Ball flight laws: draw, fade, hook, slice and cut

For a right-handed golfer, a draw curves gently from right to left and a fade curves gently from left to right. A hook and a slice are the same curves, only bigger. A cut usually means a fade hit on purpose. The ball starts mostly where the clubface points at impact, then curves away from the direction the club was swinging.

Every trajectory on this page comes from a physics model of a golf ball in flight, so you can see each shape from above and from the side. They are teaching pictures, not measurements of anyone's swing.

The nine ball flights

Every full shot has two parts: where it starts and which way it bends. Three starts and three curves give the nine-flight grid coaches have used for decades.

Reading the grid for a right-handed golfer:

• Pull and push describe the start: left or right of the target, with little curve.
• Draw and hook curve left. A draw is the controlled version; a hook bends far enough to cause trouble.
• Fade and slice curve right. A fade is controlled; a slice bends a lot and usually costs distance.
• Push draw and pull fade start on one side and bend back toward the target. A pull hook and a push slice start offline and keep going.

There is no official line between a draw and a hook. In this guide a shot counts as a hook or slice once its curve is more than 7% of its carry, about 16 yards on a 230-yard drive. Left-handed golfers can mirror every picture; their draw curves from left to right.

Face and path decide the start and the curve

Two impact numbers do most of the work. Face angle is where the clubface points at impact, measured left or right of the target line. Club path is the direction the clubhead is moving at that moment. Trackman defines face to path as face angle minus club path. For a right-handed golfer a negative number means the face is closed to the path, and a positive number means it is open.

The start comes mostly from the face. Titleist, citing Trackman data, puts the face's share of the starting direction at about 75% for irons and 85% for a driver; the path supplies the rest. The curve comes from the difference between the two. With a centered strike, the ball curves toward the face and away from the path.

The older teaching had it backwards: the ball was said to start on the path and curve toward the face. A golfer who slices and follows that advice often aims farther left and swings even more out-to-in, which makes the face more open to the path and the slice bigger. Our article on how to stop slicing turns these rules into a practice plan.

The geometry behind the modern rules is called the D-plane: the plane that contains the club's direction of travel and the direction the face points at impact. The ball launches inside that plane, close to the face direction, and spins around an axis perpendicular to it. When face and path match, the plane stands upright and the spin axis is level, so the ball has pure backspin and no curve. When they differ, the plane leans, the spin axis tilts and part of the lift pushes the ball sideways.

Why a driver curves more than a wedge

The same face-to-path number tilts the spin axis much more on a low-lofted club. What matters is face to path compared with spin loft, which Trackman defines as the angle between the club's direction of travel and the face's orientation at impact. A driver has a small spin loft, so 2° of face to path tilts the axis about 8° in the idealized geometry. With a typical 7-iron spin loft the same 2° tilts it about 3.5°, and with a pitching wedge about 2°.

Distance adds to the effect. A drive stays in the air longer and travels farther, so the sideways part of the lift has more time to work. Trackman's published examples put a tour drive with 2° of face to path (a 275-yard carry) about 19 yards offline, and a 6-iron with the same 2° (183 yards) only about 8 yards.

The model behind these figures lands within roughly 10–15% of those published examples and slightly underestimates the curve. Within a few degrees the relationship is close to a straight line, so each extra degree of face to path adds about the same number of yards.

Does a draw go farther than a fade?

Not because of the curve itself. When the spin axis tilts, part of the lift that was holding the ball up now pushes sideways instead. In the model a 10° tilt costs about two yards of carry and a 30° tilt about 18 yards, and a left tilt costs exactly as much as a right tilt.

A draw's reputation for extra distance comes from how draws are often struck. A face closed to an in-to-out path often goes with less loft at impact, which tends to mean a lower launch, less spin and more roll. Many fades come from an out-to-in path with more loft at impact, which adds spin and height. These are tendencies, not laws: plenty of golfers hit a low, running fade or a high, spinning draw.

Cut, hold and baby draw: the vocabulary

Players and commentators use more names than the nine-flight grid. Here is what they usually mean for a right-handed golfer.

A cut is often higher and softer because of how it is usually played. Swinging more out-to-in with an open face tends to add spin loft, and more spin loft means more backspin, a steeper descent and less roll. Our launch angle, spin and trajectory guide shows why spin changes the landing.

Try it: move the face and the path

Move the sliders to set the face angle and club path. The shot name, spin-axis tilt and both views update as you go.

A few things to try. Leave the path at 4° in-to-out and slide the face from 4° open down to square: the shot goes from a push, to a push draw, to a hook. Then switch to the pitching wedge with the same numbers and watch the curve shrink. Finally, set face and path to the same value; the ball flies straight, just not at the target.

Off-center strikes and other exceptions

These rules assume a centered strike. Off-center hits add what golfers call gear effect: the head twists around its center of mass, and that twist puts extra sidespin on the ball. On a driver or fairway wood, a strike toward the toe makes the head twist open and tends to add draw spin, while a heel strike tends to add fade spin. That is why a heel strike can slice even when the face and path numbers look neutral.

Equipment matters too. An iron whose lie angle does not suit your delivery tilts the face at impact, and on a lofted club that tilt points the face left or right. Our lie angle guide explains how to check a used set before blaming your swing. Wind, slopes and the ball's lie also change the flight.

Sources and model limits

Definitions follow Trackman's data parameter definitions and Trackman's “What is Face to Path?” (September 23, 2024), which also supplies the curvature examples. The 75% and 85% start-direction shares come from Titleist's Learning Lab page on face angle. Ball mass and size follow the R&A Rules of Equipment, Part 4.

The trajectories come from this site's own model. It treats the ball as a point mass with gravity, drag and Magnus lift, integrated in small time steps. The lift and drag curves (lift = 0.55 × √S and drag = 0.20 + 0.40 × S, where S is spin speed at the ball's surface divided by ball speed) follow the shape of wind-tunnel results for spinning golf balls published by Bearman and Harvey (Aeronautical Quarterly, 1976) and Smits and Smith (Science and Golf II, 1994). Spin decays about 4% per second. Start direction and spin-axis tilt use the idealized D-plane relations described above, and the club inputs are illustrative round numbers. The model leaves out air temperature and altitude, Reynolds-number effects, gusts, wind that changes with height, ball design, bounce and roll. Use it to understand directions and proportions, not to predict yardages or fit a club. Sources checked October 8, 2026.

Continue with launch angle, spin and trajectory height or what golf club loft tells you.