On the Hosel?

[Deep Stuff]

I went to the range tonight for a bit of stress releif / practice. Something clicked when I was reading Golf Mag (or Digest) about the swing and really wanted to work on it.

Well, I dropped the hands lower and backed off the ball a little and turned my neck towards the back foot (looking out the left eye). Well the tips were good and I was making good contact and even miss hits were moving a decent distance and solid hits were VERY NICE.

My problem: I was slicing some but I think that was in my left wrist. The problem I am worried about was I was getting A LOT of ball marks towards the hossel of the club. I am further away and was worried about being out towards the toe (before starting) and I was not hitting there at all.

In case I am confusing you guys (I am confusing myself), here is what I did different...

() Backed off the ball.
() Dropped my hands and addressed the ball so so my grip was aimed at my belt (I was more towards the lower/mid abdomin before)
() Roated my neck / head so I was looking at the ball from mt left eye at address (spposed to support rotation).


Ball flights:
Dead Straight with a pretty high launch (not the problem)
Slice (moderate to extreme)
Occasional Draw (When I hit well on the course, this seems to happen)
AND ON THE HOSSEL!

*Depending on the freqency of bad shots, I would look at the face and see where the ball marks were. I would guestimate that of all the bad shots, 75% were on the hossel.

I am almost positive the slices were in the left wrist - if you think different please let me know. I for whatever reason felt I was squaring off at contact.

This was the driver. I did a lot of wedge work to work in the 50-75 yard range and I hit well. No complaints. The small amount of 5-7 Irons went well too.

[muskegman]

The problem with tips is that they often assume that everything else in our swing is reletively good. Generally I've found random tips mess my game up more than they help. I tried everything to fix that damn slice but couldn't do it until I really focused on my swing path.

If you swing more from the inside to the outside of the ball you will not slice. Like me you may have to focus only on that plus a little swing path stuff to prevent an over-the-top move.

Those little tips and trick might be encouraging you to swipe across the ball from the outside which is creating your slice. Its impossible to know without looking at your swing and I'm really not the one to diagnose it anyway. There's my free advice worth exactly what you paid for it.

[kklick]

This may sound opposite of what you would think but if you're hitting off the hosel you need to move closer to the ball. The next time you go out do everything else the same but just step back in where you were before you backed off the ball.

[NCGolfer]

I notice that the flatter my swing, the closer to the hosel my ball is striking the face of the club. Since I've gotten into a more upright and less flat swing, I've been hitting the ball more on the center of the club.

If you back off the ball, make sure you are bending over from the hips a bit more as well...otherwise you will flatten your swing significantly.