Beginners Golf Swing Blog

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When you’ve given as many golf lessons as I have, it doesn’t take much thought to figure out that slicing is golf’s most common swing error. In fact, many weekend players who attend my golf instructions sessions for the first time slice, with both men and women slicing about the same amount. And they all want to know one thing when they first come to me: How do I cure my slice?

Curing your slice isn’t easy, especially if you’ve had it for a long time. You’ve ingrained the swing fault in your muscle memory and making changes to it will feel uncomfortable and strange. But the benefits of slicing less far outweigh the costs. Hitting straighter shots more consistently not only keeps you on the fairway, it also cuts strokes from your golf handicap because it produces better approach shots.

Causes Of A Slice The causes for a slice are well documented in magazines and often discussed in golf lessons. Four things trigger a slice:

1. Upper body turns too soon

2. Hands are too high at impact

3. Upper body outraces the club on the downswing

4. Grip end gets too far in front of the clubhead at impact.

These errors leave the clubface open at impact-a major swing error. How major? Recent research by one club manufacturer indicates that a club with an S flex shaft with 9.3 degrees of loft and the face open at impact about 2 degrees results in a shot that finishes 16 degrees off the target line. Obviously, you must get the clubface square at impact to hit the ball straight.

Slices and Cures Let’s look at the four most common types of slice and consider four drills you can practice to help cure your slice. Your divots will tell you what kind of slice you have.

1. Opening Up Too Soon (The Pull Slice) This is perhaps the second most common slice type. Its generated by your right shoulder moving out and over on the downswing, causing the clubface to come into the ball on an outside-in swing path. Your hands sensing that the club is coming from the outside hold the clubface open to the path, resulting in a pull slice. With iron shots your divot points left of target.

Drill: Hit practice balls with your back foot moved back a few inches from the target line and your heel down. Swing the club back making a full shoulder turn. The idea is to feel as if you’re swinging the club primarily with your arms and shoulders through impact. Let your body respond to the swinging of the arms and the releasing of the clubhead.

2. Handle Too High At Impact If your hands are too high at impact just before and through the ball, you’ll cause the clubhead to get stuck behind you. Often this happens because the golfer tries to clear the hips too fast or doesn’t trust the loft of the club to get the ball airborne. Whatever the cause, you end up with a slice. There’s little or not divot with irons.

Drill: Take your normal address position. Have a friend hold a club so the grip hovers just above your hands. As you swing back and through your friend should keep his club’s grip end steady. Concentrate on letting your hand pass just under his club.

3. Body Outraces Club (The Push Slice) With the push slice your ball starts to the right of your target, then goes even farther right. Usually this means that your body outraces the clubhead. Some people call this a lunge. To compensate some people try flipping the club through the ball with their hands in an effort to square the clubface to the ball.

Drill: Use your driver or fairway wood. Tee the ball up. Take your address as you normally would but with your left leg positioned slightly inside the ball. Now stand only on your front foot. Swing the club back and through and try hitting the ball. Alternate hitting five balls on one leg, then with your normal swing. 4. Handle Too Far Ahead Of Ball Getting the handle too far ahead of the clubhead is probably the most common cause of a slice. The primary problem is back of forearms rotation. If you make a strong strike of the ball and it starts straight down the target line before curving to the right. With your irons the divot would be square to the target line.

Starting with knockdown pitches, rotate your left forearm (right-handers) during the swing so your left hand knuckles face the ground just after impact, with the clubface turning down. Let your right hand come off the club. Once you get the hang of this, use other clubs. This drill increases clubhead speed and squares the clubface for a straighter shot.

Keep in mind as you practice these drills that you may not want to turn your slice into a draw. Hitting a fade has its advantages, too. The key, regardless of the type of shot you develop, is hitting a dependable, more consistent shot that keeps you out of trouble and gives you control of the where the ball lands. The type of shot will cut strokes from both your scores and your golf handicap.

By: Jack Moorehouse

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There are a number of theories as to why a golf ball is sliced, but the most common reasoning is that the ball is struck from the outside to the inside of the target line. Although rather uncommon, it is possible for you to strike the ball from the inside to the outside. This can really be troubling, as it will slice the ball from the right to the left.

Another golf slice tip to help eliminate this frustrating habit is to loosen your grip. Sometimes if your grip is too tight, it makes it difficult for your hands to rotate at impact. This is a simple solution, but many times your grip is combined with another problem as well. If your shoulders aren’t turning and your weight doesn’t shift to the right at the top of the swing for right handed golfers and to the left for left handed golfers, your body will be ahead of the ball. This will cause your club to open at impact and slice the ball.

