Why You Need This:

In this video, you’re going to discover how to stop slicing the ball once and for all…

And start hitting pure, powerful draws!

Slicing can turn a great, sunny day into a miserable experience.

It’s frustrating to feel like you’re getting a ton of speed coming into the ball…

Only to see your shots slice off into the weeds or even out of play completely.

Learn How to Stop Slicing with this Video Lesson

Throughout this video series, we’ll look into every facet of what creates a slice…

And what you need to do to fix your slice and start blasting draws past your friends!

You’ll see the different situations and drills that’ll build conditioning, awareness, and feeling to allow you to have the most control.

Watch this video now to get started!

What's Covered:

• detailed explanation of the slice
• detailed explanation of the fade
• exaggeration drill to combat slice

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 16:23

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, and welcome back. In this next series, I’m going to go over a few drills that are really going to help you to eliminate that slice forever.

I know how frustrating that can be, you guys feel like you’re swinging fast, you’re getting a lot of speed, you’re probably already getting really good club head speed, but then you hit the ball, it fades off to the right.

There’s no compression, there’s no distance there, and you get sick and tired of getting out-driven by those players that aren’t as strong or as fast as you.

So I’m going to help you to tap in to your natural ability, get that ball to draw from right to left, pick up a lot of distance, and I’ve got some great drills.

We’re going to start out with some exaggeration drills that are really going to help you get the feel for that, and then we’re going to fine tune that.

In this video, I’m going to walk you through step by step, exactly what happens when you’re hitting a fade, when you’re hitting a draw, and then we’re going to work from there to actually ingrain that nice, solid draw and more distance.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so the first thing to check is to really make sure that we are over the top. A lot of times people get confused on what over the top means, or how to measure this.

The best way to measure that is go ahead and put a stick lined up down your feet, pointed toward the target out in the distance. There’s a blue flag in the distance, this stick is pointing right to that, and my camera is lined up shooting down the line of my feet here.

So as I set up to this ball, now what I can do is I can draw what’s called the elbow plane. If you draw a line starting from the hosel of the club, working up through the bottom of your elbow, and that’s the line that you want your club traveling on as you’re coming down and through contact and striking the ball.

If I’m outside this line, so if I videotape myself just like we’re doing here, and I’m down, filming from down the line, and as my club is parallel with the round, if it’s outside of this line, now I’m coming over the top.

That’s going to give me an over the top slicing-type action, so my club is moving from right to left across the ball.

If I look and when I’m coming down my club is right on that line, or barely to the inside of it, that’s exactly where you want it to be wen it’s parallel with the ground in the downswing.

Then if I’m a little more to the inside of it, I’m actually what’s called underneath the plane. That would be some people that tend to hook, and that’s what we’re really going to work on in these videos in the future is get this exaggeration so we can feel that hooking-type swing, and then we’re going to tone it down in later videos in this series.

OK, so before we go any farther, let’s take a quick pause from this video, and I know what everybody’s probably thinking at this point.

I’ve seen a bunch of videos on the slice, if they were going to work, then I would already not be slicing and hitting that draw. So let’s just go ahead and see if the drills, I had Brian here take these drills, work on these for a period of about a week or two.

As he’s going through, this is the starting video, so we can see here as he goes back and stats down, now we’re going to see his club start to come well over top of this plane.

There’s the club head here, and as he comes farther down we can see that this club head is tracing kind of right to left across this ball, and it’s going to be the typical kind of over the top swing.

We can see how the elbow is bending up in a little bit of a chicken wing there, and the club is basically moving across the ball from right to left.

Now if we take the look of a couple weeks later as Brian worked through the drills that are in this series, let’s go ahead and take a look at his improved swing.

We’ll see that even though it’s not perfect, look at how much more inside it is, now that club is tracing down just barely to the inside which would be a draw pattern, releasing that club you can see the ball flight take off nice and straight, and then he’s nice and on plane as he’s through there, too.

