The Science of the Tour Draw | Film Study | Golf Digest

There's something interesting happening in professional golf. A trend is emerging. You see for a long time elite level professional golf has been moving in one direction. Players have been chasing fades, but that may be starting to change. More and more players seem to be gravitating towards a different kind of shot shape. Cam Young, Jackson Koivun, Nikolaj Hojga, Corey Connors, Bryson DeChambeau, Michael Kim, Michael Torbjörnsson, the list goes And that's what this video is about. First we're going to explain what these shots are and then the science of how pros and you can hit them. Alright so the first question is what does a tour draw look like? Because once we know that we can kind of start working backwards from there. And here's the answer. Now there are a few interesting things here but I think the best place to start is with spin. You'll notice that the average draw player on tour has an average spin rate of 2500 rpms on their good shots give or take. And the real nerds out there may notice that this is slightly higher than what's considered optimal, meaning that on their best shots they have a little too much spin in order to maximize distance. But that is intentional because what these players are doing are creating what's known as a spin buffer. That's kind of key number one here to the tour draw because it's extremely important for draw players. Draws by nature can often produce less spin which on the whole is good except when you hit the ball right here on the clubface on the high part of the toe or when you just accidentally close the clubface too much. In either of those cases the ball comes off with too little spin. Not enough to stay in the air and that's when you get this quick dive bomb drive down to the left. The duck home. This is so far left calm down. So instead of risking this pros create a spin buffer taking maybe a hair more spin than they need on good shots so that when they make a bad swing their toe shots end up turning into knuckle bombs that travel forever instead of dive bombs that go out of play. This is kind of why club fitting is so important because a good club fitter can really dial this stuff in. Also I did a whole video about knuckle bombs if you're interested in that go check it out here. But the tour draw isn't a knuckle bomb both because it always curves left. Knuckle bombs can go in either direction and also because tour draws fly a little lower. Now that's tour draw key number two. Keegan Bradley for instance is a classic knuckle bomber. He launches the ball high and hits the ball on average 130 feet into the air. The tour average apex height is just 102 feet and even the high speed tour draw guys are barely above that average. Most of them are actually below average. These draws they're kind of like little bullets. Low draw bullet up the dead center of the fairway beautiful shot. Yeah and look at that ball roll. So a tour draw in essence is a mid to low trajectory shot. In other words beware too much height when chasing tour draws because more height and more spin can create more curve. Didn't look like his best strike ever and that's aggressively left. Yeah be careful here. And this is a really important element. Tour draw key number three. You've got to control the curve. Now I mentioned this in a previous video but basically faders fade the ball more than draw players draw it. Yeah he can absolutely move it Mark. Oh this one's moving. You can actually see this based on players spin axis from the 2026 Masters practice range data. You see every shot a player hits on the range at Augusta is tracked using a radar. By collecting all that data we can compare players and take a closer look the kinds of shots they hit. This is every player in the field at this year's Masters measured by their spin axis. Spin axis is how much the ball tilts when you hit it and that tilt is what makes the ball curve. Now if you look close you'll notice that draw players tilt the ball negative while faders tilt it positive. And if you look really close you'll see how the biggest draw guys had a spin axis of between negative two and negative six degrees. Whereas the average fader lives right in that range right around four degrees. And the extreme faders on the other side of the spectrum they live in the plus seven to plus ten degree range. And this lines up with the shot link data on TOR too. The TOR draw guys curve it about half a yard less per hundred yards and about 10% less overall than faders. A small difference but a really important one. So these are the first three elements 2500-ish spin, mid to low trajectory and less curve overall. They all work together to keep the ball flight under control. If your draw starts looking a little big and curvy it's maybe a red flag. Perhaps it's not the right shot shape for you because it's just going to be too hard to control in the long term. You can get away with it with a fade though and it's ultimately why for every one draw player on TOR there are six faders. But recently people are figuring out how to do it well and turn the TOR draw into a real consistent weapon thanks to some specific moves in their golf swing. Which brings us to the golf swing portion of this video and specifically to this move right here. Now draw players love to get into this kind of shape with their body. Kind of a reverse C look. They create a lot of tilt with their upper body away from the target. Teachers call this side bend. Look at TOR Bjornsson and Koivun. They're two draw guys and they're fantastic examples of this. Now tilting like this is important for every kind of golfer because it helps you hit up on the ball. But the guys who like to draw it they tilt more than they turn. That's an important one. It's a key formula that was discovered by top coach Jeff Smith using Sportsbox and let's call it TOR draw rule