Hitting a slice is a frustrating — and common — miss for beginning golfers. It’s a ball flight that’s not only ugly, but also robs you of some serious power. If you want to get the most out of your game, you can’t be hitting a banana slice off the tee.
The trouble with a slice is that it can be difficult to fix on your own. When weekend warriors see the ball spinning off to the right, they try to swing to the left to combat it, which causes the path to get even more out of sorts and actually makes their slice worse.
To get the ball to quit slicing, you have to dial in two key components — you face and your path. If you can get the face more square and your path out to the right, you’ll see that slice turn into a baby draw, giving you more power off the tee and a more consistent ball flight.
Here’s a video from GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jonathan Yarwood that breaks down the “magic move” you need to fix your slice.
“It’s always caused by a similar thing,” Yarwood says. “What I see with a lot of amateur players that slice it is the upper torso starts the downswing too early. They unwind too early so the lead arm gets too steep and the shaft gets too steep.”
Instead of starting the downswing with the upper body, try instead to initiate your move toward the ball with your lead hip.
“Make sure you start down with a bump of your left butt cheek,” Yarwood says. “Keep your left butt cheek moving towards the target. Keep your back to the target for a fraction of a second so you surf towards the target a little bit so that lead arm has a chance to relocate across your chest.”
Once you start initiating the downswing with the lead butt cheek, you’ll be able to effectively shallow the club on the way down. With this shallowing move in place, you can swing out to the right with a closed face and turn that slice into a draw.
“Get it shallower,” Yarwood says. “Start down with that lower body, and you’re going to get rid of that slice once and for all.”
