Alex Noren reveals how he improved his driving accuracy.
(Getty Images)
Callaway Golf staffer Alex Noren‘s go-to shot is a trusty fade. He’s relied on it for 10 European Tour victories, two top 10s in majors, and a winning Ryder Cup appearance.
But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, when Noren was a college golfer at Oklahoma State University, he hit a big push draw that he often struggled to control.
“When I got to collage people would tell me, ‘you’ve got to hit it in-between the jungle. You’ve got to hit it in the fairway,” Noren said.
To help Noren learn his now-signature draw, his coach created a game for him to play, and it’s something you can easy try yourself: He’d put a stick down the target line and pull his drive. The goal is to aim straight at the stick and have your ball finish in line with it, but the route it should take will be different.
First, aim at the stick, try to start the ball left of it and curve it back in line with it.
Next, aim at the stick, but this time start the ball right of it and curve it back.
“I remember being able to play rounds with out bogeys all of a sudden, on tough courses, when before I was struggling with hitting so many provisionals,” Noren said.
Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.
An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.