How to Fix a Hook

Most beginner golf instruction is about slicing, because most beginners slice. But a significant number of golfers arrive at the opposite problem, and they tend to arrive there in one of two ways: they were always strong and handsy, or they successfully fixed a slice and kept going.

The second route is by far the more common, and it is worth naming, because a hook is genuinely a sign of progress. It means you are releasing the club and rotating the face — the thing every slicer is trying to learn. You have just learned it slightly too well.

Everything below assumes a right-handed golfer. Left-handers, reverse left and right throughout — and note that a left-hander’s hook curves right.

First: is it actually a hook?

Three different shots go left and they have three different causes. Diagnosing the wrong one is how golfers spend a season making a problem worse.

A pull starts left and flies straight. The clubface and the swing path agree with each other; they are just both aimed left. This is a path and alignment problem.

A hook starts straight or slightly right and then curves left in the air, often sharply, and usually runs a long way after landing. The face is closed relative to the path.

A pull-hook starts left and curves further left. This is the one that ends up in another county, and it is the combination of both faults.

The distinction takes one round to establish. Watch where the ball starts, not where it finishes. Start direction is mostly the clubface; the curve afterwards is the relationship between face and path.

What actually causes the curve

Sidespin, and sidespin comes from one thing: the clubface pointing somewhere different from where the club is traveling at impact.

For a hook, the face is closed relative to the path — typically the club is moving out to the right and the face is pointing left of that. The ball starts along something close to the face direction and then curves away from the path.

This is worth internalizing because it explains why aiming further right does not help. If you aim right and your face stays closed relative to your path, you have simply moved the whole shot right and it still hooks. The relationship is what matters, not the direction.

Check one: your grip

This is the cause in most cases and it takes ten seconds to check.

Take your normal grip and look down at your lead hand. Count the knuckles you can see. Two or three is neutral. Four or more is a strong grip, and a strong grip rotates the face closed through impact almost automatically.

The fix is to rotate bothhands slightly toward the target — the lead hand counter-clockwise, the trail hand with it — until you see two or three knuckles. Rotating only one hand creates a mismatched grip that fights itself.

This will feel awful for about fifty balls. It will also, for a lot of golfers, be the entire fix. Our grip guide has the full placement method.

Check two: your hands and the release

If the grip is neutral and the ball still hooks, the next suspect is an over-active release — the wrists rolling over aggressively through impact rather than the body rotating.

The underlying cause is usually that the body stops turning. When the torso stalls, the arms and hands have to keep going, and hands traveling faster than the body will flip the face closed. The shot feels powerful and goes left.

The fix is not to hold the face open, which produces a different and worse problem. It is to keep turning. Feel your chest continuing to rotate toward the target through impact and all the way to a full finish with your belt buckle facing the target. A body that keeps turning does not need the hands to save it.

Check three: your swing path

A hook usually involves a path that is traveling out to the right — what golfers call an in-to-out path, the opposite of a slicer’s.

This frequently comes from over-correcting a slice. Slicers are told to swing from the inside, and if you take that advice enthusiastically enough you end up with a path so far from the inside that even a slightly closing face produces a hook.

A simple check: set an alignment stick or a spare club on the ground along your target line and take some slow swings watching where the clubhead travels after impact. If it is exiting well right of the line, that is your path.

The correction is subtle — you are trying to neutralize, not reverse. Feel the club exiting more toward the target after impact rather than out to the right, and let your body turn take it there.

The equipment angle

Two pieces of equipment make a hook worse, and both are extremely common in beginner bags because both are designed to fight a slice.

Offset clubs.An offset head sits the face slightly behind the hosel, giving your hands more time to rotate it closed. That is a genuine help to a slicer and a genuine hindrance to you. A great many beginner drivers and game-improvement irons are offset — our drivers roundup flags which, and includes neutral alternatives.

Shafts that are too soft. A shaft softer than your swing needs loads too much and does not recover in time, arriving with the head lagging and the face closed. If you are strong and fast and playing a regular flex because it was what came in the box, that is worth looking at. Our flex guide explains how to work out where you sit.

There is also a third, less obvious one: grip size. A grip that is too thin lets the hands become over-active, which closes the face. Moving up to a midsize grip is a genuinely effective, very cheap anti-hook measure. Our grips page has the fingertip sizing test.

The drill

The gate drill, and it gives you feedback you cannot argue with.

Place two tees in the ground just wider than your clubhead, forming a gate for the club to pass through at the ball, angled along your target line. Hit shots through the gate without clipping either tee.

A hooker’s path will clip the outer tee on the way in. Working out how to pass cleanly through forces a more neutral path, and because the feedback is immediate and physical, most golfers self-correct within a bucket. Our range guide covers how to structure a session around one drill.

On the course, before the fix takes

Fixing a hook takes weeks. Playing golf while you fix it takes one decision: aim right and play the curve.

A hook is a repeatable shot shape, and a repeatable shape is a playable shape. Aim at the right edge of the fairway, let the ball turn back, and stop trying to hit it straight on the course. Save that for the range.

The other useful adjustment is club choice off the tee. A hook with a driver runs into real trouble because the flight is low and it keeps going; a hook with a 5-wood or a hybrid curves less and stops sooner. Our driver versus hybrid comparison makes that case in full.

The good news

Golfers who hook are, mechanically, ahead of golfers who slice. You are releasing the club, generating speed and squaring the face — the whole set of things a slicer is trying to learn. Your problem is a matter of degree, and problems of degree are much easier to solve than problems of kind.

If you are working on this alongside other faults, our slice guide covers the mirror-image problem, and what counts as a good score puts the whole thing in perspective while you work on it.