The Reasons Why You Slice The Ball (And 3 Easy Fixes)
Are you struggling with a distance-sapping, left-to-right shot shape? It's a common fault - but one that's easy to rectify
A slice will test your patience and make you question why you play the game at times!
For the right-handed golfer, it's that shot that curves wildly to the right in the air, often finding the right rough or sailing into lost ball territory.
I can't tell you exactly why you're slicing the golf ball without seeing your swing, but I can recommend a few tips and drills to experiment with to straighten out your shot shape.
And I can also tell you that, as frustrating as a slice is (it also robs you of distance), getting rid of it is actually quite simple when you understand what's causing it.
LEAD HAND CHECK
Your range of movement will increase with the gloved palm facing down to the ground
Put your lead arm out in front of you, parallel to the ground, and point your gloved palm up to the sky.
See how far you can move that arm across your body towards the trail side.
At a certain point you'll feel restriction in this lead arm and shoulder.
Now repeat with your palm facing the ground (above right). Your range of movement should increase.
When the lead hand sits on the club with the palm pointing up (above left), the lead arm has a limited range of movement around the body.
The hand and arms want to work a little more upright, and the club comes down in front with a swing that's going left, causing a slice.
With the lead hand's palm more down to the ground (above center), you'll be able to get the hands and arms a bit deeper, encouraging the club to travel more from the inside in the downswing.
BALL POSITION
Pull the ball position back one clubhead width in the stance to start to fix your slice
Club golfers often set the ball position all the way forward in their stance with the driver, almost outside the front of the lead foot.
The more the ball position goes forward, the more your shoulders start to point left of target.
This causes the clubhead to move out in front of you in the downswing and leads to you swinging across the ball, which may generate a left-to-right flight.
There is a really easy fix, though. Move the ball position back, the width of a clubhead inside the lead foot.
This adjustment will start to square up the shoulders and help you to align your knees and hips better to the target line.
Turn the clubface in so it's pointing less to the right of the target line, which allows everything to be square at set-up, making it much easier to find a straight ball flight.
CLUBFACE ANGLE & PATH
If you can tighten up the gap between the club path (orange stick) and the clubface angle (white head cover) you will edge closer to a straighter ball flight
We need to focus on two things in the quest to eliminate a slice: clubface angle - in which direction the loft of the golf club is pointing in relation to our target line - and club path.
The club path is the direction that the clubhead travels relative to the target. The relationship between these two elements heavily impacts ball flight.
In the picture above, the clubface angle is represented by the white alignment stick cover. The club path is represented by the orange alignment stick.
In a slice, the clubhead is going to be travelling along the orange alignment stick, but the face is going to be pointing right of that - maybe even in the direction of the white cover.
The bigger the gap between these two factors, the bigger the curvature or tilted right spin axis you're going to impart on the ball.
Understanding the physics will help you make small adjustments to limit the gap and, as a result, reduce the severity of that left-to-right shape.
