How to Stop Hooking the Golf Ball

A hook starts straight or slightly right, then dives hard left, and it's one of the few misses that gets worse the better you strike it. The fix starts with getting the diagnosis right, because a hook, a pull, and a pull-hook come from different problems and don't share a cure.

Hook, draw, pull, or pull-hook: get the diagnosis right

These four misses get lumped together because they all send the ball left of the target, but only two of them involve the clubface closing relative to the path.

A draw is a controlled right-to-left curve from a face-to-path differential of -1 to -3 degrees. A hook is the same shape pushed further, to -4 degrees or worse, and it keeps curving well past the point where a draw would have settled down. Here's the full band, pulled from the site's draw breakdown:

A pull is a different problem entirely. Face and path are both pointed left, at roughly the same angle, so the face-to-path differential sits near 0 degrees. The ball starts left and stays left in a fairly straight line, because there's no curvature to bring it back. That makes a pull an alignment issue, not a swing-shape fault, and it's not formally covered elsewhere on this site, so here's the plain version: your body and clubface are both aimed left of where you think they are.

A pull-hook combines both problems. It starts left the way a pull does, then keeps curving left the way a hook does, because the face is closed relative to the path on top of the alignment being off. It's the miss most golfers describe as "the bad one," and fixing only the alignment or only the face-to-path half leaves the other one waiting to show up again.

If you want the fuller explanation of how face angle and path combine to produce curvature, the site's ball flight laws breakdown covers it in more depth than this piece needs to.

What's actually causing the hook

Work through these in order. A hook is rarely one isolated fault, but these six show up most often, roughly in the order they tend to matter.

A strong grip. Golf Digest's Mark Blackburn, ranked the outlet's No. 1 teacher in America, points to grip first: once you're past two and a half knuckles visible on the lead hand, the face tends to close through impact before you can do anything about it with your hands. Blackburn's own threshold runs a little lower than this site's standard guideline, which puts the line at four: the slice-fix guide calls two to three knuckles neutral, and "Four is too strong and risks a hook." Either way, more visible knuckles means a stronger grip and more hook risk.

A closed face at the top of the backswing. A strong grip doesn't just affect impact. Blackburn notes that strong-grip players often have the clubface pointing toward the sky at the top of the backswing, which is already most of the way to closed before the downswing starts.

A swing path that's too far in-to-out. Blackburn and PGA.com's Vinnie Manginelli both come back to the same mechanism here: when the path swings too far from the inside, the face ends up closed relative to that path at impact, even if the face itself isn't doing anything unusual. This is the direct cause of the hook's curve, whatever put the path there in the first place.

Ball position too far back in the stance. This is usually what puts the path too far inside. Blackburn ties a too-far-back ball position directly to an in-to-out path, and Manginelli's hook-fix guide leads with ball position as well, recommending a custom fitting to find the right spot. Instructors don't fully agree on the direction of the error, though. Manginelli's own material notes that a ball played too far forward can cause problems too, just through a different mechanism, so "move it back" isn't automatically the fix for everyone. For what it's worth, I'd weight the too-far-back explanation more heavily here, since both Blackburn and Manginelli circle back to it independently even while disagreeing on the forward case, and two separate instructors converging on the same fault is a stronger signal than either one alone.

An early, flippy release. GOLFTEC's Josh Troyer describes over-hooking as a result of too much lead-arm supination through impact, where the clubhead exits left and the hands finish high with the face pointed down. HackMotion's wrist-sensor data backs up the same pattern from a different angle: casting, or releasing the club early, drops lag and shaft lean before impact, and if the forearms rotate through that early release instead of after it, the face has already closed by the time it reaches the ball.

Alignment. A body aimed right of the target line often forces a compensating in-to-out path to get the ball started toward the target at all, which closes the face relative to that path the same way a bad ball position does. This site already covers alignment in full elsewhere, so rather than re-teach it here, check your setup against the guide to aiming and aligning correctly if your misses start left from address rather than curving left after a straight start.

Fixes: start with the drills that need no equipment

Work through these in order. The first three need nothing but a mirror, a towel, and your own hands, which matters if you're trying to fix this before your next round rather than your next trip to a golf shop.

1. Check your grip in a mirror. Take your grip, look down at your lead hand, and count knuckles. Two to three is neutral. If you count four, weaken the grip slightly by rotating your lead hand a few degrees counterclockwise until you're back to two or three, then re-grip from there rather than just rolling your wrist at address.
2. Run the towel-under-the-armpits drill. Tuck a small towel under both armpits and hit half-speed shots without letting it drop. This keeps your arms connected to your body turn through impact, which makes it much harder for an independent, early hand release to take over and close the face on its own.
3. Hit balls with a split-hand grip. Slide your trail hand a few inches (about 5 to 10cm) down the grip, away from your lead hand, and hit easy shots. The gap makes an early, flippy release obvious immediately, since a split grip makes it almost impossible to roll the face shut without feeling it happen in your hands.
4. Build an alignment-stick ladder. Lay two or three alignment sticks on the ground, parallel to each other and to your target line, spaced a few inches (about 5 to 10cm) apart, and set up with the sticks framing your stance. The SKLZ Pro Alignment Rods are a straightforward option for this, with a nine-ring system on each rod that gives you a visual check on both alignment and ball position in the same setup. If your stance keeps drifting closed or your ball position keeps creeping back without you noticing, this drill catches it before you hit a shot.
5. Groove your impact position with an impact bag. Set up to an impact bag and make slow-motion swings into it, stopping right at the moment of contact. A bag like the GoSports Impact Bag gives you resistance that an early release can't push through, which forces your hands to lead the clubhead into the bag instead of letting the clubhead pass them early. That's the exact pattern Troyer and HackMotion both describe as the mechanism behind an over-hooked shot.
6. Count your tempo out loud. Say "one" on the way back and "two" through impact, at a steady pace, on every practice swing and then every real shot. A rushed transition is one of the more common triggers for an early release, and a simple count slows the transition down without asking you to think about any specific body part.
7. For a pull-hook specifically, try the tuck-and-turn. Pick an intermediate target a foot or two (0.3 to 0.6m) in front of the ball, on your real target line, and tuck your lead elbow lightly against your side as you start the backswing. Turn through to that intermediate spot rather than swinging at the ball directly. This addresses the alignment half of a pull-hook that the release-focused drills above don't touch on their own.

If you have a launch monitor: what the numbers look like

Everything above works without a device. If you do have access to a launch monitor, face-to-path is the number to watch, and TrackMan's own published data shows how much curvature even a small differential produces.

Those two examples aren't hook-specific numbers, but they show how much a small face-to-path gap compounds over a full drive. If you're seeing a differential past -4 degrees on your own sessions, the causes above are the place to start, in roughly the order they're listed.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between a hook and a draw?

What's a pull-hook, exactly?

Is ball position really the main cause of a hook?

Will a stronger grip always cause a hook?

What's the fastest fix for a hook in the middle of a round?

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