Fixing a Students Golf Hook

Most of the time, we find ourselves teaching beginners and novices, or intermediates who have typical problems such as over-the-top, slicing, etc. From a technical viewpoint, teaching beginners and novices isn’t that difficult, because we mainly focus on the basics of setup and a good rudimentary swing motion. Teaching intermediates with typical problems is still not overly strenuous from a technical viewpoint. Their problems tend to stem from the setup, and/or a lack of doing something correctly in their motions. For example, slicers tend not to release the club, so getting them to release properly is getting them to do something they are not already doing. By contrast, fixing a hook is a tremendous challenge for many teachers. The problem for the golfer who hooks is often that they are already doing something properly (releasing, for example), but they are overdoing it. Getting a golfer to reduce a motion is a more difficult proposition. A hook occurs, of course, when the clubface is closed in relation to the clubhead path through impact. There are both setup and swing considerations to take into account when evaluating exactly what the student is doing when he or she is hooking the ball. For purposes of this article, we will assume the player is right-handed.