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The post Cure your slice for good (seriously!) with this foolproof trick appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.

The slice is the most common miss among recreational golfers. Go to any range on the weekend and you’ll see what I mean. Hackers just can’t seem to stop hitting that big banana ball.

The shot shape typically afflicts higher-handicap players, but it can even give more accomplished players fits. It’s a miss that loves to rear its head at the worst moments.

We’ve covered the reasons for a slice quite a bit on this site, but here’s a quick refresher. There are two components that cause a slice: 1. An open clubface at impact. And 2. A swing path that is severely out to in. Combine those two flaws and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a slice.

Today, we are going to focus on correcting the swing path — and in a way that you won’t even need to think about when you stand over the ball. For more on that, we turn to GOLF Teacher to Watch James Hong, who shared a great tip with us last year at Cabot Citrus Farms.

A foolproof slice fix

When golfers slice the ball, they tend to come way over the top and have a swing path that is severely out to in. And to fix the slice, you’ve got to get your path closer to neutral. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, as anyone who’s tried to make swing changes to achieve this can tell you, it’s rarely that easy.

However, if you try this exercise that James Hong uses with his students, you can get that path moving in the right direction without even thinking about it.

“I call it the swimmer’s motion,” Hong says. “When I ask them to hold an alignment stick [across their chest] and do a crawl motion, they’ll move this way. If you notice, that’s the same pattern or motion as an over-the-top move.”

Instead of moving your shoulders forward and over the top like you would when crawling, Hong asks his students to instead rotate their shoulders backward like they would when swimming the backstroke.

“That’s actually encouraging a little more of a drop to the inside,” Hong says. “Some golfers like to focus on rerouting the club or shallowing the club. So this helps encourage that.”

It might sound like a fix that’s too good to be true, but Hong has used it numerous times with students he’s taught — and with great success. One such time, he approached a golfer on the range with an out-to-in path around 11 degrees and asked him to try the swimmer’s motion. Then, he simply asked him to hit the ball again with no other instruction.

“The very next ball he was only two degrees out to in,” Hong says. “Again, there was no instruction. Just doing this and then jumping right back in there to hit another ball.”

If you’re a chronic slicer, give the swimmer’s motion a try next time you’re on the range. Once you get your shoulders moving like you’re swimming rather than crawling, you’ll be able to shallow the club better than ever before.

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Every golfer has struggled with a slice while playing this game. Heck, even the best players in the world have hit a big ole banana ball off the tee one time or another. It’s a shot shape that every golfer knows and fears.

The most common victims of the dreaded slice are high handicappers and beginners. If someone shoots over 100 on a regular basis, there’s a good chance they are a consistent slicer.

As anyone who’s struggled with a slice knows, curing the ailment can feel impossible. In truth, though, curing your slice is easier than you think. All you need to do is make a few simple tweaks to your setup.

For help with that, we turn to Nick Clearwater, a GOLF Top 100 Teacher and GOLFTEC’s Senior Vice President of Player Development.

How to fix your slice

We teach a lot of high-handicap players at GOLFTEC, and for many of them, a slice is their typical ball flight. With most of them, the cause of that slice comes from a poor setup.

When we analyze a pro’s swing with our OptiMotion technology, we them set up with their shoulder slightly open and with their shoulders tilted about 15 degrees away from the target. With almost all chronic slicers, their shoulders are more open and level in relation to the target. This setup is a recipe for hitting that dreaded banana ball.

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To fix this, we need to make just a few simple setup adjustments. Close your lead shoulder slightly (move it toward the ball), and then twist your lead arm toward the target until your elbow is pointing at the flag. To help you get in this position, put your lead hand more on top of the club like you would with a strong grip. Do that before every swing, and it should get you closer to those setup numbers we see with the pros.

Once you get these setup positions down, should should start to see a more neutral ball flight. It’s as easy as that.

If you want to learn how to correct your slice under the guidance of a GOLFTEC coach, , book a swing evaluation here.

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Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.

Just about every beginning golfer struggle with the same miss when they first start playing. That shot is, of course, a slice.