One way that many people try to compensate for their slicing difficulty is by adjusting the way they line up. For instance, if you are hooking it from left to right, some people will purposely aim further to the left with the hope of ending up in the middle of the fairway. The problem with this is that you are relying on your shot slicing every time and are adjusting to an already annoying problem. To fix a problem with another problem is setting you up for trouble.

The best golf slice tip that I can give you is to practice your stance and the way you shift your weight. The more practice you do on driving ranges and on the golf course, the better chance you will have of correcting your slice. If you can overcome the slice and begin putting the ball on the fairway more, your score will drop a drastic amount. It is frustrating because your slice won’t cure overnight, but with determination and patience you will overcome this nuisance of a problem.

By: Josh Spaulding

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Pulls are a common occurrence for most golfers. We occasionally reach back for a little extra and find our ball headed left toward who knows what rather than the intended target. If this is a frequent experience for you then you must either struggle to score well or you’re an expert at getting out of trouble.

Did you know that a pull and slice are related? That is to say that they are the result of the same fundamental golf swing flaw. With so many of us suffering with this issue the golf industry continues to develop technologies and techniques for its cure. The often cited “over the top” or an “outside to inside” swing path.

So the solution is very similar to that which fixes a slice. The golfer needs to develop an inside approach to the golf ball. While there are several suggestions and techniques to make this happen, I’ve found that they only serve to confuse most of us even more so than we might already be.

Our hope here is to simply to clear up the confusion and provide you with the easiest (for most) way to correct a pull swing fault.

To correct the flaw it helps to understand the cause. While there are a few different causes the most common is that the club head approaches the ball from outside the intended target line with the club face closed to that same line.

The cure will seem counter intuitive to keeping the ball from going left but I promise it will work to create an inside to outside swing path. And that swing path will prevent the pull. Give it a try sometime on the range if you doubt it will work just to test my point.

How to cure a pull

Set up with your body aligned slightly closed to the target line. That means dropping your back foot away from the target line an inch or two.

Close the club face a bit. Rotate the club face a bit toward the inside of the line.

Strengthen your grip. Rotate the hands away from the target just a bit.

Make a full shoulder turn. Turn the shoulders as close to 90 degrees as possible.

Drop the hands from the top. Once you’ve completed the backswing your next move should be to bump you hips forward slightly and drop the hands straight down toward the ground.

As the swing continues to flow smoothly the upper body turn will bring the club back from the inside to meet the ball on a square swing path.

There you have it. Practice this until it becomes a normal part of your golf swing. Whether you are dealing with a slice or a pull these swing tips will work to help correct it in no time.

By: Wayne Hudler

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I recently worked with one of my readers who asked me for a second opinion on a video swing analysis that he had just received that brought up an interesting point about adjusting swing plane which I thought I would share with you.

He went for the lessons with the goal of increasing his driving distance by 10-15%. He was also experiencing pushed shots to the right.

The video analysis revealed that his swing plane on the back swing was very flat. Being a large-chested man who lacked a little flexibility in his upper body, he had developed a tendency to “wrap” the golf club around his body on the backswing. The net result of which was a shallow downswing that came into the ball from a sharp inside-out club head swing path that often caused the pushed shot to the right.

What he needed to do to help correct the push problem and also improve his distance potential was to adjust his swing plane to a more upright plane.

This would cause the club head swing path to move more down the target line giving him more margin for error at impact, and it would create more potential energy of the back swing from a higher top swing position that would result in increased swing speed at impact.

His instructor correctly picked this observation up. However, the way he presented the fix for the problem was a little misleading.

His advice was to “raise the hands” more on the backswing which essentially was the end result that he was looking for that would come with a more upright swing.

The reason why I thought I would focus on this is that I often read and hear about “raising the hands” as a means of creating a more upright swing. This is also a technique used by some instructors to encourage more trunk rotation on the backswing to increase backswing torque and swing speed.

Why I say this is a little misleading is that the student is presented with an instruction that can create other problems with their swing. As it turned out, that was what happened with our reader.

