If you want to improve your golf game, it’s imperative you learn about modern golf ball flight laws.
What are golf ball flight laws? They are flight patterns determined by what happens at impact. Ball flight laws are a matter of physics – there is no debating them.
Why is it important to understand ball flight laws in golf? Well, say you slice the ball – wouldn’t you like to know why you sliced the ball and what you need to do to fix it?
Understanding ball flight laws will help you do just that. Seeing the direction your ball is going and knowing the different variables that caused it to fly that way will enable you to work backwards to figure out what you need to tweak in your swing to get your desired ball flight.
The bottom line – if you take golf seriously, or want to, you owe it to yourself to learn this stuff.
The Two Key Variables that Impact Ball Flight in Golf
What impacts ball flight in golf? There are two key variables.
- Where your clubface is pointing at impact.
- Your swing path at impact.
These two variables will impact your ball flight the most. Each one plays a role in your starting line and where your golf ball ultimately ends up.
Starting Direction
What determines the starting direction of your golf shot? The direction your clubface is facing (relative to your target line) determines the ball’s starting line.
If your clubface is open – if it is facing right of your target (for right handers) at impact – then your ball flight will start to the right.
New ball flight laws say that 65-90 percent of the starting direction is based on where your clubface is pointing at impact. The amount of loft your club has plays a role in exactly how much your clubface dictates the starting direction of your ball flight.
Old ball flight laws said that starting direction was dictated by your swing path. But thanks to launch monitors and simulators like Trackman and GC Quad, we now know that’s never been true.
Curvature and Where Your Ball Ends Up
What causes your golf shots to curve? The old ball flight laws said that your clubface dictated the curvature of your shot and, ultimately, where your shot ended up. But we now know that’s not true.
New ball flight laws say that your shot curvature is heavily dictated by your swing path RELATIVE to your clubface at impact.
For example, if your clubface is open 10 degrees at impact, the ball will start at around 6.5-9 degrees (depending on the club loft).
If your swing path is not square to your clubface (or vice versa), your shot will have curvature. How much curvature your shot has and where it ends up depends on your swing path.
If your clubface is open to the path, the ball will curve right, and if the face is closed (left) to the path, the ball will curve left (for a righthanded golfer).
The ball starts on the line of the clubface and then curves away from the path depending on the difference between path and face. The larger the difference between the path and face, the more your ball will curve.
Loft plays a role in how much your ball curves too. Less loft (driver, woods, hybrids, long irons) will leads to more curvature and more loft (wedges, small and middle irons) leads to less curvature.
Distance matters too. The farther your ball goes, the more time it has to curve and the further offline it can go.
Ball Position Also Plays a Role
Clubface and swing path are the biggest variables that determine the starting direction of your ball flight, the direction your ball curves, how much it curves, and where your ball ends up.
However, your ball position will also play a role. Ball position will impact both your swing position and clubface at face.
For example, say you have an in to out swing path. If you place the ball back in your stance, you’ll contact the ball as your club is moving to the left (for a righty). This means you could hit anything from a severe hook to a draw to a push to the right depending on your clubface.
Now say that you place the ball in the front of your stance. Because swing paths curve, your club will likely be moving out to in even if you have an in to out path (assuming your ball position is optimal).
This will have the opposite effect on your ball flight. A closed clubface will cause your ball to go to the left, a face square to your swing path will pull the ball left, an open face (relative to your swing path) will cause your ball to curve to the left (a draw), and a wide open club face will result in a slice.
Ball position impacts the amount of dynamic loft presented at impact to. The further back your ball position, the steeper the angle of attack and the less loft you’ll have at impact. This can lead to more curvature. The more you push your ball position forward, the more loft and less curvature you’ll have.
If you’re experiencing a less than desired ball flight, don’t rush to make a swing change. Swing changes are hard to make. First, instead ensure that your setup – which includes your ball position – is optimal. The easiest way to do this is to record your swing from face on.
Fixing your ball position is MUCH easier than changing your swing.
9 Types of Ball Flights in Golf
There are 9 ball flights in golf. While the cause won’t always be the same, your ball flight will fall into one of the following flight patterns (reverse the following details if you’re a left-handed golfer).
- Hook – The ball starts on target or slightly right and curves away from target. This happens because the swing path is open to target line, while the clubface is square to target line and closed to swing path.
- Pull Hook – The ball starts left of target line and curves further left. This ball flight is the result of the swing path being square to target and the clubface left of target line but closed to the swing path
- Draw – The ball starts right of target and curves left towards target. This happens because the path is open to target line, and clubface is right of target line and closed to swing path.
- Pull – The ball starts left of target and continues in a straight line. This is the result of the swing path being closed to target line with the clubface being left of target line and square to the swing path.
- Straight – The ball starts towards target and continues in a straight line. This happens when the swing path is square to target line, and the clubface is square to both target line and swing path.
- Push – The ball starts right of target and continues in straight line. This happens because the swing path is open to target line, and the clubface is right of target line and square to swing path.
- Fade – The ball starts left of target and curves right towards the target. This happens when the swing path is closed to target line, and the clubface is left of target line and open to swing path.
- Slice – The ball starts on target or slightly left and curves right away from target. This happens when the swing path is closed to target line, and the clubface is square of target line and open to swing path.
- Push Slice – The ball starts right of target and continues to curve right of target. This happens because the swing path is square to target line, and the clubface is right of target line and open to swing path.
All this is easier to understand if you also know what things like open and close and in to out and out to in mean.
- Open – The clubface is facing away from you, to the right of the target line when looking down the line.
- Closed – The clubface is facing you, to the left of the target line when looking down the line.
- Out to in – A swing path that starts furthest from you (on the right side of the target line) and comes through to the left side. Coming over the top in the downswing often results in an out to in swing path.
- In to out – A swing path that starts closest to you (on the left side of the target line) and comes through to the right side.
You want to get a handle on all this too. Since these are the two variables that impact ball flight in golf the most, knowing what they mean will not only allow you to diagnose your issues, but also have an idea as to how to fix them.
Conclusion
This is all you need to know about golf ball flight laws. It might be a little confusing at first, but once you spend a little time studying what the different flights are and what impacts ball flight, it’ll start to become second nature.
A good way to engrain this is to watch every shot you hit on the range and think about how you had to present the club at impact to make that happen.
Do this on the course, too. Instead of getting angry at a bad shot, think about how you hit the ball and what you might do to change your ball flight on your next shot. This will make you feel like you have more control over your shots (because you will have more) and are relying less on luck to hit good shots.
Whatever you do, don’t sleep on this information. Ball flight laws is one of the most important things you’ll learn in golf.