number four. Amateur golfers tend to turn way more than they tilt. It's kind of a swing flaw and it's why slices at impact often look something like this. Tons of turn, too much, and not enough tilt. Which is what drags the club over the top and the clubface often open. This is a great example of it. It's my colleague Sam Weinman. Don't worry he's working on it but look how much he's turned and look how little he's tilted. Now more turn generally means more fade but the sweet spot is turning with some tilt. Wyndham Clark is a classic fader and a really good example of this. Look how much he turns through the ball but he's also got a good amount of tilt. All that turn makes it hard for his hands to catch up to his body and so that's what creates his left to right shape. But even as he's turning he's still tilting enough to hit the ball well. The draw guys tend to create more tilt and less turn. Koivun creates that tilt on the downswing. Like look how much side bend he has by the time he gets to impact. Other draw guys like to get into this shape on the backswing. Look at Tor Bjornsson here and Kirk. It doesn't matter how you do it, it's the shape, it's the tilt that really matters. And the commonality is that by impact they're tilting a ton and they're not turning as much as they're tilting. Like look at Koivun here compared to Wyndham, our earlier example. Tilting more than they're turning creates a more aggressive hand release and less of a body release. It helps their hands close the clubface more and altogether creates the tall draw. Well he has absolutely hit the best drive he's hit all day long right down the middle. But of course you can overdo that. You can close the clubface too much and hit a hook, which obviously isn't good. And it's why the final two tall draw keys are designed to prevent that. The first of those, tall draw key number five, is to get the clubface open, often on the backswing. Now I realize this sounds weird because open clubfaces mean fades and sometimes slices. Why would you want to get the clubface open when you're trying to hit a right to left draw? The answer is because draw players often want to feel a full hand release through the ball. Chris Kirk's coach Scott Hamilton talked about it right here. He called it an old school release and it's why you'll hear a lot of draw players say that the only way they can get aggressive closing the face with their hands is to first get the clubface open. And you see it pop up in their swings all the time. Michael Kim once told me that he tried to get the clubface closed on the takeaway but he played terribly this way. And now he tries to get the clubface open on his takeaway so he can feel like he slams it shut later on. That's what Koivun is trying to feel right here on his rehearsal takeaway. Trying to feel like he gets the toe up towards the sky according to his junior coach Kelvin Kelly. And look how open Bryson's clubface gets on the backswing right here and also at the top of his swing. Corey Connors's clubface isn't particularly open on the backswing but look at what happens on the downswing. He kind of opens it up with his left wrist and again the through line is the same. And then of course there's this famous picture of Mo Norman demonstrating how open he feels the clubface is on the downswing right before impact. It's getting the clubface open like that is what allows him to slam it shut. Get it open at some point early, slam it shut later on and that's how you can swing aggressively without too much fear of overdoing it. Which brings us to the final tall draw key which is kind of an insurance policy that pros use to make sure they don't overdo it and to control the curve. Key point number six. To create the feeling of a wall. This is again something that keeps popping up when draw players talk about how they like to hit draws. And what the wall is is basically a way of slamming the brakes on your body so your hands can release through fully. But to do so in a way that stops any over releasing of the hands. To stop your release turning into a flip. Bryson does this with a combination of a weak left hand grip. Notice how his thumb is more down the middle of the grip right here. That helps open the face and then his wall is a firm left arm. That's where he feels like his elbow is pointing at the target at impact. This combination allows his hands to release the club but then slam into the wall to prevent any over releasing. Coy even has a hint of this Spieth Bryson left elbow thing too which makes sense. And Mo Norman's wall was the feeling of a bent left knee. That would stop his body and allow his hands to release through but again not so much that his hands would roll excessively. You can go down the list but basically there are all these different feels that draw players talk about that allow them to release their hands aggressively without overdoing. And then you put all these things together and you've got it. The bones of a tour draw. It's a stock shot that seems to be rising in recent times and when you get it right it can be pretty close to unstoppable. And that is absolutely blistered down the center with a little baby draw. Hey guys thanks for watching another episode of Golf Digest's film study. We've got a busy slate of content coming up on this channel which you can see a rundown of right here. Next up is a course strategy video all about breaking 80 which I really think you guys will like. And then some fun videos of course after that. And as always any videos you want to see please let me know in the comments and I'll work them in. You may have also noticed my podcast Golf IQ popping up on this channel. These are shorter more casual chats about stuff and they're going to be dropping weekly in the podcast section of this channel. Anyway as always thanks for watching please like and subscribe and we'll catch up again soon.