What Causes a Golf Slice and How to Stop It

⛳️ Using body rotation and sway strategically can dramatically change your club path and shot shape in golf.

🧑‍🔬 Measuring your own movement patterns is key to understanding and improving your golf swing, rather than copying pros blindly.

🔄 Emphasizing rotation helps produce a fade, while increasing sway encourages a draw shot.

📊 Individualized coaching using tools like OPTIMOTION is more effective than generic advice based on what top players do.

00:00:00[Music] So, stopping slice of a driver. A little cheat code I've been using with lots of golfers, and I think OPTIMOTIONwill show this quite clearly. I'm going to hit two shots. I'm going to hit one where I try and slice it. >> Cool. Did I get you with a tea then? >> Nope. You missed me. We're good. >> Now, there's a good >> There's pretty typical. Yeah, >> that's a wave goodbye slice. >> Correct. >> And then I'm just going to do one where I'm just going to start. I might not

00:00:29draw cuz we'll talk about why it might draw or not. But I'm just going to do one which going to start more down the right. So where a slice of kind of wouldn't start. >> Mhm. >> So two very different movements. So which will look on optim motion. That one is trying to draw. But see they're starting in very different directions. >> Very different starting direction. >> Shaping very differently. >> And I'm using a combination of turn and shift to try and get that to really

00:00:53change club path. So I'm not thinking about >> butchering club path at all. I'm doing it more with how I'm orientating my body. >> Love it. >> Should we have a look? >> Let's take a look. So Mark, we've got the two swings that you made. All right. Uh let's talk about it from the down the line or the side view first. So obviously slice over here would be my guess and not slice over here. >> Yeah. So the cheat code if you like. So 49° closed with my shoulders at this

00:01:18point compared to 75° close with my shoulders at this point. This is where arm lead arms kind of parallel to the ground in the down swing. >> Considerably more rotated. Correct. >> Not open cuz hasn't got to that point yet. You can see it's both closed, >> but this one considerably more closed. So, more rotation works as a moving the club out action. >> There you go. >> Where the one on the left, if we go to the front on view, >> this is really interesting. When you go

00:01:45from the top of your back swing to this position in the down swing, tour players move about 2 in towards the target. Y >> Okay. So, you can see in your slice swing, very different movement pattern. you're almost anchor

00:02:04that shift towards the target. So talk a little bit about how that helps create the path that you want. >> So basically as I said from the down the line if I rotate it pushes the club out. So that's going to push my arms out the club out. There's no recovering that unless you do some pretty funky moves down at the bottom. That's throwing that path from out to in. So it would make no sense for me to get across on this one with that club path. It would be a disaster. So what happens is the sway

00:02:29then falls into place by just staying back. It doesn't want to go forwards cuz I know I've got the club out in front of me. >> This one concentrating more on lateral. So down swing just swaying across that naturally just drops the club. I didn't have to butcher move club path at all. And then the rotations that would happen down nearer impact is what's throwing that club finally out towards the ball. So I'm delaying the rotation in my mind and using sway to hit the draw to hit

00:02:58the slice. I'm emphasizing rotation and taking sway away. Now for lots of amateurs, they don't realize or feel that the club has got out in front of them this swing. >> Yes. >> So they then also subconsciously don't put the sway in as well. It's a subconscious action. So they might watch a video and go, I need to do, you know, get my hip sway changed. Well, it might not be that. It's one or the other. Which is why measuring to find out exactly what you are doing is just key

00:03:23to making this improvement. >> Absolutely. And so the hip sway, like you talked about, it helps keep your turns closed longer. So when you do that, that keeps the club further behind you. That helps you swing more into out. Uh, another piece, if we kept this rolling, we could show you the difference in the amount of shoulder tilt that you have. >> So loads more tilt in the sway. >> Bingo. Yep. So, as you move the center of your pelvis more towards the target, it makes it easier to tilt your

00:03:45shoulders to the right. So, like both of those factors help to get the path where you want it to be versus thinking about trying to keep your turns closed more or swing more into out. Like you can, this is where it's really cool to use kind of the OPTIMOTION stuff and you talked about using the body mechanics versus just telling somebody to swing more into out. Well, when you teach them how to move their sways towards the target, that helps get the path where you want it to be

00:04:07>> 100%. And that's the cheat code. If you wanted to fade it more, just rotate as hard as you can. Try not to sway. If you want to start working on some draw shape patterns more, practice swaying loads more and leave rotations behind. Just let it rotate out towards the club. The amount of students I get working on this. Just sway loads and take rotation out. And they say things like, "Well, that's a fault, isn't it?" >> Well, not if it gives a good club path, >> correct?

00:04:30>> Because it's only a fault if we're all at zero. >> Bingo. >> If you've got loads of rotation and not much sway, then you need loads more sway. Well, that's I think that's the difference between a good coach who knows what he's doing versus somebody who's maybe just teaching off of like a system of saying, "Well, everybody does this or everybody is like this is where you can use OPTIMOTION and tour patterns to say, well, yeah, the best players in the world do this, but you don't

00:04:51actually need more of it." Or, "Yeah, the best players in the world do this. You need as much of it as you can get." Like, that's where you can really use this to diagnose individuals versus just throwing everybody into a box and saying, "Well, you got to do this because this is what Tiger Woods does." >> Totally. >> Well, that's not the way to teach golf. >> Yep. Love it. [Music]

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