Fixing a Fade

Question
Jason:

My question is I am having trouble getting off the tee with my driver as of late.  I have a natural fade with my driver and I have a pretty low ball flight.  I use an interlocking grip and I don't see to be able to get the club faced closed.  I tried to bring my right over to close the club face but it seems so uncomfortable.  

Right now I am hitting a Taylor Made Burner 10.5 driver.  I am think of switching to a 9 degree driver.  I have a hit a friends 9 degree a few times and I seem to hit the ball straight and long.  What do you suggest?

Thanks for your time.

Adam

Answer
Hello Adam and sorry for the delay

First thing is that not all club lofts are created equal.  There are many factors with club head design that can change the launch angle of a club besides what it says on the bottom.  If you are hitting the ball low than you could be hitting the ball lower on the face.  The bad thing about driver designs are that they put roll on the club which is the curve from top to bottom on the club face and this essentially makes your driver of 10.5 an 8-13 degree driver.  Take that and add to it the fact that clubs are so big that it is hard to square the clubface at impact.  The club companies don't tell you that along with the larger face that makes off-center hits a little better also comes the negative side of that story and that is that the bigger you make a club the harder it is to square the clubface at impact.  So now you have a swing that works for everything else and when you get to the driver that same exact swing will cause you to hit a fade.  Now some manufacturers have built in things like offset and closed face angles to help square the club at impact.  If you want a different driver try an old titleist 983 driver, it is about 350 to 365 cc's depending on the model and they are as large as i would recommend anyone go.  technology has changed so fast that they are now able to make 3 woods that reach the usga max COR of .830 that means that there is essentially no benefit to using a 460cc club over a 350cc club with the same COR.  some argue that it is more forgiving on off-center hits which is true but we are talking 2-3 yards here and what good is that if the larger face actually helps hit it off-center.  If you want proof look at the PGA Tour. Only a few golfers are better than 70% off the tee and Tiger can't control his.  What people don't mention is that early on Tiger was using a smaller driver and when everyone changed he stayed small and beat them all.  When Tiger eventually changed his driver went way down hill.   

My guess is that you hit your friends driver better because you are hitting it higher on the face.  I wouldn't go buy a new driver because you hit his better though if you start doing that you will forever be looking for new driver.  There is something strange that goes on when you hit new clubs.  That is that when you first hit them you always hit them well for a short time and then after that they become like your old one.  

Another thing that is not told to the public is that most of the PGA has switched to higher lofted drivers.  10.5 seems to be the most popular on tour.  Now if the Tour players which swing in excess of 110 mph and many over 120 mph and 10.5 is the best for them then would an amatuer think anything less would be better.

You can go to a professional clubfitter and they can help tremendously with fitting a Driver with the right shaft and such.  Tom wishon has a website that lists professional clubfitters and i would recommend checking them out.  The website is his name .com i believe

outside of equipment the next solution would be the swing.  I cant answer this without seeing your swing but a Driver must be taken back low to create the maximum arc and give room to swing it. There really is just too many problems but the first thing you should look at is grip and grip pressure.  Grip pressure is the most important part of the golf swing.  The lighter the pressure the better.  This is why the grip is important, the better the grip the lighter you can hold the club.  it has to feel like your not even using your hands in the golf swing.  you can only use them in the impact zone, if you use them or put pressure before that then every swing problem known to man can and will occur at some point.  If you have avg or longer fingers and you think that your grip may not be good enough then try the vardon grip or Ben Hogans grip that is perfectly illustrated in his book 5 lessons.  I used an interlocking grip most of my life and found that it feels great put it has a weakness at the top of the swing the joint it makes allows you to use the hands independently so i switched and i noticed the difference, although i use the interlocking grip for flop shots because that is what i want.  I will caution you that if you are a good player and the grip is working then don't change it.  Some of the best players in the world use that grip.  

good luck and thanks for the question.  Jason