Weird slice problems

[Draftstone]

Hi!

I've been reading this forum for quite some time (found a lot of valuable informations) and decided today to jump in and ask for some advices since there seems to be a lot of people ready to help here.

So basic story of me as a golfer. I bought some cheap clubs about 7 years ago (bought bags and clubs except driver, all new for 69$, real cheap clubs haha) and a cheap driver for 50$ (intech MDT).

This year I started to play a lot more and decided that I would improve on my game. I played at least once a week. I went from playing over 130 in may to playing around 110-115 around july. The only thing that was good was my putts. My driving and my iron play sucked a lot. I decided to buy some good irons and bought the wilson Di11 set (vendor told me they were suposed to help a beginner's game). Just by changing the clubs the game improved directly the next day I tried them. I shot an 98 (first time under 100 in my life). Since then, my only game over 100 is a 102 on a golf course that was said to be harder than the one I play usually on.

So now my next step is trying to improve my drive. But here is my problem, I have a huge slice. I play left handed so I usually try to aim about 30-40 degrees right of the fairway and usually I can get on it, but most time than not, I simply go at the far left and end up in the rough. On right dogleg hole, I don't even think about using my driver.

I tried a lot of things in the driving range to try to fix it. Tried to change the grip (firmer vs loose), ball position, weight transfer earlier/later, etc... but the only thing that seemed to improve was trying to hit the ball as hard as I could. When I was trying to hit hard, the ball would slice a lot less, I would say between a push and a fade. But when I try to hit hard, I get a lot of mishits too, so simply swinging harder is only fixing the slice problem, not the driving problem. If I try to hit real slow (like a 100-125 yard drive) it still slices a lot. With my 3-wood and long irons, I only slice a small percentage of my swings and usually I feel that my swing was incorrect or that I made a "weird" contact with the ball. So it looks like my swing is not so bad ( I usually hit around 200 yards with my 3-wood with the ball landing ~5 yards left (I am left handed) of where I was aiming either on tee or directly on the fairway).

So I am wondering if the club might be a part of the problem. The loft on the club is 10 degrees and the shaft is tagged as intermediate flex. Also, when I bought the club, under it toward the end, it looked like there were 2 little weights there that I noticed were missing after a couple of weeks (probably fell off without me noticing).

So, do you think buying a good driver (I was looking at the TaylorMade R1 wich is on sale at a local golf shop) might improve my game more than trying to change my swing (I plan on taking a class next spring before the season starts) or I should be able to hit my current driver correctly?

Thanks for your help!

[Wally]

When you slice the ball, does it start out straight toward your target and then go spinning off? If so, from my understanding of the ball flight laws, your clubface is square to your target line but your swing path is out to in. I realized this recently in some of my swings. The ball goes straight but then spins off, and thinking about it I know why. So, if this is the case for you, I'd say to work on your swing. Another possibility is that the shaft could have too much flex for your swing speed. I used to have a driver from a beginner set that worked well for me at first. As I got better and swing faster, everything I hit was a slice. I couldn't do a thing to keep it straight. I tried hitting a draw which I could do with every club. No go. One day I asked to try out my friend's driver and the first swing was ripped dead straight down the range. The next couple of drives were around the same. Not one went right. I asked a club pro about it and he watched me hit a few balls before taking a look at my club. He ended up telling me that the shaft I had was a senior flex, and that is was flexing too much for me to be able to hit it straight. My thought was confirmed. So, he gave me a driver of his to borrow with a stiff shaft and it was all good. Long story short, it could be the shaft. But it could also be a combination of the shaft and your swing.

[Hardballs]

^spot on! I've never heard of intermediate flex it sounds like the a cheap beginners shaft, if your hitting it 200yrds you should be on a regular flex, I suspect you won't improve with your current shaft! Therefore i would say get a new driver! Regular flex, approx 44.5 length, with minimum 10* loft, I reckon you'll see an instant significant improvement!

[Abu3baid]

You mentiond that you tried both loose and tight grips. First thing you should do is work on your grip, and I would recommend a strong grip.. I'm not talking about grip pressure here so I would just look up strong vs weak grip and you'll find a lot of information on it... Next is work on your in to out swing path and you will improve a lot.

[joekelly]

U ain't moving your body correctly. End of story. Forget new/different clubs. Most likely you are beginning your swing, esp driver, with the upper body. Very typical male response to the word 'power'. Golf success depends on mobilizing the body in the CORRECT  sequence. Go get a video of you, then compare you to UTUBE pro of your choice. Then simply, Follow, Follow, Follow. Check out Paul Wilson on UTUBE. He's a worthwhile teacher.