The Technical Details Of The Golf Push Slice (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
The Technical Details Of The Golf Push Slice (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

With any ball flight it’s important for us to understand how the ball is actually doing, what it’s doing in flight, there’s nothing more frustrating as a golfer than hitting bad shots, and not understanding what might have caused that bad shot to happen. So if we’re looking specifically at a push slice, a push slice is a shot that starts right of target and then moves further right of target. And if we understand ball flight dynamics, let’s understand that we’re striking the ball at the middle of the club face first because hitting it off centre can cause small problems but if we take this as read that we’re hitting the ball at the middle of the club face and we’re still seeing a push slice, we need to understand what the relationship between the club face and the swing path is happening to make that ball do that. Now if a ball is curving from left to right in flight, so if it’s moving anywhere from left to right in flight, that tells us that the swing path is more left and the club face is more to the right. So effectively you’d say the club face is open to the path. So the path would be more left, the club face would be more right and that would impart spin on the side of the ball as we strike the shot. And also we need to understand that the club face is about 85% responsible for where that golf ball starts its flight.

So if your ball starts down the right side of the fairway chances are the club face was pointing somewhere down the right side of the fairway. But then the ball moves further out to the right for a push slice, so that would tell us the swing path was more left than the right side of the fairway. So your swing path could have straight at target and the face could have been open to the target and that makes the push slice happen. Your swing path could’ve been five degrees right of target or five degrees right the fairway even, down that right side. But if the club face was 10 degrees right of target that would have made the ball push slice out even more. So every time you hit a golf shot, and we need to stand back and just diagnose that flight rather than just smashing the club in the ground, throwing it in your bag and walking off looking for a lost golf ball. We need to look at that ball flight and we need to think how have I created that, how has my club face and my swing path relationship created that push sliced flight golf ball? Once you’ve got a good understanding of how that’s happening hopefully we can do something about correcting your push slices. 2015-10-09

With any ball flight it’s important for us to understand how the ball is actually doing, what it’s doing in flight, there’s nothing more frustrating as a golfer than hitting bad shots, and not understanding what might have caused that bad shot to happen. So if we’re looking specifically at a push slice, a push slice is a shot that starts right of target and then moves further right of target. And if we understand ball flight dynamics, let’s understand that we’re striking the ball at the middle of the club face first because hitting it off centre can cause small problems but if we take this as read that we’re hitting the ball at the middle of the club face and we’re still seeing a push slice, we need to understand what the relationship between the club face and the swing path is happening to make that ball do that. Now if a ball is curving from left to right in flight, so if it’s moving anywhere from left to right in flight, that tells us that the swing path is more left and the club face is more to the right. So effectively you’d say the club face is open to the path. So the path would be more left, the club face would be more right and that would impart spin on the side of the ball as we strike the shot. And also we need to understand that the club face is about 85% responsible for where that golf ball starts its flight.

So if your ball starts down the right side of the fairway chances are the club face was pointing somewhere down the right side of the fairway. But then the ball moves further out to the right for a push slice, so that would tell us the swing path was more left than the right side of the fairway. So your swing path could have straight at target and the face could have been open to the target and that makes the push slice happen. Your swing path could’ve been five degrees right of target or five degrees right the fairway even, down that right side. But if the club face was 10 degrees right of target that would have made the ball push slice out even more. So every time you hit a golf shot, and we need to stand back and just diagnose that flight rather than just smashing the club in the ground, throwing it in your bag and walking off looking for a lost golf ball. We need to look at that ball flight and we need to think how have I created that, how has my club face and my swing path relationship created that push sliced flight golf ball? Once you’ve got a good understanding of how that’s happening hopefully we can do something about correcting your push slices.