A pull with the driver can be incredibly frustrating.

What I have always hated about a pulled shot is that, at first, it feels really solid. But then, when you see the ball heading down the left, you know you are in trouble.

With all the hype that slicing a driver gets, you may be surprised that pulling a driver is almost as common of a miss. I have a few ways in which you can help straighten out your driver and stop hitting a pull.

You may need a combination of more than one fix to get the driver straightened out.

1. Your Lower Body Stops Rotating

One of the top reasons that golfers pull the ball is that their lower body stops rotating as they come through the golf ball. In order to create power in the golf swing, you must rotate your body back. However, that rotation must also continue back through the golf ball.

If at any point during the swing, your lower body stops rotating, you will likely notice the golf ball is pulled. Pulling a shot with the driver very often deals with overactivity in the arms.

How to Fix It

There are plenty of drills to work on, continuing to rotate your lower body through the impact zone. However, I find that the majority of players that struggle with this mistake tend to be standing too close to the ball.

As you are setting up to hit your driver, make sure that you are not crowding yourself. When you do this, it’s hard to get the club to pass through impact and continue your rotation.

Another important thing to focus on is transferring your weight; as you move towards the finish position, all of your weight should be on the left foot; this ensures your rotation is considerably better.

2. You’re Coming Over The Top

If you swing over the top and your clubface is slightly closed, the chance of hitting a pull is quite high. An over-the-top swing is one where the golf club is not on a proper plane as it approaches the ball.

Most of the time, the club is above the plane and swinging across the body. This over-the-top motion will, at times, cause a slice.

How to Fix It

An over the top golf swing is common. If the individual parts of your golf swing are not working all that well together, expect to come over the top.

The one thing that I have always found to help players that come over the top is to try to create a slight pause at the top of the golf swing. When you create this pause, it can help you feel the space necessary to drop the club down on the proper plane.

In addition, if you start your backswing with a turn, you should have an easier time keeping the hands and the body working together.

3. Your Hands Are Too Active In The Swing

The hands play a really important role in the golf swing, but many amateur golfers get their hands overly involved in their swing. If you are working on trying to hit the ball straight, it’s best to have less activity in the hands and more arms and body working together.

You can sometimes use your hands to square up a face and hit a straight shot, but it’s certainly not consistent.

How to Fix It

One of the best ways I have found to keep the hands out of the swing is to stay more connected. Take a headcover and put it under each of your arms, near the armpit. Now take some swings without letting this headcover fall out.

You don’t need to take actual shots, instead, use it as a drill and then step up to hit a shot. You should notice that the body stays more connected and the chance of your hands taking over and pulling the ball are a bit lower.

4. You’re Holding Weight Back

The fact that you transferred weight back to your right side (for a right handed player) is a great thing. However, to play great golf with lots of power, the weight also needs to transfer back to the left side as you move through impact.

Golfers that hold weight back on the right side will send the club flying through impact, and it most often has a closed clubface.

How to Fix It

The key to learning how to fix holding your weight back is to learn how to effectively transfer weight in the golf swing. This will take a lot of work without hitting shots and trying to create muscle memory of what it feels like to swing the club back while simultaneously getting that weight to transfer.

Once your weight is loaded up the way it should be, you can go after the ball and explode with power.

This video teaches some of the basics of a great weight transfer and how it can improve your golf game.

5. Your Clubface is Closed

Another one of the more common reasons for pulling a golf shot is the fact that the clubface is closed. To give yourself the best shot at a long driver, you need a square clubface and a proper club path as well.

Sometimes at setup, a golfer will close the clubface to help prevent a slice. The problem, of course, is when the clubface is closed to the target line, it can also create a pulled shot.

While you are checking on the angle of your clubhead, make sure that you are also looking at the ball’s position. The ball position for a driver should be off the inside of your left heel. If you are playing it further back than that, it could result in a pull.

How to Fix It

This is one of the simple fixes in the game of golf. Learn what a square clubface looks like by using a straight edge of some sort. Setup with the club on the straight edge to see what a 90-degree clubface looks like.

On the takeaway, make sure you don’t adjust the shot and start closing the clubface down. A slice is a bad miss, but if you overcorrect too much, you end up with a pull.

