Learn How to Hit a Power Fade with 2 Simple Driver Tweaks originally appeared on Athlon Sports.
Learning how to hit a power fade with your driver may not feel like it’s all that important, but when you lack consistency off the tee — or struggle with both shorter tee shots and a ball that tails away from you — a fade could be your saving grace.
Of course, actually hitting a fade off the tee is a little tricky — especially for a mid-handicapper like myself — who’s just satisfied with getting a tee shot in the fairway.
But to really elevate your golf game, it requires the ability to control your shots more frequently, which is why the Rainmakers Golf crew asked top-ranked golf teacher Tom Stickney for some tips on how to hit a power fade.
Hit Better Tee Shots By Learning How to Hit a Power Fade
There are plenty of benefits to hitting a power fade, but one of the biggest ones is simply having better accuracy. So instead of hitting a draw that lands in the fairway but rolls into heavy rough, a power fade can give you more control off the tee.
Guys like Dustin Johnson almost exclusively use power fades for this reason, which is why it’s a must-have shot in your arsenal — and it’s actually not as tricky as you think to master it.
In the video above, Stickney gives me a simple golf lesson, sharing two easy tweaks for those looking to learn how to hit a power fade.
“There’s a couple things that we need to do in order to hit that power fade,” Stickney tells me. “Number one, we need to have our body lined up facing more leftward [for a right-handed golfer], which is going to shift the path a little bit more out-to-in.
“Anytime we swing with an out-to-in path, now we can have the clubface in the right position to start the ball a little left before it fades back. So you do this by opening your stance a little bit at address.”
Although it feels a little funky at first, once you use more of an open stance, Stickney says the next part of hitting a power fade is simple: Release the golf club.
“The next thing that we want to do to hit this power fade is to release the club a little bit,” Stickney instructs. “Now that might seem counterintuitive, but we do know that the ball flight starts in the direction of the face, so if we’re going to hit a ball that starts left and then curves to the right, we need the path [to start] over there.”
Properly releasing the club means fully rotating through the ball at impact, which squares up the clubface for more accurate shots. When combined with an open stance that’s aimed more left and uses an out-to-in club path, the result is a perfect power fade.
“So I’m going to line up a little bit open and make sure that as I swing left [or out-to-in] I’m going to release the club just a little bit,” Stickney demonstrates. “That’s gonna have us hit a little power fade.”
With just two easy setup tweaks, you’re now able to practice the power fade during your next driving range session — which should lead to hitting more fairways and being in better positions for your second shot.
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This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 9, 2025, where it first appeared.
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