CHAPTER ONE: WHY DO I SLICE?

When asked this question on the lesson tee most pupils look at me as though it is a trick question. It is not. I have even stumped players on very low handicaps with this one.

It sounds simple enough – why do you slice? The main answer I get is “I keep lifting my head”. This statement seems to be used to cover every swing fault known to man. I can say without any word of a lie that even if you have someone hold your head down for you, you can still slice; you can even miss the ball. (I have actually done this for many of my pupils to prove this point). Another answer I get is “my feet were pointing to the right”. It does not matter where your feet are pointing, whether you are on flat or sloping ground, or whether you are wearing a blue golf shirt – there is only one thing that causes the ball to go where it does.

The reason a ball is ‘sliced’ is because the clubface was “open” at the point of contact with the ball. Another way of saying this is that the clubface was pointing to the right of your target (for right handers) at the point of contact with the ball.

For a ball to be ‘hooked’, or curve to the left, the clubface must be “closed” or pointing to the left of your target at the point of contact with the ball.

For a ball to go straight, the clubface must be pointing at the target when it contacts the ball, and the clubhead must also be traveling straight to the target at the same time.

This is a law of physics; there can be no other possibility. Clubface points left; ball goes left. Clubface points right; ball goes right. There have been thousands of books written about how the clubface might arrive at the ball in this position, but this book is not one of them. In this book you are going to learn how to take control and make the clubface arrive at the ball the way you want.