For whatever reason, when we first pick up a club and start swinging it, we tend to come way over the top. This, coupled with an open face, leads to big, banana slices.

Not only are slices ugly to look at, they also cost you tons of distance. And while you can easily play a fade or cut as your typical ball flight, a slice doesn’t give you that luxury.

Luckily, fixing a slice is easier than you may think. All you need to do is get your path a little closer to neutral and manage the face just a bit better. For more on the former, we look at a drill used by two-time major champ Xander Schauffele.

Xander’s anti-slice drill

As an accomplished PGA Tour pro, Schauffele obviously doesn’t struggle with a slice the way a 20-handicap does. But that doesn’t mean we can’t apply the principles of the drill he doing above to our own games.

As you can see in this video shared by Callaway Golf on X, Schauffele has placed a bucket of range balls in front of him just inside his target line. The goal of the drill is simple: avoid hitting the bucket.

By placing the bucket on the inside of his target line where he releases his club, Schauffele is making sure his path does not get too out-to-in. And when he avoids it, he knows he’s swinging from the inside and not coming over the top.

For all the slicers out there, this is a great drill to try. Start out slow at first (so you don’t hurt yourself if you do hit the bucket) and work your way up to full speed. This will teach you what it feels like to swing from the inside and keep you from that dreaded over-the-top move.

From there, all you need to do is make sure you have your clubface in the correct place. But fixing that will have to wait for another day.

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If you’re a player who tends to slice or push everything to the right, you’re not alone. Ask 100 amateur golfers what their miss is, and I’d bet 90 percent of them would describe this exact result.

While there are a number of different reasons for slicing the golf ball, one common issue is that players just don’t have the right golf grip.

Think about it: When you don’t grip the club properly, you’re not going to square up the face as it comes through impact, meaning it stays open to cause the slice. It’s frustrating, but it’s actually an easily fixable problem.

So how can you learn the right golf grip in order to hit straighter shots? GOLF Top 100 Teacher Cameron McCormick offers up a simple hack — and it only requires two golf tees. Check out his tips below.

How 2 tees can ensure the proper golf grip

When you’re trying to fix your golf grip, you don’t need to overthink things. Instead of using a bunch of different training aids or watching some confusing instructional videos, McCormick says using two tees with provide you with instant feedback to help solve the problem.

“Your grip could be the reason why you’re missing it to the right,” McCormick says in the video above.

He then dives into how two tees will validate your hand position.

“Take two tees, place them between the thumb and the index finger, and then place your hands on the club,” he said. “If your tees are pointed parallel to the leading edge of the club, or even further towards the target side in the leading edge of the club, that’s going to highly correlate to you missing it to the right.”

Instruction

Instead of having the tees pointed towards the leading edge, McCormick says they should be aimed a little more forward — which helps close the clubface.

“Rather, we want the tees aimed some amount to the trail side or the right of the clubface,” McCormick said. “So get those tees pointed to the right of the clubface and it’s going to solve your slice forever.”

This is a great hack to use during your next driving-range session, just to make sure everything’s lined up properly and you ensure solid contact. So give it a try and start seeing straighter shots almost immediately.

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That line you draw on your golf ball to help you align putts can also help you nix a nagging slice off the tee. 

For most recreational players, slices result from swinging too much out-to-in or over the top. You need a swing that moves slightly right of the target as you come into impact. So, when you place the ball on the tee, angle your putting line so that it points slightly right. 

This small visual cue goes a long way in helping you position your shoulders at address and guide your club on the correct, anti-slice inside-out path. 

When you look like this — with the club approaching the ball from the inside — you can’t miss. 

Jason Birnbaum is a GOLF Top 100 Teacher who is the director of instruction at Manhattan Woods Golf Academy in West Nyack, N.Y.

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Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you play smarter, better golf.

It’s safe to say Rory McIlroy is feeling pretty dialed with his swing.

After a slow start to 2024, McIlroy seems to have found something over the last several weeks. At the Zurich Classic, alongside teammate Shane Lowry, McIlroy nabbed his first victory of the season. In his very next start, at last week’s Wells Fargo Championship, he won again.

