentally the process of spinning the golf ball in special ways. Thus, if you can understand the way in which this spin influences the flight of the ball, you'll have a head start at learning how to impart that spin.

When you hit a straight shot with normal trajectory, you impart pure backspin. As you make impact with a 7 -iron, for instance, the clubface pinches against the back of the ball and makes the ball rotate "backwards," toward the club.

The ball actually climbs up the face of the club for a millisecond. Then this backspin lifts the ball into the air. As the ball leaves your clubface it is spinning backwards at the rate of nearly 150 revolutions per second.

Every shot in golf has backspin-the drive, the chip, the sand shot, even the duck hook and the shank. In fact, even a putt skids backward for an inch or so before it begins rolling forward.

Fade and Draws

When you cut across the ball, however, either from out to in or from in to out, you impart sidespin along with the backspin. It is this sidespin that causes the ball to curve to the right or left.

Clockwise sidespin makes the ball move from left to right. In basic terms, you impart this spin whenever the face of the golf club is open in relation to the angle of your swing path at impact.

Please recall that "open," in the case of the clubface, means pointing to the right of the swing path. This should not be confused with an open stance in which your body is aligned to the left of the target line.

It's important also to understand that this open clubface is the only root cause of fades and slices. You can make a perfectly square, on-plane swing, but if at impact the face of your club is pointing to the right of your target line, you'll curve the ball from left to right.

Conversely, you can have your club pointed perfectly down the target line, but if you hit the ball with a glancing blow from out to in, that straight-forward clubface will actually be open in relation to (pointing to the right of) the path of your swing. This also will produce a slice. The more open your clubface is in relation to your swing path, the more clockwise sidespin you'll put on the ball. Slightly open faces produce fades, wide-open faces produce slices.

Draws and hooks come from the opposite situation, where the clubface is closed in relation to (pointed to the left of the path of the swing at impact. This imparts counterclockwise spin which makes the ball turn from right to left.

As with the slice spin, it doesn't matter whether your swing path is from out to in, in to out, or straight into the back of the ball; if your clubface is pointed farther left than the line on which that club is moving, you're going to curve the ball from right to left. A little spin produces a draw, a lot of spin means a hook.

- Greg Norman