The seven deadly slices

The first priority for us when we play is to keep the ball on the short grass - easier said than done it has to be said, but the game is far easier from the fairway. The tour players are no different from you and I and for those trying to retain their Tour Cards over the coming weeks, keeping the ball in play will be of paramount importance.

For the club player, the slice shot is normally the killer from the tee. The one that curls violently to the right, then bounces further into trouble. Sounds familiar?

It's probably the most often asked question in golf: "Why do I slice?" And almost certainly the most misunderstood. In my experience, most golfers don't know why they hit slice after slice after slice.

Most people think they slice because they swing from "out-to-in," or because they "cut" across the ball. But neither is correct. If you slice, it is for one reason and one reason only: The face of your club is open at impact relative to the path of the clubhead.

It's true. While an out-to-in swing does exaggerate your problem, it does not, in itself, cause you to slice. What it does do is take time away from you. When you swing to the left, the club is coming down on top of the ball, so you have less time to square the clubface - as opposed to those who make a big turn, have a wider arc and come into the ball from the inside. They have more time to square the clubface.

The same is true of cutting across the ball. The only way you can cut across the golf ball is with an open clubface. You can swing across all you want, but you will never hit a slice until the face is open. Where that open clubface comes from is the subject here.

Look in these seven places and you'll find the particular cause of your left-to-right ball flight. You'll also find the one cure that should work for you:

1) The wayward left hand

The key to hitting straight shots is the back of your left hand. If the back of your left hand is aligned to the right of the target at impact, the face will be open and you will hit a slice. If the back of your hand faces the target at impact - or even feels that it's facing the target a little before impact - and your grip is fairly neutral or strong, there is no way you can hit a slice.

2) The too-weak grip

A weak grip has your hands turned too far to your left. With this grip, you can square the back of your left hand and still slice. So it follows that if you are squaring your left hand at impact and still slicing, then your grip is too weak. In that case, turn your hands to the right on the club into a strong position. A stronger grip makes it easier for you to turn your left hand over and means you don't have so far to go to get the clubface square.

Take care, though. If you're trying to rotate and square your left hand, but still can't do it, then there is something wrong with your swing - not your grip.

3) The Sin of Steepness

If you're like most golfers, you tend to swing the club on too steep a plane, which again makes it difficult for your hands to turn over and square the club through impact. This tendency is a natural consequence of practicing off bare lies or hard mats where you have to hit down even more to make a solid hit. Trouble is, that downward hit also encourages a slice. If you swing the club almost straight up and down with your hands and arms, your arms are going to reverse rotate and you will block the face open through impact. So you need the club swinging more around your body. Try to feel as if you're making more of a baseball-type swing. Practice actual baseball swings above the ball. Alternatively, hit shots off a sidehill lie, the ball above your feet.

4) The terrible shoulder tilt

This is another version of an upright swing, with the same result. The difference is that the steepness stems from a tilting of the shoulders on the backswing and through-swing. This time your swing is upright not because your arms are lifting the club up and down, but because your body is tilting, not turning.

You want your arms swinging around your body, which you can do only if you are making more of a level shoulder turn. Practice without a club. Put your arms across your chest, then turn your shoulders level, back and through. Once you have that level-turn feel, try to reproduce it with a club in your hands.

5) Over rotation at 2 o'clock

If your swing shape is good and you're still slicing, the problem could be that you're rotating the clubface too much as you move it away from the ball. In effect, you're opening the face too much and giving yourself that much farther to go to square it again through impact. Try to swing the club square to your arc on the way back, rather than rotating it open. "Two o'clock" is a good checkpoint (See pic).Your thought should be to keep the clubface looking at the ball longer on the takeaway.

6) The mis-matched loop

This is another way your downswing can get too steep. It usually stems from a misguided attempt to fix the steepness in your swing by making more of an inside move away from the ball. So you turn level and swing flatter on the way back, but unfortunately you get too flat and have to get steep to get to the top, then even steeper coming down. So you're in the same place coming down - too steep. You just got there in a different way.

The cure here is simple. Reverse your loop. Swing the club up and out away from the ball to the top. Then drop it to the inside on the way down. That's the opposite swing shape to the one you had previously. If anything, you will hit a hook. If you don't hit a right-to-left shot, exaggerate the reverse loop even more.

7) The cupped left wrist

This symptom can stem from any one of the previous faults. I tend to see it more in those who have longer and looser swings (those who bow their wrists into closed positions tend to have shorter and quicker actions), but it doesn't really matter. A "cupped" left wrist at the top of your backswing is common among slicers. Instead of cocking your wrists up, you have bent them sideways.

You should have your left wrist flat at the top. Try to cock your wrists up on the backswing, flattening your left wrist at the top of the swing. This will put your clubface in a square position - and "square" is the cure for "slice".