“I definitely took a lot from [winning in New Orleans], especially with how I played at the weekend there,” McIlroy said. “And I think this week was just a continuation of how I felt. I felt like I drove the ball incredibly well at New Orleans, especially over the weekend. I drove the ball great again this week.”

When you can drive the ball like McIlroy does — especially when he’s grooving his high draw — it’s an incredible weapon. Multiple times at Quail Hollow he was able to take advantage of that weapon, routinely hitting wedges into par-4s that measured out over 500 yards.

“This is a golf course that lets you hit driver a lot and you can really take advantage of length off the tee if you have it,” he said. “It’s one of the big factors why I’ve been able to do so well here over the years.”

It’s not likely that any of us mere mortals will ever develop the prodigious driving skills that McIlroy has ridden to a Hall-of-Fame career. However, there are some positions in his swing that even the weekend warriors can benefit from — particularly if you struggle with a slice.

Rory’s anti-slice move

McIlroy has made millions relying on his go-to high draw. It’s not an easy shot to execute, but he’s made the shot look simple for his entire career.

As noted above, hitting the ball like the four-time major winner is unlikely. But if you’re trying to fight a slice in your own game, studying McIlroy’s swing is a good place to start.

During last week’s broadcast of the Wells Fargo, CBS utilized its GOLFTEC Optimotion technology to demonstrate the position that McIlroy gets to in the downswing compared to where a slicer gets.

When McIlroy gets about halfway through the downswing, the clubhead is still inside his hands when you look at it from down the line. But if you were to watch a weekend warrior with a slice, you’d see the clubhead getting outside the hands at the exact same spot.

“Most average players at home, they get that club out in front of their hands,” CBS analyst Trevor Immelman said. “And that is the thing that causes the dreaded slice.”

If you want to improve your shot shape, and turn that slice into a draw, you have to get into this position during the downswing.

“Just allow that clubhead to drop behind you in transition,” Immelman said. “Hit up and out on it like Rory does.”

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The post This ‘frying pan’ TikTok slice hack helped me break 80 for the first time appeared first on Golf.

I wish I could say my greatest golf swing fix came to me via divine intervention.

That an angel came down from on high to pass along the definitive advice to curing the shanks, or that a wise old golf teacher whispered the secrets of golf into my ear in his final act before slipping into the great beyond, Yoda-style.

“The tops, you have.”

“Stand closer to the ball, you must.”

The truth is that the single piece of advice that changed my life forever as a golfer and keyed the first two sub-80 rounds of my career came from a source so painfully ordinary, involving a tool so painfully accessible, I am largely embarrassed to share it with you.

But because I work for GOLF.com, and because my bosses have informed me that our audience is generally interested in the kinds of one-stop fixes that can change an (otherwise ordinary) golfing life like my own, I will swallow my pride for long enough to share the story.

The fix that saved my golf life came from TikTok, and it required only a frying pan.

OK — before I lose you entirely, some backstory.

It was summer in England, and some GOLF.com coworkers and I were jonesing for a week’s worth of links golf in the early evening hours following the Open Championship. On our first night of the trip, we arrived at West Lancashire, a wonderful links test set along the Wirral coastline.

It was supposed to be an epic round, and maybe it might have been … had I been able to keep my golf ball on the face of the earth. But that, dear reader, I was not capable of doing at West Lancs, where the worst push-slice miss of my life resulted in my running out of golf balls on the 13th hole.

It is a deeply embarrassing thing to run out of golf balls with five holes remaining in your round — and even more so when you realize you’re surrounded by people who work in golf. Add in the fact you’ve been struggling with your golf swing for the last six months and suddenly you’re looking at a full-blown existential golf spiral.

But there’s good news about that, too. Most of the people I play golf with are pretty sharp players, which means they’re also pretty sharp knowers of the golf swing. So, when I awoke two days after our West Lancs tee time to a text message from my colleague Dylan Dethier with swing advice, I wasn’t particularly surprised.

“A little tip for all the slicers in this chat,” he’d said.

I opened the text to see the TikTok below, which contained a slice fix I’d never seen before.

