bret - need help with my slicing please help

[bart44]

hey guys i have trided may way but cannot fix my slice i hold my club normal, but just came off baseball grip so i also have 3 drivers taylormade r5 9.5 and r7 10.5 and a hippo 10 which i use to practice at home, so please help me and thanks for the help

right hand over left hand thumbs down, no overlap but i can try also, but dont forget im left so what you do i do opposite

[c4m]

from the looks of your followthrough looks like you dont let your wrists turn over and the club face is probably wide open, but cant tell much about swing plane unless you do a video from behind

[Bauer]

Just a few things I see that don't look right:

Your right arm is bending and it shouldn't be, at least not till just after contact with the ball.
Your left arm needs to stay tight to the body.
What is your grip like exactly? It doesn't look right but that might just be because you are lefty.

[Bauer]

It looks like your back hand (Left) is too far underneath the club but usually this promotes a hook I believe. If I remember correctly the "V" made by your back (Left for you) hand should point to your chin and the "V" from your front (Right for you) should point to your back (Left for you) eye. Are you close to this?

[RC]

What I see you may not like to hear -- but you don't need to take advice from some online person you don't know and who claims no expertise. Having a good pro look at you would be much better.

First off, you really do not have a turn, you hips and shoulders turn together with no resistance or coil. Then, there is no good place for the club to go, so it points almost straight down at the top -- everything has collapsed. You have no foundation from which to swing. The club is completely trapped behind you, and from there you start making more compensations to get the club down to the ball.

Your left knee gives way so much it actually points away from the target on the backswing. Your left side moves all left into an "I" shape, and actually reverse pivots. At the top, your right hand cups a lot, so the club is wide open. As you start down, you start with everything, arms, hands, left side, etc. There is no place for you to go and stay on a good swing plane. All you can do now is come over the top and slice. There is more but all of the above tells me you need to work on setting up and taking the club back in a way where you can move onto your right side and turn as the club drops on plane coming back to the ball from the inside, and with a flat wristed right hand so the club is not so open.

Try to resist your hips turning and keep the club in front of your chest on the backswing -- that should restrict your backswing so the club gets to parallel at the top, not pointing down to the ground. To you it may feel like you are taking the club back outside. Don't do that, but keep it low and more straight back, letting it come inside with the shoulder turn.

Hit balls only at half speed, with almost no hip turn on the backswing. Focus on keeping the right wrist flat as you take the club back. As you start down, relax your upper body, shift your weight and turn your lower body and keep the right wrist flat (like you had a splint on the back of your right hand and wrist.) As you strike the ball try to keep the right wrist leading and even (for the time being) try to keep it slightly bowed (like a delofted iron.) In fact, hit easy eight irons only perhaps 100 yards, but developing a push draw. It will feel like you are dragging your right hand through the shot with the back of the right hand bowed in and down, and not cupped. The ball will come out lower and if you can swing on plane from the inside, it will draw. Your left knee should never point away from the target line, keep it pointing toward the ball on the backswing.

Anyone can learn to hit a draw... it is easy to do. The problem is when you learn to do it you usually over do it. So make sure you hit these small shots so they start out to the left of your target. That requires a swing path that is from the inside.

Finally, you may have grip problems. Read Hogan's book on the five fundamentals. I think it is still as good as it gets for the fundamentals to begin your transition from a loose, over the top, swing to a controlled body swing.

I do not mean this to be harsh. You are obviously athletic and capable of a fluid swing, but fix your problems now and save yourself a longer and harder road ahead. Good luck and good golf to you.

P.S. I tried to make all the correct conversions from right to left-handed statements, but I may have said some of it backwards -- I hope not. Look at right handed swings in a mirror and you will see the left-handed versions.

[bart44]

thanks guys for the advice and i have gone out this morning for 30- 60 mins of pratice and i think i maybe improving a bit after i changed my grip to being proper (overlap) and increasing my strenght on my grip, but i see for me it hard to get use to keeping my right arm straight and i can start to feel my body coil up or that might be me stretching my mucles on my backswing, but any ways i'll try and get up early tomorrow and practice some more. Also i don't mind being told whats wrong and stuff like that i'm self taught and seeing how my driving i really bad now a days i'll take any advice and try my best with it.

[cmvash]

To be brutally honest, you need a lot more help than a message board can provide. When I saw the video it looked like a noodle swinging a club. But hey we all start somewhere.

While RC nailed home some pretty good points, you need to seek some lessons or at the very least, pick up some instructive books. Even your initial set up looks pretty bad - your stance is narrower than it should be.

Second, you've got way too much lower body movement. Your swing starts from the ground up. You need resistance to 'uncoil' and create club speed with the turning motion of your body, not with your arms. Try sticking a beachball between your legs and holding it there while you swing with your @ss up against something(like the wall of the deck in the video). You should feel like your pivoting the weight from your left foot to the right when unwinding.

You're bending your right arm way too much as well. Your right arm should be flat with very little bend. At the top of your swing your arms should be parallel to your shoulders and the club head should be no more than parallel with the ground. Try to keep your right bicep as close to your body as possible when making your swing.