High To Low Hook Drill

To straighten out your hook, GM Top 25 Coach Ged Walters suggests checking your grip and working hard to stop your hands over-rotating through impact

high to low hook drill

Golf Monthly Top 25 Coach Ged Walters explains his high to low hook drill to help you straighten out your ball flight and hit more fairways

High to low hook drill checklist * Make sure only two knuckles are showing in your upper hand * Turn the right side of your chest to the target through impact * Feel like the club moves from high to low on the downswing

Watch: back to basics on the hook with GM Top 25 Coach Clive Tucker...

 1) Where most hooks come from The hook really hurts a lot of golfers whether from fairway or tee, and it often comes from an obsession with wanting to hit a draw – golf’s Holy Grail that we all dream of. But in our desire to hit the draw, we often go a bit too far and get the club travelling too much out towards the right-hand side, but with the clubface looking too much the other way.

It’s easy then to over-rotate the face through impact, and by the time you look up it’s veering away sharply left and you need to reload.

Watch: more hook causes and cures from GM Top 25 Coach Andrew Reynolds...

2) Check your torso It can be difficult to avoid the path being too much to the inside if your torso is tilted away from the target, so try to feel the right side of your chest turning towards the target through impact, so the positions of the centre of your shoulders and the centre of your hips don’t get too far apart.

3) High to low hook drill Ideally, you need to learn how to neutralise things such that you can still hit a draw, but with a swing that feels like it’s going to generate a massive slice or fade. You’ve got to take it to extremes the other way to then be able to control the shot and hit that little baby draw off the 1st rather than hitting it OOB left.

I know it sounds strange, but bear with me on this and dedicate some practice to this new move. The feeling you really need to get from the top of the backswing is the clubhead forward of the hands, and moving from high, down across the body a bit, to low with the face holding its position pointing at the target.

This is the position you should be aiming for through impact

You need to get the feeling that you’ve blocked it with the back of your lead hand before going through to your finish.

Watch: GM Top 25 Coach explains how to hit a draw shot in golf...

4) The grip holds the key The reason I want you to do this is that a lot of hookers have a super-strong grip, with the right-hand tucked underneath the club because they want to get the face to rotate.

Make sure no more than two knuckles are showing on your upper hand

I want you to actually weaken that hand off – I want to see two knuckles in the upper hand, so the back of the lead hand mirrors the clubface much more. The feeling that the back of the hand is then blocking towards the target at impact means the hands can’t then over-release.

If you can get the feeling of clubhead forward of the hands from the high to low hook drill, then you definitely won’t hit the golf ball left!

Jeremy Ellwood
Contributing Editor

Jeremy Ellwood has worked in the golf industry since 1993 and for Golf Monthly since 2002 when he started out as equipment editor. He is now a freelance journalist writing mainly for Golf Monthly. He is an expert on the Rules of Golf having qualified through an R&A course to become a golf referee. He is a senior panelist for Golf Monthly's Top 100 UK & Ireland Course Rankings and has played all of the Top 100 plus 91 of the Next 100, making him well-qualified when it comes to assessing and comparing our premier golf courses. He has now played 1,000 golf courses worldwide in 35 countries, from the humblest of nine-holers in the Scottish Highlands to the very grandest of international golf resorts. He reached the 1,000 mark on his 60th birthday in October 2023 on Vale do Lobo's Ocean course. Put him on a links course anywhere and he will be blissfully content.

Jezz can be contacted via Twitter - @JezzEllwoodGolf


Jeremy is currently playing...

Driver: Ping G425 LST 10.5˚ (draw setting), Mitsubishi Tensei AV Orange 55 S shaft

3 wood: Ping G425 Max 15˚ (set to flat +1), Mitsubishi Tensei AV Orange 65 S shaft

Hybrid: Ping G425 17˚, Mitsubishi Tensei CK Pro Orange 80 S shaft

Irons 3-PW: Ping i525, True Temper Dynamic Gold 105 R300 shafts

Wedges: Ping Glide 4.0 50˚ and 54˚, 12˚ bounce, True Temper Dynamic Gold 105 R300 shafts

Putter: Ping Fetch 2021 model, 33in shaft (set flat 2)

Ball: Varies but mostly now TaylorMade Tour Response