Realized most players don't know this is a thing so I screen-capped some gifs. I'll try to keep it somewhat brief but this is a controversial topic gets people mad and stuff, dedicated a section to technicalities for the weirdo(s) but normal people can skip it.
While we don't have a way to literally setup sidespin as we want for every shot, very early/late hits mainly with driver don't just drift off-line (you might've heard people saying it's just a pull/push or "wind-like" side movement) they start snapping around halfway through or a bit earlier; it curves the way a golf ball with sidespin would and it bounces towards the curving side upon hitting ground the way a ball with sidespin would. Wind doesn't change this. For all intents and purposes it can only be defined as a draw/fade curve or more specifically a pull draw/push fade shot, of course doing this it's not possible to hit a (straight)draw/fade or the more common push draw/pull fade which would end on-target with a straight aimpoint.
[vvv skip this vvv]------- Semantics Start -------[vvv skip this vvv]
To most of you..don't read this honestly, it adds nothing of value to the topic at hand and I felt basically forced to type this out. This part has become necessary due to a couple (1?) pedantic bigots trolling in the forums, writing me walls of text with a poorly presented argument, relying on racist garbage and personal attacks maybe because they already know they're wrong. No one is this dumb so I have to assume it's mostly trolling to rile people up and create empty controversy, I think a notable shitposter of this kind was banned recently right? I remember he left some bizarre replies to my apparel thread so there's a few crazies around...
Then again being wrong but loud and vomiting a bunch of childish insults instead of a coherent argument is successful even in politics, so probably not a bad angle if that's all you got, it's just ugly. No matter how wrong the facts are there's no point in arguing with someone like this, so I usually just let it be. This clarification is not so much for the troll I don't expect them to see it, it's for the lurkers reading that might've been following the bizarre exchange I had in a different thread. Don't wanna fuel that mess, but I can still leave this here. What we're talking about is the technicalities of draw/fade and push/pull:
>>right-handed golfer point of view by the way! before I get a novel insulting my entire family tree over that technicality too
Line: A shot can exit straight, offline right (push) or offline left (pull). This is the first of the 2 main visual descriptive qualities we'll talk about, other being sidespin/curve. This one's mentioned first e.g. pull fade, push draw, straight draw...or as a standalone if there is no sidespin/curve so the ball goes straight (straight duh) / straight right (push) / straight left (pull).
Sidespin/Curve: A discrepancy between path and club face tilts the spin axis and that generates the horizontal movement, the curve we know as draw (to the left) and fade (to the right), in more extreme cases hook and slice are also used respectively. Technically, since we like being so technical and argue over details, none of these descriptive terms can be mentioned without mentioning its line term above. You can have a shot without curve (standalone terms mentioned above) but you can't have a golf shot without an exit line, that ball is going right/straight/left. On top of that any shot that curves from its initial line due to the tilted backspin axis is a fade/slice or a draw/hook even if it exits already towards the right/left side it's curving, push/pull with no additional definitions are applied to shots with minimal to virtually no sidespin.
So where's the misunderstanding? Is that person that started an argument with themselves over this just a moron? Well yes and no, for the most part they're just ignorant and confrontational, doesn't help that their ignorance is reinforced by the way we use these terms on the regular (doesn't excuse their psycho behavior either by the way).
Let's talk pictures we like pictures, further down I'll put a technical picture from titleist's website that actually spells out all 9 shot types from the 2 terms mentioned above (the 3 lines + those lines with a draw/hook + with a fade/slice). This is all of it, not summarized for the most common ones no terms being shortened or any nonsense to fit a wrong argument, all main 9 shots you're likely to see in these types of instructional pictures are spelled out completely.
So this friendly forum user kept reuploading (along a picture of a different pc golf game?) some picture where the exit line was only mentioned in the 2 extreme cases A (pull draw/hook) and I (push fade/slice), with cases G (push draw) and C (pull fade) tagged as simply "draw/fade" (very common, more on this later). If anyone saw this post before edits, to make fun of the whole situation and that interesting strat of omitting information that didn't suit the needs, I posted a different image also of shot shapes also incomplete but this time the shots being called just "draw/fade" were A (pull draw) and I (push fade). So also wrong/incomplete information but the complete opposite, the just "draw/fade" shots were the ones starting off-target on a pull/push line and curving further off-target, what we can accomplish in-game.
