To draw the ball off the tee is the ideal shot for a recreational golfer. It looks great, and it gives you extra distance on the ground. The trouble is, it’s a hard shot to hit, for reasons there is no point going into now. I’d rather spend my time describing an easy way to hit one.

The title of this post sounds wrong, doesn’t it? Everybody knows you have to close your clubface to hit a draw, and that is exactly right.

But it’s closed in relation to what?

The club PATH, that’s what. That’s the geometry that gets you your draw. And here’s how to get it with an OPEN clubface.

Set up parallel to a line going from the ball to the target as if you were going to hit a shot straight at it.

Open the clubface about three degrees.

Here comes the magic trick: swing toward the ball from inside-to-out by about six degrees. Now your clubface, open to your stance line, is CLOSED to the swing path, and there’s your draw.

If you look at the diagram carefully, you will see (if you tilt your head a bit) that even though the clubface is open to the target line, it is slightly closed to the swing path. Hence, a draw.

To get an in-to-out swing path of about six degrees, you have to aim your swing.

Take your stance aimed at your target.

Facing your target, put your left arm out in front of you, palm down, with the outside edge of the hand against your target in the distance. The inside edge of your hand is about six degrees away. Aim your swing for whatever is grazing the right edge of your hand. Forget about the target. Aim at that place or object.

Then aim your clubface at half that distance to the right. Now it is open to your stance, but closed to your projected swing path.

This shot takes practice. To swing in-to-out, it helps greatly to take the club back in-to-out as well. This is something have to learn how to do. You also have to learn what angles of clubface and swing path work for you. The ones I mentioned above are just for mentioning.

Another place you can use this shot is to get out of trouble from the left side of the fairway.

I once was off the fairway in a bunch of trees with no straight shot to the pin, but I had an open look at the fairway. So I played this shot, but really exaggerated the angles. I opened the clubface about ten degrees and swung from about twenty degrees inside. (Don’t worry, I had practiced this shot, too.)

The ball took off way right then took a hard left turn towards the green and ended up just off the left side of the green. But I got my up and down.