Path or face causing slice?

[DublinMeUp]

Just watched this:

I only really slice with my driver, I have been thinking it was just an open club face. I had tried closing the face a bunch but was still slicing.

After seeing this I i think its a path issue, he describes an open face slice as one that turns nearly immediately, my slice starts off on line and will only kick in at about 100 -150 yards ( but its massive ) ie ball ends up heading 90 degrees from my original line.

So how do i figure out if its my path or club face for sure? and if it is my path how do i figure out which way to adjust it?

His drill didn't really help me btw

[Precis1on]

I'm going to take a stab at it, I'm still learning the proper ball flight laws to help find flaws my swing as well.

So since ball starts straight and then slices to the right, it means your face is square to your target line and your path is coming from the outside in. So you will need to work on getting your path coming from the inside (subsequently you will need to open your clubface slightly to compensate for that as well, but it will still need to be closed to the path).

Please correct me if I'm wrong those with more experience :).

[DublinMeUp]

thanks, its weird when i think about it, like i can understand why the guys students in the video overcompensate.

I also now realize that the above thinking is incorrect though lol

[mdl]

Look up the ball flight laws thread on this forum.  Face direction is responsible for 85%+ of the direction the ball starts.

Ball starts straight slices late means coming across with approximately square face at impact.  Ball starts right and slices means open face at impact, square to OOT swing path.

So your slice most likely comes from swing path, not open face with square path.

[DublinMeUp]

I think it worked!

first day back playing after a week off with the flu so i headed up to the range in the early morning.

Did my usual warm up with wedges and moved down through my irons. When i got to my hybrids ( i hit these well most of the time ) i decided to try change my path by keeping my arms closer to my body. I hit them fine and might have had a few baby draws with them.

Then i took out the driver, my only swing thought being "don't swing around and in, swing in and out" not very technical but it made sense to me. First drive was straight as an arrow! I thought this was just luck as i had hit the odd straight drive before but i just kept smashing them straight, hit about 70 balls with the driver and had maybe 2 small slices and 5-10 hooks ( I'm taking the small amount of hooks as a good thing seeing as it used to be slices or duffs ) the rest where low-mid trajectory "bombs", well bombs for my standards anyway.

So i get home delighted with myself but then doubt starts to creep in, like maybe it was just one of those sessions where your hitting way above avg. Maybe the next time the slice will be back to torment me.

In the evening one of my playing partners calls me up and asks if i wanna go hit some balls as he just got new clubs, I decided this would be a good test to see if i could do it again. By the way this guy has seem me repeatedly hit a slice over the last few weeks and knows that i basically stopped using my driver because of it.

So we get there and while he's filling his machine with balls i tee up my first ( did a good few practice swings so i wouldn't be swinging cold ). I get the same result, arrow straight and a carry of about 250-260 ( not big eh? but i dont care ). my friend laughs and says lucky shot bet u can't do that 10 more times, which i proceed to do. He then bets me 20 euro i can't hit like 45 out of my 50 balls straight.

I won the bet.

Pretty long post for something that most of you will think of as basic stuff but I cant get over how good it feels to have fixed such a major flaw.