So big improvement, these are the same types of things that if you follow these drills, if you work hard, you take them to the extreme that we want you to go to, they’re going to work out for your game.

So good luck to you guys, let’s go ahead and get back to where we left of.

Let me go ahead and swing one, and I’ll show you guys exactly what you should be looking for here. I’ll try to do the best swing I can coming right down on plane, and then I’ll move forward and we’ll talk about exactly what happens with the club coming through impact.

All right, so now let’s go into te physics of what’s actually causing your ball to fade or to draw. Once we understand this it makes things a lot more simple, when we see our ball in the air we know exactly what to do to fix this.

It sounds really complicated, but I’m going to boil it down to where it’s really simple to understand. There’s just a couple of things that we really need to focus in on.

Number one is, where is the face pointing at contact? We know from using radar and from using some pretty sophisticated scientific equipment that the club face is going to dictate which direction that the ball starts.

About 80 percent of the direction the ball starts is going to be where the club face is pointing. So if my club face at contact when I actually hit the ball is pointing to the left, the ball starts left. If it’s pointing to the right, it starts right. If it’s pointing straight, it starts straight.

The direction that the ball curves from there goes away from the path. So if my club face, I come down, I make contact, my club face is dead straight to the target, and my path is to the left, my ball is going to start ta the target and then curve to the right, so it always fades away from the path.

Then if my club face is straight and my path is right, my ball is going to curve to the left. The bigger the difference in these numbers, the bigger the difference between your face and your path, the more the ball’s going to curve.

A good rule of thumb when we’re talking about an iron -- this isn’t exactly right, but it’s a good rule of thumb, there are some factors that play into there we won’t get into in this video -- the ball is usually going to curve about the same amount of distance between the face and the path.

Let’s go back to the fade example, I come down, my club face is straight to the target. My club path is 10 yards to the left, my ball is going to start about 80 percent almost straight to the target, and it’s going to curve 10 yards to the right of the target.

If we want that perfect draw, what we really need to be doing is we need our have our face or our path pointing about 10 yards to the right. We’re going to be swinging out to the right very, very slightly, about 10 yards to the right.

Our face is going to be 5 yards to the right, our ball’s going to start where the face is pointing five yards to the right, and it’s going to draw right back on the target.

So keep that in mind as we’re working through this. Now you’ll be able to watch any of your shots and you’ll be able to watch the ball flying through the air and say, OK, where did that ball start, which way did it curve?

Now I know exactly what I need to do on the next one to straighten that out and hit that nice draw like we’re all looking for.

All right, so now we know what it looks like from the behind the line perspective, from the camera’s perspective, we understand a little bit more of the science on this, but what’s it really going to look like when we’re over top of the golf ball?

That’s what I’m going to show you here. I want you to really focus in on how is my club moving through contact. A lot of times when people are trying to fix a slice, they’re worried about their backswing, they’re worried about how they start down.

Well what I really want you to key in on is how is my club moving through contact? And how am I going to tweak that and change that to get the desired ball flight?

That’s what the best players in the world are doing, and that’s what I’m going to show you in these next few examples.

Now for the first one, let’s pick up right where we left off. In the last example, I hit a nice little five-yard draw that came down and landed right on the pin. Now I’m going to do the same thing here. Now we know the ball is going to start on the direction of the face, or about 80 percent toward the face.

So if I want a nice five-yard draw that ends up on the target, my face needs to be pointing roughly five yards to the right of the target whenever I make contact. We can see here that the red face line is pointing about five yards to the right of the flag.

Now my path needs to be further to the right of that, so I’m going to make my path about 10 yards to the right to get that ball to start on the face line and then get that five-yard draw.

So if we had more or less difference in these angles, we would get more or less curvature. But for this example, this would be that perfect five-yard draw that everybody’s looking for.

The face is a little closed to the path, the face is about 5 yards right at the target, the path is 10 yards to the right of the target.

