Cure for the Slice

What is worse than the slice in golf? Maybe getting stuck in traffic on the LA freeway. So, you can simply go another direction to avoid the freeway. To avoid the slice is not that easy.

There are several reasons a golfer slices and there have been thousands of articles written on how to correct the problem. I am here to give you one answer that you may not read that much about.

You have been informed of ball position, grip, swing path, feet position, swinging over the top and clubface opened at address. You probably have not heard that much about position of your shoulders at address.

I have been fighting a slice in my own game for some time and have made all the changes that I thought were possible to correct this abysmal imperfection in my swing. I reduced the slice into a large fade with many of the corrections that I made, but that just is not good enough for me. I always played a draw and have lost 30-50 yards in this dramatic change of my swing.

Then, a complete stranger I was playing with told me something that alarmed me. My shoulders were wide open.

What does that mean? Well, my alignment is parallel to the target if you lay a club down on the ground along my toe line. My hips are square to the ball at address as well. But....my shoulders are aiming probably thirty yards to the right of my target (I am a lefty).

How does this happen? The more your game leaves you, the more you start to change things to compensate and they are not always the right changes. I started getting a fade instead of my normal draw. The more my ball flight started off to the right, the more I began to open my shoulders along the flight path that the ball was taking. This was not an intentional change, but rather a subconscious change that was beyond my control, or knowledge at the time.

Why did this change happen? It would appear that the more my ball faded, the further forward I placed the ball at address. In theory, the more forward the ball, the more likely the club-face has time to square up, or even close a little to correct the fade. But, if I began to open my shoulders during this change in ball position, my club-face was merely slapping across the ball as it moved in an arc and thus produced the larger fade and eventually the slice.

Now, it is back to basics. Square up the shoulders. Move the ball back into proper position and swing from the inside to the ball to produce the draw flight once again.

Hope this helps. Hit 'em long & straight!