Do Baseball Swings To Fix Your Driver Slice!!

One of the most requested lessons that I receive is to fix someone's Driver slice. Before I do I'm always very curious to know whether their slice is a common theme all throughout their bag. Often when I ask this question sometimes they are convinced that it's happening only with the Driver but once I have them start warming up, what tends to happen is that the slice begins becomes visible with the shorter ones and then gets progressively worse with the longer clubs.

The reason why it becomes progressively worse is that if you have a bad habit of 'coming over the top', (steep swing) when the club gets longer, you start to increase the speed of the swing and thus exaggerate any slice spin you may have. Also the decrease in loft also accentuates this problem. What my recommendation always is when fixing this issue, is instead of just practicing your Driver, go back to your 8 iron and work on your swing mechanics. The reason is two-fold. Firstly all swings are the same so if you fix your 8 iron swing, your swing will also improve for your Driver. Secondly when working on your swing with the 8 iron, you will be able to practice longer as it is quite exhausting only using Driver.

Now to fix the Driver slice directly, the best way is to imagine doing Baseball swings. Just position the club parallel to the ground and rehearse swinging around the body on the same plane. While doing this you also want to rotate your hips back and through. Now once you put the club back on the ground, you want to have the same motion. You want to feel the club moving around the body on approximately a 7 o'clock position which is slightly inside and then entering into impact at this 7 o'clock position. If you do this you will cure the 'over the top' position and have the club hitting the inside of the ball which creates 'draws' or at least straighter shots.

Now to ensure you're able to do this effectively, you also want to have the alignment square which simply means having the feet, shoulders, knees and hips parallel left of the target. You also want to have the ball position opposite your left heel and right shoulder tilted. Lastly when swinging on the same plane back and through, ensure also you are moving onto your front foot on the follow-through.

If you are having trouble with slicing your Driver, just contact me at David Waters Golf located at Emerald Lakes Golf Coaching Centre.