Monday, 2 December 2024

HiDraw / LoFade Pattern and its Repeatability and Consistency on Request. Correlation between set Pelvis and Levelled Knees and the Shape of the Shot.

No matter how consistent is a pattern it will never match all courses and all possible situations. One of the most consistent player in history of golf, Lee Trevino, with his great push fade could not be able to win The Masters at Augusta mainly because that beautiful course favours heavily drawing the ball. Ben Hogan, who desperately sought for eliminating his hooks, found a secret to play fades with a draw swing which was considered the biggest secret in golf. Mac O'Grady worked out a great set of patterns called a set of windows that should serve all aspiring juniors and pro golfers.

We are not in the league of these above masters in any case, however, our aim is to help amateur seniors and body-handicapped persons enjoy playing golf thanks to implementing as much automatism as possible to their actions. Therefore, having mastered the Controlled Draw Pattern and having an unlimited access to Trackman nowadays we have been thinking about an universal pattern for the majority of situations on golf courses that would be extremely easy and very consistent on request at hoc. Hence our idea to have a pattern consisting of only two subpatterns (that in our opinion are the most useful from all), namely low fades and high draws.

We are not going to guide you through the meanders of the D-Plane and old vs. new golf ball flight laws as this knowledge is videly available in the net; we are going to give you a short and not complicated receipt how to be able to play these two subpatterns using the same pre-shot routine. Since the draw swing is the most natural and because we were working almost exclusively last years on the Controlled Draw Pattern, we are a bit hoganesque biased and treat fades as just anti-draws. We shall explain it later on, now let us concentrate on main pre-swing factors used in both subpatterns.

In both subpatterns we use the Diagonal Stance that we consider as the best option not only for golfers but also for other human activities when force vectors are directed sideways; what differs the LoFade and HiDraw subpatterns are the ball position and orientation of knee leveling procedure which is of key importance.

For HiDraw subpattern the ball position is like on improved version of Ben Hogan's 5L diagramme (in fact, two diagrammes -- for LED and RED persons:




The hips are being set open to the baseline, however, the knees have to be levelled as for the Controlled Draw pattern, i.e. the line is slightly closed in relation to the baseline (please revert to the "The Knee Flex Leveling Procedure [...]" article). In short, the lead knee is being bent more than the rear one.

Everything, i.e. the whole motion starting from the Trigger Compression phase is unchanged. In case one struggles with hitting draws please revert to the whole series dedicated to the Controlled Draw Pattern articles.

For the LoFade subpattern we need to move forward or to leave the ball back in the stance because it makes the path of the swing more outside and allow to deliver more open clubface to the ball; one the best illustration is what already mentioned Lee Trevino, himself playing predominantly push fades, was doing before starting the swing -- he moves forward both feet in his special way shown below: 


With the ball back in the stance we obtain lower trajectory and  relatively bigger easiness to find a spot to hit the ball while having a short flat spot while the shape of our swing is more similar to the letter V than to the letter U (that ois present and desired thing when playing a controlled draw).'
As regards bending knees we need to bend the rear knee joint more which is opposite to the knee action in the HiDraw pattern. Thus, the knee line is levelled in an open manner corresponding to the fade outside-in path. 


Please take a look on the diagrammes below:






Basically, this is it. The idea will not guarantee 100% repeatability plus typical for human beings  instability in delivering the clubface angle may end up with bigger or smaller draws and fades (or even pushes instead draws and pulls instead fades), however, on amateur level it appears to be relatively highly repeatable method that allows us seniors and body-handicapped golfers play all golf courses with high draws and low fades almost on request. It is a great feeling when we can see our shots go as planned, a true enjoyment of this great and difficult sport.