6. You Have Poor Alignment

Amateur golfers sometimes take a stance that will set them up to the left of their target line. The pulled shot is not always caused by mistake in the golf swing and is instead caused right at setup.

If you are working on your golf game at the driving range, use alignment sticks to work on your tee shot alignment.

How to Fix It

Always pick a line for your clubhead, and then make sure that your feet, shoulders, and hips are square to this line. If your legs are open and your clubface is square, you could be setting yourself up to hit a slice.

If those feet are closed, and your clubface is square, there is a good chance you are going to pull your tee shot.

Take the time you need in your setup. It’s one of the most important areas of the golf swing. The setup is a way to ensure you get to the perfect impact position. I like to incorporate my aiming routine into my pre-shot routine so that it is done the same way every time.

7. Your Grip Is Too Strong

Our only connection with the golf club is the grip. Golfers with strong grip have their left hand turned more to the right than they should. This extra turn of the hand allows the right hand to fit more under the club.

With one hand rotated more on the bottom of the club, it takes a more active role and makes it easier for a golfer to release the clubhead at impact.

For players that slice the ball, this has always been a great quick fix. However, most amateur players tend to overcorrect. If you overcorrect and your grip starts to get too strong, it will create a pulled shot. Many times these pulls turn into hooks.

How to Fix It

Finding the perfect grip on your golf club is an art. There are grip trainers out there that make it easy to see exactly where your hands should be on the club. However, it’s best to invest time in this process and learn how to grip the club in a neutral position.

Start by ensuring your left thumb is not wrapped too far to the right of the center of the grip. Instead, keep the left thumb a bit more straight down the shaft.

When your left hand is in this potion, the right hand should fit more on top of the club than under it. This positioning takes the right hand out of it a little and allows you to get your golf shot on the proper path.

I would work on keeping this same grip in place for all clubs, aside from the driver.

Brittany Olizarowicz

Britt O has been playing golf since the age of 7. Almost 30 years later, she still loves the game, has played competitively on every level, and spent a good portion of her life as a Class A PGA Professional. Britt currently resides in Savannah, GA, with her husband and two young children.

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Pulling the golf ball has always been one of my least favorite misses. The problem with the pull shot is that it feels so good. As soon as you pull the ball, it feels like it’s going to go a long way.

Most pulls are solid strikes.

I know a lot about pulling golf shots and this ball flight because it’s a common miss for me. The good news is that there are some easy fixes to help you eliminate the pull shot and get your ball flight straightened out.

Here are some reasons you are pulling your irons right to left and the best ways to go about fixing it.

What Happens When Pulling Your Irons

Pulling your irons is when the ball starts out immediately left across a right-handed golfer’s body.

A draw golf shot starts out to the right or straight and then makes a turn left.

However, with a pull, this is not a shot that turns; it simply goes straight left from the tee.

The club face of the golf iron is often square when this happens and that is why the shot stays straight as opposed to having much of a turn.

A pulled shot typically goes a long way, as the clubface is often square or even slightly shut. However, it can still hurt your score as it will likely be off the green or rough.

5 Reasons Why You Might Be Pulling Your Irons

Doesn’t it always seem that in golf, there is never a simple, quick fix to the issue? The first part is always to determine what it is that is causing the problems in your game, and then it’s a matter of fixing it.

I’m going to give you 5 of the top reasons you are likely pulling the ball and then some tips on determining which one is the problem and how you can fix it.

1. Ball Position Too Far Forward

One of the simplest and most common reasons for golfers to pull the ball is that their ball position is too far forward. When the ball is up closer to the front of your stance, it’s very easy to pull the ball.

What happens here is by the time you make contact with the ball, your body has already started to rotate towards your finish, and your clubface may even be slightly closed.

The ball position for many amateur players is a major issue because of confidence. In golf, there is a lot of inconsistency in the setup and stance.

In fact, if you watch professional golfers, they take quite a bit of time to ensure that their setup is perfect. At the address position, golfers must feel like the body and clubface can return to square for an ideal impact.

One way to know if ball position is the issue is if you are pulling your irons and not your driver or your hybrids but not your wedges. Essentially, is your setup correct for some clubs but not others?

Use golf alignment sticks and even a mirror to practice your setup and ensure that the ball position is where it should be for each club.

