. Stopping the Pulled Shots By Jeff Parks GolfTEC Director of Training & Technology, PGA Member, MTT Contributing Writer What is worse than sitting in the middle of the fairway and slicing your 7-iron 20 yards right of the green? Just the opposite of course! Instead of going right, you pull the ball 20 yards left of the green. Are you frequently suffering from this problem? Then let me explain what could be happening. There are several factors that can cause a pull. Obviously the club is striking the ball with a closed face and "pulling" to the left. The club doesn't do this all by itself... remember the saying, "It's not the arrow, it's the Indian?" One problem could be alignment, which you can correct by simply putting clubs on the ground to remind yourself where you are aiming. Another reason could be that your hands are just too quick through the impact area causing the clubface to close to quickly. Both of those problems can be fixed pretty easily but what I'm about to explain may take a bit of work on your part. GolfTEC's 3-D motion-analysis system measures the body movements during the golf swing and gives us information about the swing that cannot be seen with the naked eye. When a golfer complains to me about pulling the ball and they have proper alignment and the hands aren't rotating too quickly, I immediately look at the amount of shoulder tilt at the impact position. In testing over 100 tour players we've found that, on average, the shoulders are tilted 43 degrees down to the right at impact. Most golfers that have their shoulders too level at impact tend to pull their shots. When a players shoulders have turned through the shot not tilted enough, the upper body moves in front of the ball at impact and pulls the club shut and to the left. Voila! A pulled shot! When the shoulders turn too level through impact, the club typically enters the hitting area from outside of the target line and pulls left to the inside of the target line very quickly. This path causes either a pull or a slice (if the clubface is open). That is why golfers with this problem can alternate between slices (where the ball starts to the left and curves right) and pulls or pull hooks. In Illustration on the right, you can clearly see that my shoulders are more tilted to the right and the club has extended down the target line a lot longer thus producing straighter shots. To work on this motion, as your hips start turning on the downswing, try to feel that your right elbow drops down towards your right pocket. This will drop the club inside and the right shoulder will tilt more to the right as you swing through the impact area. The club will come from the inside and extend down the target line a lot longer. This is not a swing change that will happen overnight. It will definitely take some deliberate practice but you will start to see more straight shots come off of your club. If you have any questions, please call me any GolfTEC location. Denver Tech Center (303) 770-5951 or Westminster (303) 426-6600.