Today I'm sharing the most common BALL FLIGHT error that I see and how to fix it.  

A slice ball flight is the most common ball flight error that I see.

You are probably all too familiar with this ball flight: The ball starts pretty straight and looks good for a moment but then curves sharply to the Outside (to the right of target for right-handed players). Usually the ball ends up deep in a trouble area (trees, long rough) or in a penalty situation (a water hazard or out of bounds). 

Slices are pretty horrible. We need to fix those.  

Your ball curves because of the relationship between your club face and your club path.

Re-read that sentence until you have memorized it and you will never forget it. Make it a mantra: Ball curve = Face:Path relationship.

(Yes, the ball can also curve as a result of where on the face the ball contacts the club. I'll make another post about that, because it is pretty cool stuff. But for the overwhelming majority of golfers, an unusable Face:Path relationship is why their ball flight is horrible). 

Let's look at some examples:

At impact, if your club face is pointing at your target, and your path is from the Outside to the Inside, your ball will curve to the Outside. This is a law, as solid and predictable as the law of gravity.  You can also think of it this way: if your club face is open to your club path, your ball will curve to the Outside.

Imagine playing tennis or ping pong or pickle ball and trying to put serious cut-spin on the ball. How would you have to move the racket/paddle in relation to the ball to create that spin? You would cut across the path of the ball as it approaches you.

If you're slicing in golf, you're doing the same thing, except it doesn't feel the same because in golf the ball isn't moving towards you.  

Conversely, if your club face is pointing at your target, and your path is from the Inside to the Outside, your ball will curve to the Inside. 

Going back to our tennis/ping pong/pickle ball example, if you want to put topspin on the ball, how would you have to move the racket/paddle in relation to the ball to create that spin? To create that topspin your racket/paddle has to approach the ball from the opposite direction than when you're creating cut spin.

It's the same with golf -- to stop slicing you must learn to do the opposite of what creates a slice.

So, if you want to stop slicing, you must stop swinging from Outside to Inside and you must stop having your Face open to your Path. You must reverse that. Learn to swing from Inside to Outside and have a Face that is closed to the Path.

So what happens when your club face is neither open nor closed to the path? What happens when your face and path are the same? Well, your ball has no curve. And depending on the direction of the face and the path, you could hit a dead straight shot that is to the right of the target line, or to the left of the target line, or directly on your target line. A ball with no curve does not automatically mean it's a good shot. 

PRO TIP. You might now want to conclude that having no curve is desirable. Instead of thinking in terms of "no curve" as being optimal, rather think of shots being "on target" with a predictable curve. Hitting dead straight shots is very difficult given that we play golf from an inclined position. But hitting predictable shots, knowing how and how much they will curve before we hit them, is much easier than trying to hit dead straight shots every time.