The exact same thing happens for a really nice fade. So if we want to do the exact same thing for a nice five-yard fade, all we do is just switch the angles.

Now the face is making contact with the ball 5 yards to the left of the target, the path, the direction the club is swinging is 10 yards to the left since the ball stats on the face it’s going to start on that five-yard to the left face angle, and then it’s going to curve away from the path to the target.

Again, if those angles were separated more the ball would curve more. If they were closer together, the ball would curve less.

Now I want to share with you something that was very important and very crucial in my ball striking. When I grew up, I was always told that we want to be consistent, we want to make the same swing over, and over, and over.

One of the most important things to learn, and if you take nothing else away from really anything that I teach you, this is probably the most important thing to being able to strike the ball well day in and day out.

A secret that I really learned, is that we have to change our feeling on every single swing. So what we’re trying to do, and what our feelings are, are never really lined up, and every single day we’re going to tweak this. Let me go ahead and give you a couple of examples.

First let’s take the example of a player that’s struggling with a slice, which is what this series is all about.

Now when you set up to the hole, you feel like you’re swinging dead straight, you feel like your swing is perfect, everything’s going to be a nice, straight ball flight, but then you look up, the ball starts a little bit to the right of your target, and then slices 30 yards into the weeds, or the trees, or out of bounds, or wherever to the right rough. We’ve all done it, very, very frustrating.

Now we know, based on the science that we just talked about, if that ball started a little to the right of the target, that means my face was a little to the right, or a little bit open, and my path --- since that ball curved 30 yards -- my path was about 30 yards to the left.

This is a very simplistic way of looking at it, but that’s the rough idea of what’s going on, so I need to adjust this.

When I set over top of that ball, I felt like I was making a perfectly straight swing, but in reality, we know the science behind it, the path was 30 left and the face was a little bit open.

So if we want to straighten that out, we have to get the opposite feeling, and that’s what’s going to straighten out our ball flight.

Whenever I sit there and I make a swing and get the result like that, now what I’m going to do is get the opposite feeling to try to straighten out my result.

On that last example, what I’m going to feel on my next swing is that my path is 30 yards to the right, and instead of my face being a little bit open, I’m going to make my face a little bit closed.

So in my head, I’m feeling like I’m swinging 30 yards out to the right, I feel like my club face is closed maybe 5 or 10 degrees on the outside of the ball, so my face is pointing to the left, and now I’m going to make another swing and I’m going to see what happens.

What’s usually going to happen for you guys, is you’re going to see still a little bit of a fade. Now instead of that 30-yard slice that went into the trees, you’re probably going to see a small 10-yard slice that goes a little bit to the right of the target, or curves a little bit.

Now I know my mind was thinking I’m going to swing 30 yards to the right with my path, I’m going to have my club face closed 5 or 10 degrees, and I’m still getting that fade, so I need to exaggerate even more. I have to play tricks with my mind to exaggerate what I’m feeling versus what’s happening.

What I would feel over top of that shot, is now I’m going to swing 45 degrees to the right, and instead of my club face being closed say 10 degrees, I’m going to feel like it’s closed 20 degrees, way to the left.

Now in reality, I know if I actually did that, it would be a terrible shot. It would be the biggest snap hook you’ve ever seen. But then when I feel that, and I swing, all of a sudden the ball’s going to start to fly pretty straight.

So we’re always adjusting our feel based on what type of shot we want to have. Now the professional golfers, they do the exact same thing.

They’ll go over and start hitting balls on the range, and maybe they’re hitting the ball a little thin that day, and they’ll try to hit a little higher on the face.

Maybe their ball is curving a little bit more one direction or the other that they don’t want, they’re constantly fine-tuning that.

Once I realized that, took me years and years, I hit the ball terrible, I never hit the ball solid for more than a couple days in a row because I was under the belief that I make the same swing and eventually I’m going to get good enough to where the ball’s going to fly where I want.