We use these terms incorrectly aaall the time, we don't argue about it (normal people don't) we just understand each other because we are capable of reasoning out what the other person meant. Want the absolute 100% right technical terminology? Sure titleist has you covered, left the picture down there. Should you care about it? Probably not. Most of the illustrations out there are both wrong and incomplete because of 2 main reasons: 1.they follow wording most people use instead of accurate technicalities and 2. they're summarized for instructional purposes, only showing the main 3 or 5 "shots".
Which shots are the most usable out of all this? The shots that end on-target so E (straight duh), G (a push draw: in-to-out face closed to path, ball exits right on a push, draws back to target due to draw sidespin) and C (opposite for fade). Therefore when you ask a golfer to visualize a draw they see G and C for the fade, therefore in simple pictures the push/pull parts are left out, it's the good draw/fade that ends on-target after all. Similarly someone might say "ah pulled it" when they hook it all the way across even if the ball started on or even right of target, and viceversa although slice seems to get more love. We all know what everyone means by these. But they're not just a draw/fade, they're not the only kind of draw/fade, they're not even the "straight"(exit-line) version of draw/fade no matter the landing spot, and A (pull draw) is not just a pull and I (push fade) is not just a push they both carry sidespin/curve.
Oh context in case they delete stuff and because gaslighting was their main method of turning this into an "argument?": You can't make this shite up I swear.. They were present in that thread and also some other where the controversial draw/fade thing was mentioned. Saying those were not draw/fade but just a pull/push, I believe crosswind against was also mentioned (because it would make the shot look like it started towards the opposite side it's going to, so = curve? who knows the thoughts in such an .. interesting mind). Anyway push/pull very common thing to say about this fade/draw business in wgt nothing unusual, was the most recent thread mentioning this so I tagged him and also replied to someone else saying that they're not simply a push/pull they visually and gameplay-wise curve instead (which is what a fade/draw means, sidespin/curve). And they lost it, as a normal well-adjusted adult would, afterwards barely any reply was needed to prompt a second wall of insults and repetitious nonsense for this keyboard warrior; same wrong picture came up, I think the picture from a completely different game was also here.. like witnessing an insane angry person trying to convince themselves of something they have a feeling is wrong, with some spectators. I simply made the flat-earther analogy, which fit the situation to a T.
That kind of reaction over semantics was just disgusting. Imagine talking about taking off backspin (dot up), all the way up some call it topspin (we all know what players mean by this) and some miserable creep goes off about how it's less backspin instead of topspin : "u fckin n-word f-word piece of.. blah blah". And this is an example where the psycho trying to start an argument would be technically in the right by the way. This is not something that should be encouraged it's trash, doesn't even have any value as entertaining drama because the insulting is sad and childish "well you're spanish lol, racist racist something haha cojones"...I don't even know, does it work? Do I sound more convincing if I call him a poophead? This is so pathetic, gotta keep reminding myself I'm not dealing with a 12-year old here.
Funny thing is it doesn't even matter that they're wrong after getting so absurdly technical for no reason, it never mattered. I never cared hence why my reply was the flat-earther thing instead of this. This is annoying, provides nothing of value to the discussion and to top it all off it's not even entertaining to follow, just some weirdo regurgitating wrong crap over and over, trying to gaslight others over what he said or didn't say and sprinkling childish insults to hold it together.
Conclusion this is overly long: All I want is to give players something interesting or cool, maybe if I see a topic that hasn't been covered well before I'll try to gather the information and help people. I believe I achieved that with the apparel stuff (although I wished it was a bit more complete) and I thought this was also a good one because there were some forum discussions over draws and fades but little visuals after the replay feature was gone... And this is the crap I have to deal with, oh well.. the pic I mentioned is down here.