In the video, a creator named TheConnectedInstructor shows how recreating your golf swing by gripping a frying pan can reveal your swing tendencies. Essentially, those who swing the frying pan and find it is facing towards them at impact have an open face, causing their slices. Those who swing with the frying pan and find it is facing toward the ground at impact have a neutral or closed face.

It’s a simple drill — one that took me roughly 15 seconds to do — and it revealed, to no great surprise, that my clubface was more open than a McDonald’s drive-thru on the way home from the bar.

I practiced the new move a few times and headed out for another round. The change was apparent from the first tee box. My swing was mechanically no different, but the fix at my impact position had made all the difference. Mega-misses with my driver were now steady fairway finders; flubbed iron shots were now flushed. Nobody, myself included, could believe the difference.

I returned home to New York the next week and snuck out for a late afternoon 18 at nearby Bethpage Red. As someone who’s had his fair share of 15-minute fixes in his lifetime, I kept my expectations tame … until about the eighth tee box, when I realized I was three over for the day. Just a week earlier I’d carded a triple-digit score at West Lancs. Now a 79 was well within my sights.

I nervously pegged my way around the back nine at the Red battling a strange new enemy (pressure) and tapped in on the 18th with a furious fist-pump to secure my life’s first 79.

It was a euphoric moment — one I don’t anticipate will happen many more times in my golfing life — and it was almost entirely thanks to the TikTok I’d seen just 10 days earlier.

It’s been close to a month since that first moment, and I can say confidently the changes haven’t worn off. My scores have ebbed around the 80 mark ever since I made that fix, and my consistency has reached an all-time high. All thanks to a TikTok … and a frying pan.

I wish the story were better, but when it comes to golf, I can now say definitively that boringly good is much more fun.

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The post Our most-read slice fix of 2022 featured 10 ways to straighten out your ballflight appeared first on Golf.

Missing fairways is never fun, but missing fairways because of a slice is mildly infuriating. There’s a certain helplessness you feel when hitting a banana slice, and most golfers have no idea how to fix it.

It’s no surprise that an anti-slice story was a popular one on GOLF.com this year. With a multitude of causes and golfers willing to do just about anything to fix their slice, a story about the fix being a hit is a no-brainer.

The story comes courtesy of GOLF Top 100 Teacher Kellie Stenzel and it contains 10 potential fixes for your slice, including clubface angle, posture, grip and so much more.

Check out Kellie’s advice in full below, or click here to read the original article.

There may be no greater power loss than a slice. The ball sometimes starts out ok and then makes this depressing curve, robbing you of all of your potential distance and power. You can fix that slice, but it starts with understanding what causes it in the first place…

1. Open club face

The most common cause of a slice is an open club face. This open club face will give you contact that isn’t square and often feels like a “side swipe.”

The most common cause of an open club face is an incorrect grip as your hand position will directly reflect in the face.

You can make this adjustment by turning one of both of your hands away from your target. In other words, if you were a right handed golfer, you would rotate your hands to the right. When making this adjustment, often times it needs to be adjusted more than you think.

2. Thumbs too on-top of the grip

One of the more common misconceptions when it comes to a “weak” grip causing an open club face is golfers thinking their thumbs should go straight down the grip.

Your lead hand in particular should appear exactly as it looks when this arm hangs and in most cases that would have the thumb off center and opposing the hand for relaxed support and control.

3. Arms separating from body

One of the great stabilizers of a square club face is to keep your underarms relatively close to your body throughout your golf swing. If on your backswing or your downswing your underarms move away from your body, it is very easy to open the face.

What can help you to do this properly is to understand the the golf swing is circular in nature. If you allow this natural curving to happen as your under arms stay closer to your body throughout your are much more likely to have a square club face that also engages the body in the swing, additionally adding power.

4. Keeping lead arm straight too long

Width and tension in a golf swing can easily be confused. Having width can add power, but if width is misunderstood to mean lead arm stays straight, this can make it really difficult to allow the lead elbow to relax and fold on the forward swing. If the lead arm stays too stiff for too long on your forward swing, this will not only hold the club face open and making the ball slice, but also delays the release of the club face and the speed associated.

