Why You Slice

Understand the causes, and you can—finally!—stop going right.

- Ashley Moss

I grew up on the lesson tee. Sometimes taking lessons, but mostly watching my dad [teacher Mike Malaska] give them or listening to legends like Jim Flick and Bob Toski. Now I’m teaching, too, and I can say that one thing hasn’t changed: Golfers hit slices. And the more they use their instincts to try to stop those slices, the farther right the ball goes, which we’ll get to in a minute.

• That’s my dad playing the slicer (left), and me holding the rings. We’re showing the difference between the target and what a slicer sees as the target (more on that below). This demonstration sums up how we feel about teaching: Once you understand the root cause of a problem—a misconception, a faulty feel, an illusion—it’s easy to fix. Now let’s go to the lesson tee. —with peter morrice.

FAULT | YOUR VIEW OF THE TARGET MAKES IT LOOK LEFT

FIX | SQUARE UP TO SOMETHING A LOT CLOSER

• Here’s an exercise we do that shocks many golfers. Stand behind the ball and sight the middle of the fairway through an object, like the ring I’m holding in my right hand. Then take your setup and have someone move the ring until you see the fairway through it again—that’s the one in my left hand. Go back behind the ball, and see the difference. This visual challenge, called parallax, is caused by your eyes being to the side of the ball at address. Parallax makes slicers try to pull the ball to hit their target. But the more you swing left, the more likely the clubface will be open to that path at impact, which causes a slice.