How To Cure Your Golf Slice (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
How To Cure Your Golf Slice (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

I think I would suggest in my lifetime of coaching golf and certainly watching amateurs out in the golf course as well. It’s probably fair to say that about 90% of the golfers that I see at some point in their golfing career would struggle with a slice shot. Now a slice shot is a golf ball that starts to the left-hand side of the intended target, but actually curves to the right hand of the intended target for the right handed golfer. Now that slice shot doesn’t happen all the time in people’s games, but it comes and goes in people’s games and 90% of golfers I suggest would struggle with this shot. And if that’s the shot that you struggle with, there’s probably two main reasons why you slice the golf ball. One is that the club path direction would be what we would class as out to in, from the outside line of the golf ball, to the inside line of the golf ball, cutting across the ball. And the second reason why you would slice the golf ball is the club face would be open to that path. So the club is travelling from out to in and the club face is aiming more to the right than that path is travelling. And that puts spin on the ball, that sends the ball from left to right in its flight.

Now if we look at the two main reasons why that fault might be happening, if we look at the club face being open to the swing path first, the club face is open to swing path can often be caused by a weaker than standard grip. So we have a grip. Now this does not apply to grip pressure, as in how tightly or softly you are holding the club. What we’d say is weak and strong in relation to the position of the hands. So a hand with its – left-hand that’s too far round to the left, we would describe that as a weak position. The left hand can’t have enough influence, and if the left hand was too far over to the right we describe that as strong. So a weak position would be where we can only see one or no knuckles at all. And a neutral position we’d be looking to see at least two if not three knuckles on the back of the left hand. The right hand is then placed on the grip and it’ll kind of follow its position guided by the left thumb. And the thumbs and the Vs of the hand here are going to be pointing slightly up to the right side of your body, that say neutral or slightly strong grip which is good for someone that the slices the ball. So that should look after the club face. Now the next thing we talked about was the path travelling from out to inside. Now if we can get this path to come down more this way, and attack the ball from the inside, that’s going to help us get the ball drawing or hitting straighter shots and certainly not coming over the top and hitting the big fade. So the checkpoint here I want you to utilize is as you pull the club down towards the ball, where does this butt end point. Now if the butt end points too much towards the body and the toes, that’s going to send the top end, the club head end outside the line and across the ball. So during the downswing, I’d like to feel the butt end points at the golf balls for as long as possible, dragging the club into a good position from the inside, squaring the face using your neutral or slightly strong grip, and then we have a swing path that’s straight into the back of the ball with a square face rather than outside the line with an open face. And that should get you on the road to curing your slice. 2015-10-08

I think I would suggest in my lifetime of coaching golf and certainly watching amateurs out in the golf course as well. It’s probably fair to say that about 90% of the golfers that I see at some point in their golfing career would struggle with a slice shot. Now a slice shot is a golf ball that starts to the left-hand side of the intended target, but actually curves to the right hand of the intended target for the right handed golfer. Now that slice shot doesn’t happen all the time in people’s games, but it comes and goes in people’s games and 90% of golfers I suggest would struggle with this shot. And if that’s the shot that you struggle with, there’s probably two main reasons why you slice the golf ball. One is that the club path direction would be what we would class as out to in, from the outside line of the golf ball, to the inside line of the golf ball, cutting across the ball. And the second reason why you would slice the golf ball is the club face would be open to that path. So the club is travelling from out to in and the club face is aiming more to the right than that path is travelling. And that puts spin on the ball, that sends the ball from left to right in its flight.

Now if we look at the two main reasons why that fault might be happening, if we look at the club face being open to the swing path first, the club face is open to swing path can often be caused by a weaker than standard grip. So we have a grip. Now this does not apply to grip pressure, as in how tightly or softly you are holding the club. What we’d say is weak and strong in relation to the position of the hands. So a hand with its – left-hand that’s too far round to the left, we would describe that as a weak position. The left hand can’t have enough influence, and if the left hand was too far over to the right we describe that as strong. So a weak position would be where we can only see one or no knuckles at all. And a neutral position we’d be looking to see at least two if not three knuckles on the back of the left hand. The right hand is then placed on the grip and it’ll kind of follow its position guided by the left thumb. And the thumbs and the Vs of the hand here are going to be pointing slightly up to the right side of your body, that say neutral or slightly strong grip which is good for someone that the slices the ball.

So that should look after the club face. Now the next thing we talked about was the path travelling from out to inside. Now if we can get this path to come down more this way, and attack the ball from the inside, that’s going to help us get the ball drawing or hitting straighter shots and certainly not coming over the top and hitting the big fade. So the checkpoint here I want you to utilize is as you pull the club down towards the ball, where does this butt end point. Now if the butt end points too much towards the body and the toes, that’s going to send the top end, the club head end outside the line and across the ball. So during the downswing, I’d like to feel the butt end points at the golf balls for as long as possible, dragging the club into a good position from the inside, squaring the face using your neutral or slightly strong grip, and then we have a swing path that’s straight into the back of the ball with a square face rather than outside the line with an open face. And that should get you on the road to curing your slice.