One of my favorite drills to combat this is just to take practice swings with your hands split apart. This will almost force your lead arm to relax and fold on your forward swing, helping to deliver a square face at impact.

5. Bad posture

Posture that is too upright and now allowing some bend forward from the hip joint will directly affect your ability to make a proper backswing.

Too upright posture will tend to put weight too much back into the heels and this is often accompanied with a back swing that is too upright and lifted and this will produce a slice path on the downswing.

And while all golfers are built differently and postures may vary, allowing some bow from the hips so that the arms can relax and hang will allow you to be balanced and athletic.

Being balanced and athletic will allow you to make a proper backswing for you.

6. Not flexible enough

Some of us are more flexible than others for sure. Often times you will see women with really long backswings and this is often because they tend to be more flexible.

If your flexibility is limited, it can be really difficult to get proper body rotation on your backswing. The rotation of the body on the backswing allows the club to get deep enough on the backswing, therefore allowing the proper downswing path.

If you fall into this category, you can make an adjustment in your set up to make it work today.

You can take your back foot and drop it back into a closed position as if your lower body is a bit turned away from the target. This will immediately create effectively more flexibility and allow you to get the club into a more powerful position in your backswing and help to improve downswing path and more distance.

7. Lefty playing righty (or righty playing lefty)

If you play golf from the side other than your dominant arm this can often lead to a ball that slices. I learned this when working for Mike Adams and it has served many of my students very well.

When you play golf from the side other than your dominant side, that lead arm is so strong is tends to delay natural release of the club face on the forward swing.

You can adjust for this by taking your trail hand grip and turn in under more to be able to see your finger nails. For example, if you are a lefty playing righty, if you take your right hand and turn in under or more to the right, this will allow this hand and arm that aren’t as dominant to have a chance to square the face at impact.

8. Bad ball-position and tilt

Do you hit most of your clubs straight to a nice draw, but slice your driver? I see this all the time and most often it is a ball position issue and understanding how your shoulders should be slightly different with your driver than when the ball is on the ground. When you hit your driver your ball position should be more forward. Ball position that is too far back can cause a slice and/or a pop up.

As your move your ball more forward it is also important that you allow your shoulders to tilt back and away from the target. Your lead shoulder should get higher and your back shoulder lower. This will allow your shoulder line to match your body lines and directly affect your swing path as well as allow the club face to have time to get back to square at impact.

9. Not understanding shoulder line vs. the target line

So little of the time does the club head spend on the target line and golfers who seek to do this will often result in a power-robbing slice.

Going back to the concept that a golf swing is circular. When you make your backswing and your upper body rotates so that your shoulders are turned away from the target.

From the top of your backswing, if you were to allow your arms to swing down your shoulder line, this would produce a great path on the downswing – feeling much like an underhanded throwing motion.

10. Incorrect foot flare

One of the great challenges when studying golf is knowing when information is correct for you. The foot positions that are great for the the tour players, might not be appropriate for anyone with flexibility limitations. A square back foot and a flared forward foot will affect the swing path and produce a slice for many golfers who have limitations.

If you slice the ball try the opposite. Flare your back foot and square your forward foot. This will help increase your ability to rotate back and also slow your body rotation down on your forward swing, both helping with path and sequencing of body and arms.

The post Our most-read slice fix of 2022 featured 10 ways to straighten out your ballflight appeared first on Golf.

The post How trying to hit a slice (or hook!) can help cure your swing woes appeared first on Golf.

The post How trying to hit a slice (or hook!) can help cure your swing woes appeared first on Golf.

If you’re like most golfers, you likely have a hole in your game — and it’s in your head! I call it the law of intention and attention. 

Upon meeting a new student, even if he or she has been playing for years, I’ll always ask, “What are you paying attention to during your swing?”

By far the most common answer is “I’m trying not to think about anything.”

But the second most common answer is more revealing. It usually relates to controlling body parts: “I’m trying to rotate my trail arm,” or “I’m trying to create torque in my torso.” 