His instructor was encouraging him to get his hands up above his head and shoulders which encouraged more trunk rotation and raised his swing plane which is what his instructor was looking for, but due to his lack of flexibility, it created a lot of muscle tension in his left side and also created a severe break of his left elbow…

Swing plane is not governed by your hand movement – it is governed by shoulder movement. The higher hand position is the “result” of a more up right swing, not the means to get there.

In order to adjust your swing plane, your focus has to be at the start of the swing – not at the end of the swing trying to achieve a result that many golfers have no hope of reaching due to their lack of flexibility.

Swing plane is affected by how you rotate your left shoulder – the more you rotate the shoulders “horizontally” around your spine the flatter the swing plane, as was the case with our reader.

To increase the swing plane angle, rotate your shoulders more “vertically” by driving the left shoulder down instead of around at the start of the swing.

Initiating the backswing turn with a vertical shoulder movement instead of “lifting the hands”, helps you to remain relaxed in your left arm and maintain a stable left side with no elbow break – incidentally, this also results in less risk of an early hand release from the top of the swing.

We all know that increasing backswing torque increases swing speed.

Rotating your shoulders more achieves this end. However, you will not generate any more shoulder torque by breaking the left elbow just to get your hands into a higher position – you end up loosing torque.

The reason why you have to break the elbow in the first place is because your shoulders will not turn any further. If they have reached their limit of flexibility that’s the maximum torque you will achieve from the trunk turn.

The left elbow breaks because the arm muscle are unable to match the tension that has been built up in the trunk turn. Once the break occurs you release the torque contribution from your arm muscles which essentially “opt” out of the total torque build up in the turn.

The net effect is that you loose backswing torque after the break occurs.

Breaking the left elbow also creates another moving part in the swing that has to be coordinated back to the straight position at impact making the timing of the swing more difficult.

Be very careful about what you hear and read about a “high hand position”. Yes, it is the ideal position for power and consistency in the swing that we see in every professional swing, but you have to have the flexibility to achieve it.

If you lack the flexibility, do not attempt this as you will create more problems with your swing than you solve.

Recommendations:

1. Never try to swing beyond your “natural” swing range which is what this instructor was advising our reader. Always swing within your natural range of flexibility.
2. A move to a higher swing plane angle is good for both swing consistency and swing speed – you get there by more vertical rotation of the shoulder that comes from driving the left shoulder downwards at the start of the swing – not by trying the raise your hands above your head.
3. Do not break the left elbow. Even though your hands may not be able to go beyond shoulder height, maintain a firm left side to retain backswing torque and simplify the timing of the swing.
4. In order to achieve more shoulder turn, you have no other choice but to improve the flexibility of your back muscles. – Go through simple lower back stretching routines every day for 2-3 weeks and you will increase your turn angle by as much as 10.


Good luck!

Regards,
Les

By: Les Ross

About the Author:

Like many weight-loss diets, many people think golf training aids and golf books are too good to be true. Many of the ads for golf training aids come along with hefty claims such as being able to knock ten strokes off of your game or by cutting you handicap in half. You have learned that if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. So which training aids or golf books will help you improve your game? Below is a training aid and a golf book that you can use in unison to improve your putting indoors or out.

1. The Putting Arc Deluxe

The Putting Arc Deluxe works because this putting aid is based upon natural body movement. This body movement can be quickly learned and repeated. With regular use, the results can be seen in a short period of time. The putter head travels in a perfect circle (radius R). The projection of this circle on the ground is an ellipse in the shape of The Putting Arc Deluxe. The putter is always on plane and the intersection of this plane with the ground is a straight line, the ball/target line. With the Putting Arc Deluxe, the club face is always square to the above plane. In addition, it is only square to the ball target line at the center line of the Putting Arc. You are learning an inside to square to inside putting stroke. In this perfect putting stroke, there is only one moving part. The hands, arms and shoulders rotate as one unit and no manipulation of the hands or arms are required to follow the correct path with a correct clubface.

2. The Art of Putting by Stan Utley

In The Art of Putting, Stan Utley’s golf book outlines his putting fundamentals for players of all levels, from beginners to very skilled. Stan Utley’s easy to understand method will allow you to develop a repeatable stroke. Utley introduces you to the fundamentals of the proper grip, posture, alignment, and stroke. The Art of Putting will give you guidelines for finding the correct putter for you and the type of stroke you have. In addition, how a putt should sound and how to read greens properly. No matter what your current skill level is, Stan Utley keeps his theories easy to read and to implement for all players from beginners to skilled players. Everyone can enjoy this easy read.

By: Brad Myers

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