2. Club Face Slightly Shut

Sometimes amateur golfers intentionally shut the clubface of their iron or even driver to help avoid a slice. Although this issue doesn’t typically fix a slice, it can undoubtedly decrease one if you have a hard time releasing and rotating the club head.

However, there are also times when a golfer who slices it suddenly stops slicing. When this happens, the clubface is still shut, but the slice spin is no longer on the ball.

Hitting the golf shot with a slightly shut clubface like this can cause a pull.

I’ve seen many players that have no idea how to lay a clubhead flat. So many will close it, thinking that it is square.

One of the best ways to test if your clubface is square is to simply hold it up to a 90 degree angle. You can even set up with the club in a door jam and look at how it looks. You want the base or sole of the club to be directly up against the straight edge.

For those closing the face of the club, the toe will be touching the straight edge. For those that hold the clubface open, the heel will be touching the straight edge.

3. Body Stops Rotating

Timing in a golf swing is so important. If the hands and the body are not working together, the results of the golf shots are not going to be ideal. Essentially players must ensure that they are rotating their lower body both back and through each shot.

If the body stops rotating and the arms continue to swing, the ball is going left.

So many players worry about the fact that they are stopping their body rotation, but sometimes this is a cause of never really starting.

When you take the club back, make sure that you are turning your lower body to rotate, and then just keep that motion going as your arms swing back.

If one goes without the other, the dispersion rates in your game will be a bit out of control.

One way golfers can work on this is by hitting chip-type shots. The chip shot is a mini representation of the full swing. Getting your lower body to turn back in a chip will force it to turn through, resulting in a much straighter shot.

4. Club Path Over The Top

Have you ever been told that you bring the club over the top on the downswing? This is a very common club path for the amateur golfer, and it can create an impact position with a slightly closed clubface and golf shots such as hooks, pulls, and sometimes even a slice.

If your club path is over the top, there are likely two reasons for it.

The first is that you may have taken the club outside on the takeaway and never gotten it on the proper path. The second reason is that when you tried to make the transition from the backswing to the downswing, you never got the club dropped into the correct position.

That transition from the backswing to the downswing is tricky for many amateur players. When you get to the top of the swing, if the downswing starts with hands and arms, chances are the club will be coming over the top of the path.

Instead, at the top of the swing, there needs to be a start of a rotation that uses the legs to pull the arms into place. This is one of the more difficult shot fixes, and it can take time to get the swing plane and swing path correct.

Use an alignment stick, make sure your takeaway is perfect, and then feel as though the club drops into place at the top of your swing.

5. Improper Weight Transfer

Last but certainly not least is an issue with weight transfer that can cause you to pull your shots. If your weight hangs back a bit at impact and the arms continue to rotate and swing through the shot, it often shuts down the clubface and causes a pull.

As you set up to hit a golf shot, the weight should be somewhat balanced. Then as you make a turn back, it goes to the right foot (right-handed golfer), and then, through impact, it is already transferring to the left.

Golfers that learn to make impact with most weight transferred to the left side will see more power and straight shots with a square clubface.

You will know improper weight transfer is the culprit of your bad shots because of the finish position you are in. If you are leaning back, work on weight transfer.

How to Identify and Fix This Problem

Sometimes a pull shot is a quick fix; other times, you may be working on this issue for a while.

One of the best ways to identify what the issue is in your golf swing is to take a video. So many golfers have a great phone that they can use to have a friend take a video down the line and head on.

Go through these videos in slow motion and see if any of the five reasons why you are pulling your irons right to left seems like they may be happening.

In addition, you can meet with a golf professional who will quickly identify what the issue is and give you a plan to fix it.

Luckily, the pulled golf shot is still a good strike.

Therefore it becomes most important to make these minor tweaks and get the ball flight straightened out. You won’t need to reinvent the wheel here; simply changing the setup, working on better body rotation, or getting the swing plane straightened out will do the trick.

Brittany Olizarowicz

Britt O has been playing golf since the age of 7. Almost 30 years later, she still loves the game, has played competitively on every level, and spent a good portion of her life as a Class A PGA Professional. Britt currently resides in Savannah, GA, with her husband and two young children.

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