A sound understanding of the dynamics of ball and club is essential if you want to improve your game.
Without this, learning is just trial and error.
Most club golfers watch their shots fly off to the right or left without really knowing why this has happened.
The first thing to appreciate is that a golf ball is designed to take up spin.
The dimples on the surface encourage spin to help get the ball airborne.
In taking up backspin, the ball also takes up sidespin with great ease.
In most ball games, the ball flies straight, and you learn to put spin on to make it curve.
In golf you first have to learn to take sidespin off the ball to get it to fly straight.
Then the good player learns to put on spin to bend the ball as required.
This is done either to curve shots or to hold them into the wind.
The more lofted the club, the greater the backspin and the less sidespin you get.
it is difficult, for example, to bend a ball with a 9 iron.
In contrast, the driver produces little backspin but easily affects sidespin, so any hook or slice is exaggerated.
The other principle to understand is that provided the ball is struck from the middle or near middle of the clubface, it starts in the direction of the swing.
A correctly struck golf ball starting left is produced by a left aimed swing out to in.
It may then bend left or right, depending on the clubface angle.
Analyse any golf shot in terms of 'Where did it start? How did it curve?' and you will quickly begin to get a clue to any fault in the swing.