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Symptom

The ball curves the opposite way to the shape I played

You aim off to allow for your usual fade or draw, the ball curves the other way instead, and it finishes about twice as far offline as a straight miss would.

A ball curves because the face and the path through impact disagree. The flight alone cannot tell you which of the two is out of place, because a face problem and a path problem can produce the same shape, and that is exactly what the questions separate.

Common ways golfers describe this

  • The dreaded double cross
  • Fear of the double cross off the tee
  • Aimed left for my fade and it went left
  • Aimed down the left and pulled it further left
  • Why did my fade hook?
Club path square to the target, face square to itThe club's path through impact seen from above, drawn for a right-handed golfer, with the feet at the left and the target at the top of the page. A dashed line runs up the page through the ball: the target line. The club's arc meets the target line at the ball travelling straight down it, so its direction at the ball matches the target. A short solid line at the ball is the clubface. It points along that path, so there is no gap between them and nothing to bend the ball. The figure moves. The clubhead travels the arc at an even speed and draws the path in behind it, carrying the face with it, and the face holds the same aim the whole way rather than turning with the arc. The two readings meet at the ball, which is the only moment either of them decides anything.
  • Target line
  • Club path
  • Clubface
The two things a shot's shape comes out of, seen from above: where the club is travelling at the ball, and where the face is pointing. They are drawn matched here, which is the only state that curves nothing.

Narrow it to one cause

Each question is here because golfers answer it differently, and that difference is what rules a cause out. Nothing is generated while you answer: every question, cause and fix was written and checked in advance.

Start the questions

A few questions · no account needed

What you will be asked

  1. Which way round does it happen to you?
  2. How far off the target do you aim to allow for your shape?
  3. When does the wrong curve turn up?
  4. Ignore the curve for a moment. If that ball had flown dead straight from where it started, where would it have finished?
  5. On the swings that go the wrong way, are you holding the club tighter?

Where this can come from

These are the causes this symptom resolves to, in the order they turn up most often. That order is not a diagnosis and it is not your answer: two of them can produce a shot that looks identical from behind. Each has a fix you can read now, whether or not you answer anything.

  1. Face closed at impact

    The face points left of where the club is travelling. The ball starts left of the path and keeps turning left, and because a closed face also removes loft, the flight is usually lower and more diving than the golfer expected. The same closed face that produces a playable draw produces a hook once it outruns the path by enough.

    Read the fix

  2. Face open at impact

    The clubface is pointing right of where the club is travelling when it meets the ball. Start direction is governed almost entirely by where the face points at impact, and the curve comes from how far the face sits open to the path. An open face is why the ball starts right, curves right, and loses height-adjusted distance: loft is effectively added as the face rotates open.

    Read the fix

  3. Body aimed left of target

    Feet, hips or shoulders point left of the ball-to-target line. It usually starts when the shoulders swivel open to follow the eyes toward the target, or when a golfer aims left on purpose to allow for a slice. The path tends to follow the body, so aiming further left to allow for a slice reliably makes the slice worse.

    Read the fix

  4. Body aimed right of target

    Feet, hips or shoulders point right of the ball-to-target line. Right-handed golfers do this far more often than they believe: a square stance runs parallel to the target line, so the feet point at a spot left of the flag, which looks wrong from address. Turning until the feet point at the flag aims the body right. Shots either go right with it or require a compensating move across the ball.

    Read the fix

  5. Grip pressure too tight

    Holding the club hard enough to tense the hands and forearms makes the delivered face angle less repeatable and shortens the motion. It is the most common physical expression of pressure, which is why the same golfer strikes it well on the range and loses the face on the first tee.

    Read the fix

  6. Face angle varies shot to shot

    The face arrives open on some swings and closed on others, so shots scatter to both sides while the path stays roughly the same. This is variance rather than bias, which is why aiming further right or left never helps: there is no single miss to aim away from. It is the fault behind most two-way misses.

    Read the fix

Related symptoms

These are not here because they sound similar. Each one can come from a cause on the list above, which is why fixing one sometimes quietly fixes another. The closest matches are first.

What this rests on

If something here contradicts what a launch monitor tells you, say so. Corrections change the page.

Discussion

Golfers who have had this shot, on what it turned out to be and what sorted it. Read it as experience rather than diagnosis: the questions above are what narrow it to a cause.

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