TeeBox TIPS: Slices caused by the most common error in golf



 

Golf is certainly not an easy game. I’ve been playing and teaching for half a century and still keep learning and losing balls. It is, however, the greatest game ever invented. With that in mind please consider the following ideas.

There are several ways to get a golf ball to fly consistently towards the target and they all involve clubface and body rotation. The goal is to blend these rates of rotation easily, consistently and powerfully. Here is the good news for each of you: Hip rotation speed is not directly related to clubhead speed. Proper sequencing of forces is more important to speed.

I want all my students to understand that slices are caused by the center of the chest rotating past the ball faster than the clubface. It’s the most common error in golf and is fueled by the common use of terms like turn, hip pivot, clear the hips, whirl, rotate and open up.

Slices are cured by altering your rates of rotation. Accomplish this by having a stronger grip with your thumbs rotated behind the shaft, which creates more clubface rotation, which gets your back to the target more on your backswing and slows down your chest and shoulder rotation on the downswing (which gives your clubhead more time to catch up).

Mike Dero is a PGA teaching professional at The Rookery Golf Academy. He can be reached at dero@swspotlight.com

Mike Dero is a PGA teaching professional at The Rookery Golf Academy. He can be reached at dero@swspotlight.com

But by far the most effective and easiest rate of rotation to change is the free and natural rotation of the upper arms, elbows and forearms through impact with relaxation. This relaxed freedom along with the design of the golf club, which has most of the club weight in the toe, will rotate the forearms at precisely the moment that the clubhead passes the center of your chest every time. It’s a physical law of nature. It feels wonderfully free and consistent and doesn’t require thrust or force and certainly not spinning of the hips or shoulders.

So my golfing friends, stop trying to rotate faster, and instead try to let the clubhead return in front of your chest and touch the ground. The body needs to improve club movement by staying out of the way and harnessing the swing forces, not mucking it up. If your golf game seems forced and complicated consider the phrase “Rotation in golf is an effect, not a cause.”