Once I learned that the ball never goes where you want it to go, you never just show up, or maybe 1 out of every 20 days, you feel like you’re making a good swing, it actually happens. Well the other days, you’re completely lost.

Well once I realized that I can tweak and adjust this, and get the ball flight that I want, most days I hit the ball pretty straight, and hit the ball fairly solid, and it’s a lot more controllable once I learned how to tweak this.

So here’s the last part of this, that shows you how cruel feelings and things like that are, and they change. Feeling changes all the time.

So once you start to feel like I said in that last example, that the path is going to be 45 right, the face is going to be way closed, and you’re just nailing those dead straight balls, maybe a little bit of a draw on them, and you’re feeling great.

Well you keep on doing that for 15, 20 minutes, or you keep on doing it for a couple days, now all of a sudden the ball’s going to start to hook, right?

Because our feel has changed again on us, and the ball’s going to start to hook on us, because we’re overdoing that example, and we’re trying to create that same feel. Now we want to straighten it out again, we’re going to have to tone that down.

Eventually we’re going to go from 45 right and 20 left with the face, now we’re going to have the path maybe only 15 right and just 5 yards left with the face. That’s going to get us the feeling of a dead straight shot. So we’re constantly, adjusting.

All I’m doing is looking at the ball, I’m seeing which way it curves, and I’m adjusting the feeling that I have in my body through impact of what the face and the path are doing to get that dead straight shot.

Every single day I’m trying to go out there and nail it nice and straight, maybe have a little bit of a draw on there, and fine-tune it every day. So if you follow those examples, you follow those rules, you’re going to be a pure ball striker.

Let’s pick up right where we left off, we’re going to join me back on the tee, and I’m going to give you a drill to get the right kind of feeling to kind of cap off this video, and get you hitting those draws right now today.

A great way to visualize this, and I think where a lot of people go wrong, is they start to try when they’re hitting a draw, they start to try to swing more out to the right, but now my club face is hitting too far on the bottom of the ball.

My face is also pointing right, and the ball just goes a mile to the right. We swing inside out, our face is too open, and it’s just a big block out to the right.

What I want you to do for this drill in this video, is to swing out to the right and feel like the face wraps around the outside of the golf ball.

Now if you do this, it’s going to be a big time hook. So what I’m going to do as I visualize this, I’m going to go ahead and put the ball a little bit back in my stance. I’m going to line up a little to the right, so I’m preparing for that draw.

As I swing, I’m going to swing out to the right, and then I’m really going to get that face wrapping around the outside of the golf ball. So I’m really letting that face roll on over.

If you look at my left hand, you can see that my hand, the logo of my glove is pointed down to the ground, and as I release this club, I want to turn my hand this way, almost like I’m throwing a frisbee out to the right like that.

That’s going to let my face roll on over on the golf club. Same thing as my right hand, you can imagine I’m doing the opposite where I’m letting my right hand turn that way.

But I want my face to be getting to the outside of the ball, even though my path is swinging out to the right.

If try this out, I’m going to start with some mini swings, ball a little bit back in my stance, I’m lined up a little to the right. Really letting that face roll around to the outside, there we go. That ball curved about 10 or 15 yards right to left.

I’m going to go ahead and hit a good 20 or 30 shots, just chip shots. We’re going to work on getting that ball to really curve right to left a good 15-20 yards, maybe even more than that, really exaggerate if you want to.

If I get the ball, or the club way on the outside of the ball, that’s when it’s really going to start hooking. Let’s try that out.

There we go, so that one you can see, it drew 15-20 yards. Take some nice easy swings, work through these drills, and the next video you guys are going to see, we’re really going to kick it up a notch.

You’re going to start to hit those big hooks, you’re never going to slice again, and we’re really going to exaggerate it. Then later in this series we’ll tone it down and get it dead straight.

Good luck to you guys, great talking with you today. Hope this helps to clear up a bunch of misconceptions with hitting a slice and hitting a draw. Go ahead and do those drills, I’ll see you all in the next video.