“How do I fix a slice?”

That question gets asked of me more than any other, and it’s what most of my lessons revolve around. Actually, for some golfers, curing a slice is even more important than scoring lower.

Not every slicer is created equal, which makes my job on the lesson tee exciting. Below, I show the flaws of a typical slicer, and offer a plan of how to fix it depending on numerous variables.

Note: All explanation is based on a right-handed golf swing. 

The Typical Slicer

There are two things I have to do in order to successfully fix a slice:

1. Shift the path farther right than it is currently so the player can hit a push draw or a pull draw, depending on their skill-level.
2. Shift the face farther left of the path than it is currently so the ball will move left after it leaves the club face.

You can see that the golfer pictured above has a path (the blue line) that moves well left of the intended target (-11.9 degrees) and a face angle (the red arrow) that points right of the target (1.4 degrees).

As most GolfWRX readers know, the ball mostly begins in the direction of the face angle at impact and curves away from the path with a centered hit. So in the example above, the face is right of the path by 13.4 degrees. That will cause the ball to curve to the right with a 16.7 degree spin axis. Couple this with the face angle at impact pointing right of the target by 1.4 degrees, and you get a ball that starts right and goes farther right — the familiar banana-slice.

Here’s my challenge as a teacher. Fixing a slice depends on this player’s skill-level, practice time, coordination, goals, etc. The best option for long-term ball striking success would be for the player to shift the path more to the right, but what if the player cannot physically manage this change? Or what if they don’t have the practice time necessary to do so?

In this case, I would work with the golfer to shift the path as much as possible, but focus on shifting the face angle more leftward so the golfer can hit pull draws. “At least the ball didn’t go right,” they will say. Over time, we can start working on a more in-to-out path, but I have to work slowly so a golfer can still maintain a certain level of playability.

OK, now that we’ve identified that the path is too leftward, how do we go about fixing it?

The FIX

• This player’s shoulders are positioned too far left at address, causing the club to track leftward on the downswing.
• We must square this player’s body to the feet, hips and shoulders, and also align her a touch to the right so the path shifts more rightward.

• With the alignments more square to one another and the body aimed a touch right, you can see that the path is still left (-3.9 degrees), but it’s much better than the -11.9-degree leftward path we saw earlier.
• If this is the best the golfer can do from here, I might work on moving the face a touch more leftward. That will create pull draws, which aren’t the best option, but at least the ball is going left and the golfer didn’t have to rebuild their swing in the process.
• If the golfer has the ability to shift the path rightward, then we move on to altering the sequence of the pivot so the club transitions more under rather than over. If not, we help shift the face left of the path, hit pulls, and learn to play with them.

Let’s say that through altering alignments of this player and restructuring the pivot on the way down that we now have the right shoulder moving “back and down” into its delivery position, thus the path is now 5.9 degrees from in-to-out as shown above. The last issue is to shift the face just left of the path.

Currently, the path is indeed from in-to-out, but the club face at impact is still right of the path by 1.6 degrees, causing this ball to hang right.

We know that the starting direction of the ball is controlled by the face angle at impact, and a push draw is hit with a path that is to the right and a face that is left of the path, but right of the target. With the average player, at first all you want to do is make sure they shift the face angle leftward at impact, EVEN if it’s too much. We can always adjust that later with driver’s settings, a grip change, changes in vertical swing plane, ball position, etc. The bottom line is that we must have the face left of the path at impact for the ball to move left. In the photo above, we just adjusted the driver’s settings to promote more of a draw and the face retuned to a position consistently left of the path.

As stated earlier, I’m not too upset that this player hit a pull. The face was left of the target at impact (-2.3 degrees), and because she is a high-handicap player she only wanted to see the ball move left in the air.

Teachers have many directions they can go during a lesson, but I try my best to choose the one that best fits the goals and practice time a player has based on my experience on the lesson tee. With some players, I choose a simpler lesson plan, but with others I might choose a more long-term plan for total eradication of the flaw. It all depends, but fixing the puzzle of a slicer is how I spend most days on the lesson tee.

Remember: To fix a slice, shift the path to the right and the face to the left!