How to Hit a Fade: With Minimal Swing Thoughts

Being able to hit a fade in today’s game is equally as hard as when those started playing the game many years ago.

For us to be able to hit a fade you’ll notice a few core aspects that must be finetuned to ensure that consistency is translated from the driving range to the course.

A fade in golf is most opportune when we are able to avoid certain impediments in front of us, such as a tree, or when looking to land the ball on the green softly, and avoid too much role.

Overall, to master the fade, you must master the overall mechanics of your golf grip first. The stance of your position at address is very important along with your takeaway, but all fundamentals of the golf swing point first to the golf grip.

Below includes four easy steps to begin working on mastering the fade in golf. And while you might lose some distance, we expect that you’ll have more consistency than hitting a draw.

How to Hit a Fade: With Minimal Swing Thoughts

Time Commitment: 5 Days

Supplies and Tools

• Any golf club, a mid iron if practicing

• Alignment stick

Step 1 - Check your grip

Starting with an incorrect grip can make the rest of your swing fall apart and is by far one of the most common flaws in the game of golf. We often don’t look to improve our grip because it’s so hard to see the impact of the ball direction and flight with the smallest change. Yet, many of us tend not to try to have a fade the majority of the time that we play, but ultimately it happens.

Oftentimes why the fade happens unintentionally is because of the fact that your grip is not correct.

Many beginner players often have too strong of a top hand when holding the club. Because of that, you are far more likely to open up the club face and hit a slice or push fade.

Remember that when you’re trying to hit a fade, you want your grip to be slightly weaker than normal. A good way to think about this is that you want your top hand (left for right-handers) rotated a little backwards or counterclockwise. Instead of seeing three knuckles on your top hand at address, you should see two.

If you find that you can’t get the club back to square at impact, you’ve rotated your top hand too much (a.k.a. too weak). The right pressure is key here and must be tried and tested many times before you start to get a feel for what is right.

Step 2 - Move your back foot an inch or two backwards at address

As you can see in the picture below, you want to make sure that your feet are actually a bit misaligned.

When you become a bit more close with your feet, your body will naturally want to swing the club backwards towards the 5 o’clock hand on a clock.

Swinging at a slower speed during your practice swings is critical. We highly recommend that those swings are focused on taking the club backwards further outside than your normal club path would be. You might hear that exaggerating the swing thought is needed. It absolutely is for mastering the fade in golf.

Step 3 - Swing across your body on the follow through

While the backswing is just as important as the downswing, your feet position should be closed resulting in your shoulders and club path feeling like you’re aiming way left (for right handed golfers).

Ultimately, you should notice that your downswing cuts across your body and golf ball.

As you might imagine, the club path drives much of the curve of the ball. Your grip also plays an important part, but you’ll be able to increase the severity of your fade solely based on your club path.

Step 4 - Grab a bucket or gold range basket

To really maximize and exaggerate the feel of your swing, we recommend putting a buckets or golf range bucket about 6 to 8 inches inside the golf ball.

This will force your swing to want to avoid hitting the bucket, and should naturally force you to figure out which way your club path must follow to avoid doing so.

We expect that you will most likely hit the bucket a number of times before mastering this, but we think overall, the bucket drill to perfect a fade in golf is by far one of the best mental and visual aids to help you improve upon this even faster.

Give your hybrid or 7 iron a go, as those clubs should be common for you to hit a fade with because of the related launch angle and club face design (specifically for hybrids).

Conclusion

The fade in golf is often something that we might mix up with a slice. Overall, the major difference is how much the ball moves in the air, which we realize is incredibly subjective.

The fade in golf should really be played in the right conditions. This includes times when you are looking to have a higher ball fight with a softer landing, preferably when you are going for the green. The fade is also a great play off the tee. No matter the club that you have in your hand, you should expect to lose a few yards of distance because of the higher ball flight and minimal role.

As players get older distance often comes to mind as one of the key aspects of their game that starts to go away. Yet, what we really want to focus on is keeping the ball in play and setting ourselves up for the next best shot. The fade is great for senior players and shouldn’t be frowned upon.

We really should be mindful of the aspects of the game that we sometimes take for granted. Trying to draw the ball can actually be harder than hitting a fade, but would give us more distance. The fade in golf is by far one of the more preferable shots, because of your ability to control the club face and ball.