What Causes My Golf Slice? (Video) - by Natalie Adams
What Causes My Golf Slice? (Video) - by Natalie Adams

What causes my golf slice? A golf slice is a shot that starts on the left of the target and then it flies left to right during its flight and finishes on the right of the target. And it’s purely caused by your swing paths so that’s the direction that the club head is travelling in through impact and your club face position. To hit a straight golf shot if I take this red alignment pole and we pop it on the floor there, to hit a straight golf shot you’re just working on making your club head travel straight along that line which is the target line and as the club head is travelling along that line through hitting that ball the club face is also pointing down that line, and that hits a straight shot. If you’re hitting a slice, I’m just going to show you what’s happening is you’re setting up trying to hit down that red line but instead of hitting down the red line, you’re swinging more along the yellow line.

So as you’re coming in to hit the ball, the club head is travelling to the outside of the target line and then from the outside of that target line we’re on that side of the red line, you’re having to pull the club into the ball and then across the target line so your club head is moving from out to in and as you do that, you’re club face is not pointing at the target. It’s pointing between the yellow and the red pole. So that starts the ball on the left of the target line but because it’s actually the club face is aiming more right than the yellow line that you’re travelling down, the ball now spins because there’s a difference between the club face aim and the direction of travel. So that’s what’s causing your slice so in order to correct it, we need to stop the club travelling along the yellow line, we need to stop the club travelling out to in and we just need to get it travelling down the red line so we need to get it travelling straighter along the target line. So the easy way to do that is to block the outside and the inside of the target line where you would tend to pull the club into. So we can do that quite similarly if you take your head covers and place your head cover on the outside of the target line on the right of where the ball would be, you’re playing the ball from here and then we take the other head cover and block the area on the inside of that target line. You can now see that we’ve created a channel that we want to swing the club through. So we can swing back and instead of hitting the head cover on the right hand side of the ball, we’re going to work on swinging the club head back down inside that head cover and then making sure we swing it past the head cover on the left hand side of the ball as well. If we do that and we keep the club face pointing at the target throughout the impact position there so the club face is pointing at the target as it strikes the ball, you’re going to hit a great straight golf shot and you’re going to cause your -- correct your slice and you won’t see that left to right ball fly anymore. 2014-05-22

What causes my golf slice? A golf slice is a shot that starts on the left of the target and then it flies left to right during its flight and finishes on the right of the target. And it’s purely caused by your swing paths so that’s the direction that the club head is travelling in through impact and your club face position. To hit a straight golf shot if I take this red alignment pole and we pop it on the floor there, to hit a straight golf shot you’re just working on making your club head travel straight along that line which is the target line and as the club head is travelling along that line through hitting that ball the club face is also pointing down that line, and that hits a straight shot. If you’re hitting a slice, I’m just going to show you what’s happening is you’re setting up trying to hit down that red line but instead of hitting down the red line, you’re swinging more along the yellow line.

So as you’re coming in to hit the ball, the club head is travelling to the outside of the target line and then from the outside of that target line we’re on that side of the red line, you’re having to pull the club into the ball and then across the target line so your club head is moving from out to in and as you do that, you’re club face is not pointing at the target. It’s pointing between the yellow and the red pole. So that starts the ball on the left of the target line but because it’s actually the club face is aiming more right than the yellow line that you’re travelling down, the ball now spins because there’s a difference between the club face aim and the direction of travel. So that’s what’s causing your slice so in order to correct it, we need to stop the club travelling along the yellow line, we need to stop the club travelling out to in and we just need to get it travelling down the red line so we need to get it travelling straighter along the target line.

So the easy way to do that is to block the outside and the inside of the target line where you would tend to pull the club into. So we can do that quite similarly if you take your head covers and place your head cover on the outside of the target line on the right of where the ball would be, you’re playing the ball from here and then we take the other head cover and block the area on the inside of that target line. You can now see that we’ve created a channel that we want to swing the club through. So we can swing back and instead of hitting the head cover on the right hand side of the ball, we’re going to work on swinging the club head back down inside that head cover and then making sure we swing it past the head cover on the left hand side of the ball as well. If we do that and we keep the club face pointing at the target throughout the impact position there so the club face is pointing at the target as it strikes the ball, you’re going to hit a great straight golf shot and you’re going to cause your — correct your slice and you won’t see that left to right ball fly anymore.