That banana-shaped shot that starts left and sails helplessly into the trees on the right is the single most common frustration on the golf course. It steals distance, destroys scores, and makes the game feel incredibly difficult. The good news is that a slice isn't a life sentence. It’s caused by a few specific and fixable physical movements in your swing. This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, the real causes of your slice and give you the actionable drills you need to finally straighten out your ball flight.
Before we can fix anything, we need to understand exactly what’s happening at impact to cause a slice. Think of it less as a big, complicated swing fault and more as a simple physics problem. In golf, the clubface is like the rudder of a boat, it has the biggest say on where the ball starts and curves. Your swing path - the direction your club is traveling through impact - tells the ball which way to spin.
A slice is the result of a specific combination:
Our entire mission is to neutralize these two factors. We’ll teach the club how to swing more from the inside and how to return to the ball squarely. Let’s get to work.
Your hands are your only connection to the club, making them the "steering wheel" for the clubface. An improper grip is often the primary reason golfers can't stop the face from being wide open at impact. The most common slice-inducing grip is a “weak” grip, where the hands are rotated too far to the left on the club.
Let's build a stronger, more neutral grip that encourages the clubface to close naturally through the ball.
This will feel strange at first - perhaps even a bit uncomfortable. Stick with it. This new "stronger" position makes it infinitely easier for your hands to rotate and deliver a square clubface at impact without you even having to think about it.
Your starting position pre-programs the kind of swing you're going to make. Slicers often set up in a way that makes an out-to-in swing path almost unavoidable. The most common fault is aiming the body - feet, hips, and shoulders - way left of the target.
You might think this helps to account for the slice, but it actually makes it worse. Aligning left encourages you to swing even more to the left, steepening your angle of an attack and exaggerating that out-to-in path.
Here it is. The move that causes about 90% of slices. The "over the top" move is when you start your downswing not with your lower body, but with an aggressive throw of your hands and shoulders from the top. This pushes the club *outside* the correct swing plane, forcing you to swing across the ball from out-to-in. It happens fast, and it’s a pure power-killer.
The fix involves changing your entire downswing sequence. Instead of starting with the hands and shoulders, we need to feel the downswing starting from the ground up.
This "pump drill" is designed to re-train your downswing sequence and help you feel the sensation of the club dropping into the correct inside path, or "the slot."
This drill grooves the feeling of a proper transition. It promotes a shallow, powerful, in-to-out swing path that completely eliminates the over-the-top move.
The final piece of the puzzle is the release. Slicers are so afraid of the ball going left (a hook) that they subconsciously prevent the clubface from closing. They hold the face open through impact, often resulting in a "chicken wing" finish where the left arm bends awkwardly.
A powerful, straight shot requires you to *release* the club. This means allowing your right hand and forearm to rotate over your left hand and forearm through the impact area. It’s not something you want to consciously flip with your hands, it should be the natural result of a good body rotation and a passive arm swing.
Imagine you're skipping a stone across a pond. You wouldn't finish with your palm facing the sky. Your arm and hand would naturally rotate and turn over after you've released the stone. The golf release is a similar feeling.
A great indicator of a full release is your finish position. After your swing:
Holding this balanced finished position tells you that you’ve committed to the shot and allowed the club to release its energy through the ball, not at it.
Fixing a slice comes down to fixing the fundamentals: strengthening your grip, squaring your alignment, and most importantly, re-sequencing your downswing to eradicate that "over the top" move. It takes patience and dedicated practice with drills, but by understanding the causes and cures, you now have a clear roadmap to hitting straighter, more powerful shots.
As you work on these changes, sometimes you need a second opinion right on the course. With Caddie AI, you get an on-demand golf coach in your pocket. If you find yourself in the trees after a bad slice, you can take a picture of your lie and we can instantly give you the smartest strategy to get back in play, helping turn a potential blow-up hole into a manageable bogey. You can also ask us for a quick swing thought or a mental reset to help you commit to a better movement on the very next tee shot, giving you the confidence to trust your new swing.
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