- Well hello, Adam Bazalgette here,
I'm a three-time PGA Teacher of the Year
and today's subject we're gonna tackle
is an important one, how to stop slicing your driver.
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So how to stop slicing your driver, well let's take a look
at perhaps, you know, what's definitive about it:
the order you should try to fix things in
and I'll give you specifically four tips that I think
will really help, if you'll follow these in order.
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ScratchGolfAcademy.com is my home website, full courses
in every aspect of the game there, thanks.
One thing's definitely true to say, I'm telling you,
if you hit the ball reasonably solidly, let's just assume
that for a moment, it is always true to say that
when you slice it, the club face is open in relation
to the swing as you're hitting the ball.
Now watch me slow-motion in the hitting bay hit one,
you'll see just what an affect this has.
OK, so I'm gonna have a little come over the top swing here,
the club face is open but not extraordinarily so,
you just watch how the ball reacts down there,
and I hit that ball relatively solidly
and one of the things they've really learned in the
golf business in the last 20 years is that if you have
the swing and the face, the face trumps the swing.
The ball will go much more towards the face angle
than the swing direction so it's crucial that you start
to match those up.
Alright, as we get started here, first off, don't try to fix
everything at once.
I suggest you try to get the club face better first
and I'm gonna show you four tips on that here.
Believe me, if you're losing a lot of balls right,
if you try to make yourself swing more to the right
it's not only gonna be very difficult to do but
you'll actually hit the ball worse if you do it because
the ball's gonna go even further to the right.
So let's work on that club face, here's four thoughts
to help you.
So grip is crucial if you're gonna square the club,
relax this lead hand, let your fingers curl,
let the club slot down in the fingers of that hand
so that that pad is completely on top of the club.
When you look at it from this angle, the wrist joint
should be well on that side of the shaft.
OK, point number two, it's important to understand that
when you're trying to close that club face,
and if you haven't been able to do that effectively before,
this can easily happen to you.
Don't think that it requires a massive amount of shaft,
whip and chaotic sort of motion down there.
All we're talking about is closing the face, so we're not
trying to get out of control, we're trying to
get the face shut.
Let's have a little look at a drill,
I think will help you.
OK, impact bag, that's gonna help us with
point number three, and that is you have to have
a deceleration snap pattern, if you like,
or a deceleration acceleration pattern
before you'll solve this.
Now here's what I mean by that, if you're gonna crack
a whip, you've gotta stabilize the handle to crack energy.
I teach golf all day, slicers have had such a time
hitting the ball to the right that invariably they pull
so hard with their arms and shoulders trying to get that
ball on to line, there's not enough of a deceleration,
there's not enough resistance to get the club to snap
square, there's nothing for it to resist against.
So practice with a bag, or just imagine you have one
or hang a little sheet there or something, a pillow.
Very smooth swings and what you're trying to feel is,
much like snapping the whip, I feel like I begin
to decelerate, not stop necessarily but decelerate
and pot the energy to the golf club.
Now you may say, well I thought you just said
in the previous tip, we don't want all this activity
in the club.
If you watch baseball, it's a good example, I'm not a
baseball expert, they have a lot of snap in there
but when they get to impact, it's stable.
You don't see the bat crumble all over the place so,
hey sure we do want some pop but we want it to be stable
at impact like that, not chaotic and active.
The key with this as well is, when you get to the bag,
have the face aimed left.
So we're gonna try it again, I've got my deceleration
pattern, I'm not trying to square the club with my body,
and I just crack the face so it's closed like that.
You will have the feel, it's a critical component.
So number four: play around with the club face.
Do some mid-speed swings, I'm gonna come over the top
a little bit on this one again, and play around with it,
in this case I've snapped the face much more square
and actually ball went slightly left but you can see
the ball is more or less taking off true to the swing.
Hey, no matter, that's over here
and my ultimate target's over there, I'm trying to get used
to the face and don't try to do it just perfectly,
do a few where you get some wicked hooks, leave a few open,
then go back to trying to just square it up
and get that straight ball flight.
That's the way you want the ball, transferring off the club.
OK, so let's assume we're doing a little bit better
with the club face, that those four tips are helping out.
Let's at least look at swing path a little bit.
Certainly a slicer almost always swinging too far
to the left, so how can we straighten that out?
Now there can be many many reasons why the path goes
to the left, but let's at least give you a drill,
I think simple, at least give you a feel, shall we say,
for how to do it correctly.
So if I had a bucket full of sand and sand wasn't gonna come
out of here, that would be tossing
the contents straight out.
Picture this in your mind's eye, try it in front
of the computer, you don't have to have a bucket.
If I wanted to toss the sand way over to my right,
look at how the body attitude would be,
my hips would go forward, my body would tilt back,
and that sends the content of the bucket as such, out there.
Conversely, if I wanted to toss it like a slicer behind me,
my hips would stay back and I'd go around my body like that.
So, here's a little drill I think is good.
I've been lucky enough over the years, recent years,
to become reasonably friendly with Andy and Mike
Bennett and Plummer, the founders of Stack and Tilt
and they call this drill the Flying Wedge,
it's a great little drill so, here's what I would recommend.
Tee the ball pretty high, we're not gonna swing very hard,
we're not gonna try to do a lot with the golf club here.
And once you're set up, picture the bucket toss,
push your hips forward, your upper body will feel more
back and more closed, if you like.
And just make a little half swing,
I might hit this 120 yards.
From that position and you will start to get
a real sense of it.
Let's have a look from this angle.
So make sure you tee it nice and high, I'm gonna take
my set up here, then I'm gonna give the hips the bump
forward, that tilts my spine, and you can just see
I'm set up to swing a little more in this direction,
again not too much speed, not too much action in the club.
Just get set there,
and feel that path of that swing going a little
more out to the right.
You can lock on to that feeling, cycle back through
these things, you start slicing it a little bit again,
go to the four tips, get the face, then come back
and work on this stuff.
You'll have to do it a lot of times, you'll fix your slice
in time, I promise.
So I hope that helps you with how to stop slicing
your driver, ScratchGolfAcademy.com's my home website,
full courses in every aspect of the game there,
plus personal coaching with me if you're interested
in that and of course I hope you'll consider subscribing
to the YouTube channel, lots of free content there,
thanks again.
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