CURE YOUR SLICE NOW

Great drill to cure your slice

Hi, Robin here. The slice shot seems to be a shot that plagues the golfing world. But when I play in a Pro-am or I play socially with some friends, there’s one very common fault I see in players trying to fix their slice. What they do is they close their feet to the target, believing that a more closed stance will help them swing more in to out; fixing this over the top movement where the club comes out to in, club is traveling left of target at impact. But you see by closing your stance, what you’re doing is you’re blocking your lower body. Your hips will not really be able to accelerate coming down, they’ll be blocked. So something has to accelerate, and that would be your upper body, arms and club. They will dominate the downswing and that movement nearly always results in the club coming outside the swing path being to the left of impact. The last thing you want to do in trying to fix your slice is close your stance and block your lower body.

A dominate upper body is really the number one cause of the slice shot. You really want to be doing the opposite. So an exercise you can do to get a feeling for that is tee the ball up on the driving range, maybe with a mid-iron, a seven iron or a six iron; taking your setup as normal, but then pull your left foot back, so your left toe is almost in line with your right heel. Now before you strike the ball, just get a sense of accelerating your hips, rotating your hips open, keeping your shoulders squared to the target, or if anything, closing them to the target as you rotate your hips open. That will result in your hips accelerating faster than your shoulders in the downswing, which is almost guaranteed to have the clubhead coming down more from the inside and traveling more to the right of the target through the impact zone. Let’s give it a try. So a couple of rehearsals, hips opening up, shoulders staying square or slightly closed and then trying to repeat that same movement coming down.

Once you’ve developed a feel for that in your practice, you can go ahead and square your stance up again, but it’s the same body movement; you need to feel your hips are accelerating faster than your shoulders; your shoulders are staying square or slightly closed to the target through the impact zone. That’s going to produce a swing path more to the right.  It’s sure to help you fix your slice.