Improve early swing pieces to fight your slice this season.

Logan Jackson, Cragun’s Legacy Courses

Whether we’re in mid-season form, or just starting off for the spring, the direction our golf ball is traveling is one of our largest concerns, and specifically if our ball is traveling rightward seems to be the most common directional frustration. Yet with a few simple alterations early in the swing, Saturday slicers can see some improvement in their flight. First our setup must be correct, specifically beginning with our alignment. Although the club face is the number one determinant of the direction of the golf ball, our body is a close second. When setting up, we want to see our feet, hips, and shoulders all pointing on the same line, which is preferably our target line. To correct for set up positions causing the ball to curve right, for a right handed player, we begin by bringing the left foot slightly ahead of the right at address also known as closing our stance. From here we alter our shoulders to match, by turning the left shoulder more rightward, and bringing it closer to our chin. A good checkpoint to use to assess this is to use either an alignment stick, or golf club and place one by your feet, and hold the other across your shoulders, if the two point in opposite directions determine which body part needs to be altered to match. The second step in directional correction is to alter the face in the takeaway. Many times players allow the face to open as they work away from the ball, leading to it being open at impact. Our checkpoint when improving this position is where the face is pointing when the hands are at waist height. If the face is aimed towards the sky, it is open, and should be corrected. Ideally we want the face pointing slightly towards the ground. In practice exaggeration of this position with having the face point directly at the ground, will help to reduce right curvature.