What Is A Duck Hook In Golf?

What Is A Duck Hook In Golf?

Every golf shot that doesn’t fly straight has its own name, whether push, fade, slice, pull, draw or hook. For a right-handed golfer, pushes and pulls fly straight right or left respectively and can be destructive, depending on their severity.

Fades and draws curve gently right or left respectively, and these are often fine – most golfers move the ball a little one way or another, intentionally or naturally, and these gently curving shots will usually keep your ball in play if you’ve allowed for that shot shape.

Slices and hooks then take these curving right and left shots, respectively, to another level and usually end up in trouble as the ball veers significantly one way or the other. The duck hook, which we’re concerned with here, is an even more extreme version of the hook in which the ball not only flies with a big right-to-left curve, but never really gains much height. It also goes by the names of ‘snap hook’, ‘quick hook’ or ‘smother’.

Why is it called a duck hook? Almost certainly because the ball ducks away violently to the left, invariably leaving you in trouble and probably not very far up the hole, depending on the length of the rough. Because it flies low, it won’t carry far enough up the hole before straying from the short grass. However, if ground conditions are firm and nothing gets in its way (such as on a links course where two holes run side by side) it can run for miles as the right-to-left spin will see it bounding on much further than a ball spinning left-to-right, which will also typically fly much higher.

What causes it? Well, this is not an instruction article as such but some of our instruction content addresses the possible causes (for example, 'Hooking the ball? Try these simple tips' by Golf Monthly Top 50 Coach, Clive Tucker).

But briefly, the key things to look out for, with the assistance of another of our Top 50 coaches, Keith Wood, are...

Closed stance
Feet and shoulders point too far right of target so your swing path back into the ball is too much from the inside.

Closed clubface
This is likely to be pointing to the left of your target line.

Body stops rotating
If this happens through impact, the club and arms will then be moving faster than you, with the hands taking the club around the body and closing the clubface in the process.

Too strong a grip
The upper hand sits on top of the grip too much and the lower hand too much underneath, which can lead to the hands becoming too active through the ball.