These responses always give me pause, because while swing thoughts are fine, there’s a big difference between thinking about how to do something with a club versus what you are actually doing to make the club behave in a certain way. 

Instruction

To hit the ball properly, you need to swing the club so that it connects with the turf in the right place — i.e., on the target-side of the ball. There are several possible explanations for poor contact: your club is too high on the ball, too low, too far left (toe hit), too far right (heel hit, or maybe even a nice shank!), or too far behind (chunk). 

How you process that information — and react to it — is the key to improving. 

Let’s take a common swing flaw: the dreaded slice. 

If you’re a slicer — and assuming your grip is not the culprit — try this fun exercise. Hit that slice on purpose! But don’t change your setup at all. As you swing, focus only on opening the face. Then, over the course of several swings, experiment with opening the face at different moments: in your backswing, at the top of your backswing, in your transition, etc. The goal is to “catch yourself in the act” by heightening your awareness of the action that’s causing the clubface to be open at impact and the ball to slice. 

Now, do just the opposite. Shut down the face. If you make the ball hook hard left, don’t call it a bad shot. Instead, rejoice! That’s what we’re trying to do here. You’ve, in fact, done a fantastic job of getting rid of your slice. 

Instruction

Once you’re comfortable both intentionally slicing and hooking the ball, you can then start to home in on correcting your clubface position relative to the club path.

As the old saying goes, “To explore is to learn. Everything else is just information,” and that’s what you need to do to improve at golf. Hit the slice. Hit the hook. Hit it straight — by which I mean straight enough. This process of changing your intention from shot to shot and making adjustments as needed serves a dual purpose: You are learning both how to pay attention and how to execute shots. 

Don’t worry about trying to hit the ball perfectly straight. Even the girls and guys on tour can’t figure out how to hit their marks every time. You’re always going to have shots that stray from your target — the goal should be to reduce your shot dispersion. 

And that process starts with paying attention — during every swing! — to what you had intended to do.

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Welcome to Play Smart, a game improvement column and podcast from editor Luke Kerr-Dineen to help you play smarter, better golf.

There’s no better time to be a golf nerd than right now, in this current moment.

For all the charm of previous eras, golfers today can use technology in ways we previously had never thought possible. Coaches can study their students’ swings more in depth than ever — and emerge knowing more than ever.

One of the companies on the forefront of this movement is Sportsbox AI, an app which uses the camera on your iPhone to generate a 3D model of your swing while also providing advanced metrics. In a recent Sportsbox webinar with GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jeff Smith, who teaches Davis Riley, Viktor Hovland and Patrick Rodgers, among others, Smith showcased the technology and, along the way, revealed an interesting nugget about what’s potentially causing your slice.

You can subscribe to the Play Smart podcast on Apple here, or on Spotify here.

The cause of your slice

Below you’ll find the 3D images of two different golfers. The top golfer struggles with a slice. The bottom player is on the PGA Tour. For both, Smith highlights two key metrics: chest and pelvis sway halfway through the swing and at impact. Look for yourself below, and you’ll notice the slicer’s chest is slightly ahead of his lower body.

“His chest is swaying toward the target at a much higher rate than his pelvis,” Smith says of the slicer (top golfer, below). “That’s the exact opposite of the way you see top level golfers do it.”

This, Smith explains, prevents the golfer from tilting away from the target on the downswing, which causes them to send the club over the top and leads to a slice.

When Smith pulls up the Tour golfer, you can quickly spot the difference. Whereas the slicer had his pelvis three inches toward the target and chest almost six inches toward the target in the first frame, the Tour player has those rolls reversed. His chest is just three inches toward the target, and his pelvis is five inches toward the target.

“You’ll notice the pelvis out-race what the chest is doing,” Smith says. “You get quite a big differential between the pelvis and the chest…the pelvis is shifting forward, but the chest is kind of staying back.”

Put simply, the Tour player’s lower body is ahead of his upper body throughout the downswing (the result of good “sequencing”), which helps the club drop into the slot on the downswing and avoid a slice. It’s a good thought for the rest of us, presented in a way we’ve rarely seen before.

You can watch the full video right here:

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