Nothing saps the fun out of a round of golf quite like watching your ball peel off to the right, landing in the trees or the next fairway over. That big, banana-shaped slice is the most common and frustrating miss for amateur golfers. The good news is that a slice isn't a life sentence, it’s a symptom of a few specific things happening in your swing. This guide will walk you through exactly what's causing your slice and provide a clear, step-by-step game plan to turn it into a powerful, straight shot.
Before we can fix it, we have to understand the cause. At its simplest, a slice is a ball that curves excessively from left to right for a right-handed golfer. This happens due to one simple combination in physics: your clubface is open relative to your swing path at the moment of impact. While that sounds technical, it’s actually easy to visualize.
Imagine your club is swinging toward the left foul pole in baseball (this is your swing path), but the clubface itself is pointed toward the centerfield wall (this is your clubface angle). When the ball is struck, that combination imparts sidespin, causing it to slice.
The most frequent culprit behind this combo is the classic "over-the-top" swing path. This happens when your first move from the top of your backswing is to throw your hands, arms, and right shoulder out and over the proper swing plane. This forces the club to cut across the ball from outside-to-in, promoting an open face and that weak slice. Our entire fix is built around learning to swing from the inside-out.
Fixing a slice isn’t about one "magic" tip. It’s about getting a few fundamentals right in a sequence. We’ll go through them one by one, starting with how you hold the club and finishing with how you move through the ball. Be patient with yourself, as these changes can feel a bit strange at first.
Your grip is the steering wheel for the clubface - it has the biggest influence on whether the face is open, square, or closed at impact. Most slicers use what’s called a "weak" grip, where the left hand is rotated too far underneath the club. This makes it very difficult to square the face at impact, in fact, it promotes an open clubface.
We’re going to adjust to either a neutral or a slightly "stronger" grip. Here’s how:
This stronger grip will feel weird at first, maybe even like you’re going to hook the ball. Trust it. This simple change makes it much easier to naturally rotate and release the club through impact, which is exactly what we want.
Over time, many slicers develop a sneaky compensation: they aim their entire body far to the left of the target. The thinking is, "If I know I'm going to slice it, I'll aim left and let it curve back to the fairway." Unfortunately, this makes the over-the-top swing even worse. Aiming left encourages you to swing across your body to get the ball back toward the target, which just adds more slice-spin.
A slice often starts with a bad takeaway. Many players snatch the club back with their hands, pulling it too far inside, behind their body. From this "stuck" position, the only way to get back to the ball is to throw the club out over the top.
The feeling we're after is a "rounded action" - a swing that moves around your body, powered by the turn of your torso.Think of the first few feet of the backswing as a single unit: your hands, arms, and chest all start moving back together. As you continue to an athletic posture, you want to feel your torso and hips turning away from the ball. The idea is to rotate your body in a stable cylinder, not to sway your weight off the ball. As you turn, your wrists will naturally hinge, setting the club at the top. The goal is to get your back facing the target with your weight loaded on the inside of your back foot, ready to launch.
This is where the magic happens. Remember the over-the-top move? It’s an "arms first" sequence. The anti-slice move is a "body first" sequence. From the top of the backswing, your very first move should be initiated by your lower body.
It can feel like a slight shift of your lead hip toward the target. This small bump to the left starts the unwinding process from the ground up, allowing your arms and the club to drop down *behind* you onto the correct inside path. Slicers do the opposite, their shoulders lunge forward, pushing the club outside.
Here are two fantastic drills to get this feel:
Once you get the club swinging from the inside, the final piece of the puzzle is to allow the clubhead to pass your hands through impact. Slicers tend to have a "blocking" motion where they try to hold the clubface square with their body, but this just leaves it wide open.
With your new, stronger grip, you'll feel like your right hand is rotating over your left hand as you swing through to the finish (for a righty). This isn't a deliberate wrist flip, it's a natural release of the energy you’ve built up. A great thought is to feel like your chest keeps rotating all the way through to face the target, and finishing with 90% of your weight on your lead foot in a balanced, proud stance.
In short, fixing a slice comes down to a clear system: first, build a solid foundation with a neutral-to-strong grip and square alignment. From there, focus on a rotational backswing and, most importantly, on starting your downswing with your lower body to drop the club into the "slot" and swing from the inside-out.
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