If you disagree with me and want to call me a cu.nt or whatever send it to my inbox honestly, spare the people who read these threads. Oh and talking about messages, it's been now more than one person telling me something nice to the effects of "he's not usually like this", so this was just a friendly interaction with your classic veteran forumer, how lovely... Luckily I don't have strings attached, I'm not confrontational but I can call out the weirdos and the trolls for being just that.
Image credit: Simon the roach (irl handicap 52 but has read at least 1 golf book, he knows some stuff!). Oops wrong one it's from titleist.com, but he also provided pics!
[^^^skip this^^^]------- Semantics End -------[^^^skip this^^^]
The most aggressive hooky/slicey curves result from hitting the ding-looking line that separates the dark blue zones from black or very very close to it, of course clicking in the black is a mishit so comes with risk.
Mostly works off the tee with driver and 3w, any other club or from any other lie is mostly a push/pull, there is no usable curve/sidespin really. Personally disagree with players that claim all clubs can curve from everywhere, at least the rock ball doesn't, but you can try yourself and maybe screen-cap it? I'd like to see it
I can now confidently say the distance loss is somewhere between 5-10% (more on that later). Much lower than expected considering the absolute banana shots you can curve drives into, the ball seems to be overall (including the curve) travelling the or near to the full distance even if it ends up a bit farther from the target than hitting it straight at it.
Addressing questions about the usability of this. I went for maximum curve for the cool visuals but obviously it's also maximum risk, I wanted to show this off and have a proper thread on it. But as some replies have mentioned, a more conservative approach towards the outer dark blues of the meter, especially with a slower-moving meter from balls, could yield a consistent draw/fade that takes some trees with fickle hitboxes 100% out of play; that'd be the legitimate use, not many holes like that in this game at the moment. As for the snapping hooks and slices? They look cool, you could try pulling it off in a match the way some people putt with a club in friendly games. From now on when people look up "draw/fade" they'll stumble upon this at some point and have the visual examples to go along with it. Also some players don't even know it's a thing as I mentioned, the fact you never punch a wedge on the green doesn't mean you don't wanna know it'll go half the distance or whatever, just in case.
Credit balls will curve more or at least appear to have a larger arc because of a higher + longer trajectory. One of my replies here has some gifs comparing rock with a paid ball, you can judge from that. My original flash replays were done with some prov1s vaporwhatever I had, these ones are my ball, the rock™. Also please note that I'm using maxed (lvl10) swing edge apparel, most relevant stat here would be driver distance from the hat, hence why my yardage reads 312 instead of 291.
Used flag ball effects to enhance visibility. The shots are from back tees with hittable trees and stuff like that.
Oh and the wind is out of my control of course, some shots it helped some it worked against the curve and others it was a fairly neutral tail/headwind. Help from the wind is not needed to shape the shots and an opposing wind doesn't cancel the curve. I did reset pebble #1 to get both the banana + worst possible crosswind shots. Anyway show don't tell, enough text:
-------Examples-------
Bethpage #2
Pebble #14
Merion #10
Merion #12
Olympic #1
Olympic #4
Olympic #5
------Distance Loss------
Some visuals for what I said about 5-10% less distance. This is what distance loss looks like with TS3(312)-Free Ball, YMMV. Chose everyone's favorite mapping hole Kiawah #1. The target for all 3 drives is that red 100yd mark on the ground, or giant sprinkler, or whatever it is.. you know, the red circle thing.
Draw-289
Straight-307
Fade-287
----Strong Crosswinds----
Included this just to have an example of it. You can draw it against 30mph left-to-right wind and viceversa, and the ball will bounce in the direction according to what would be the hypothetical "sidespin" not the wind, when it hits fairway/green. Used Pebble#1 cause it's a nice dogleg for my full drive distance to illustrate this and easy hole1 to reset for the right wind.
Clarify that I'm not slicing it to avoid anything, the ball has to be travelling very low to hit the corner trees, this is not curving around obstacles. These examples are just showing heavy crosswinds, both favorable and unfavorable.
Bad wind = Sad Snowman
Good wind = Banana
there's a bug here can you spot it? >> says 0th shot, think it happens when you take a mulligan from an immovable obstruction or something, purely visual though next shot updates to say 2nd.