Why You Need This:

In this video, you’ll learn how to fine-tune your swing and hit a golf ball straight.

This is the 7th video in my “Never Slice Again” series.

Now by this point in the series, hopefully your slice is nearly gone…

And you’re starting to get the ball to draw a bit from right to left.

Most importantly, I hope you’re starting to have some fun…

And not worrying about chasing wild slices that escape off into the thick stuff.

The previous videos in this series concentrated on combating the slice…

And even overdoing it a bit with a draw (and sometimes hook).

This video is going to focus on straightening out your shots.

You’ll fine-tune your swing like the pros and hit dead straight shots.

Once you know exactly what’s happening when you’re slicing and hooking,…

…you’ll make small adjustments and work your swing until your shots split the middle.

And by fine-tune, I mean you’ll be adjusting your club face and club path.

Now you’ll rarely hit a perfect shot…

But by making small adjustments back and forth…

…you’ll start hunting flags and lowering your scores!

What's Covered: Drills to straighten out your ball flight.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 5:09

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, and welcome back to the fixing your slice series.

We’ve worked through a lot of drills, hopefully by this point you guys have worked through the videos prior to this, and now you’re getting that ball to curve quite a bit amount right to left, really getting that draw on there, having a lot of fun seeing that ball turn over.

The previous video were all about getting that hook, getting that draw, getting that ball to see it turn over right to left. This video is geared on straightening that out.

So if you haven’t watched those previous videos, go through those, do all the drills before you get to this one. This is where we’re going to straighten it out to get that dead straight shot.

Ideally what we’re going to do when we’re playing well, we’re going to hit that ball dead straight. So I’ve got my ball set up here, I’ve got just a stick kind of going toward my target, that white flag in front of us, another stick outside the ball.

Now I can see this dead straight path, this dead straight target. We’re going to work through some drills that are going to help you get that perfect ball flight.

Let me go ahead and remind you from video number 1, we talked about the ball’s going to start wherever the face is pointing.

So if I make contact and my face is pointing directly toward the target, that ball is going to start about 80 percent the direction of the face.

Now if my path of the club is swinging right to left, my path is swinging to the left, my ball is going to fade away from the path every time. So if I’m right to left across the ball with my path, my face is dead straight, the ball is going to start toward the target and then fade away.

If I’m doing the opposite of that, my path is out to the right and my face is straight, my ball is going to start toward the face, go away from the path again, which means it’s going to start straight and move to the left.

So knowing this, now we can adjust any time we see any kind of ball flight to get that dead straight shot. If I see a little bit of a fade, if the ball starts straight, or starts to the left and then it fades, I’m going to be able to adjust my face and my path to get that straightened out.

This is a big key, I think this is one of the most important things we can learn from this. Most people have the idea that when you get to be a good player, when you get to where you can hit the ball well, that you just go unconscious, you make a swing, and the ball flies exactly where you want to.

Well, that never really happens. Nobody ever gets to that point, we’re always looking at the ball and fine-tuning the ball flight to get it to do what we want.

Maybe we’re fading a little too much, we have to work to get it to what feels like a draw, and that really gets that straight shot.

So your feel is always going to be a little bit different than what’s happening in the result. Let’s go ahead and start one out.

I’m going to make a swing, we’ll see where the ball flies. You’ll be able to see this on camera, and we’ll talk about the feeling that I should have to get that dead straight shot.

Let’s go ahead here. Now if I contact this and the face is square, the path is dead straight, this ball will fly directly toward the target. We’ll see how I do.

All right, so that ball started almost dead on the target, and that ball faded about five yards or so to the right. I felt like I was going to hit that thing just dead straight on a string right toward the target.

The result is the ball started out straight and faded a little bit. So I know based on the ball flight laws we just talked about there, my face was going directly toward that target, because that’s where the ball started, and I know my path was going a bit to the left because that’s the direction my ball curved.

Now, the feeling I’m going to need to hit a dead straight shot is actually the opposite of that. I’m going to need to feel like my path is a bit to the right, and my face is straight again. My face is already good, because the ball started straight.

So on this swing, I’m going to feel like I swing a bit more out to the right. I’m going to feel like my face is straight again, and it should get me a nice straight shot. So even though I’m feeling like I’m out to the right, in reality my face is moving square.

Let’s try that out and see how I do. There we go, so I actually overdid that one. That ball started a little left of the target, maybe slightly, and then drew a few yards.

So I know somewhere between those, I just basically overdid a good thing, and got the ball to draw too much. So I know somewhere between those two feelings is exactly where I want to be.

I’m going to hit one more, trying to split the difference in those two last swings that I made, and see if I can get one going really straight here.

There we go, that ball was straight as a string, curved less than a yard either way, almost right down the middle.

I’m just constantly fine-tuning. That never ends, for as long as you play golf, you’ll be constantly fine-tuning your path, fine-tuning your face, fine-tuning every little detail to get the exact shot that you want.

Don’t be scared of that, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. For this drill what I want you guys to do is go ahead, set down about 50 golf balls. After every swing, you’re going to adjust your path, adjust your face to get that ball to straighten out.

You’re basically going to do the opposite of whatever bad result you got, to get that ball flying straight.

Good luck, get those balls straight on a string like a laser beam, that’s going to be the best way that we can hit it. Work through these drills, good luck to you guys. I’ll see you all soon.