Attention all slicers! You’re out of order! Your golf swing is out of order!
No, this is not a courtroom, just a court of golf opinion. One of the most common swing faults of a slicer is a poor sequence between the backswing and downswing when the club is in motion.
A common issue for the slicer is the order between shifting weight and turning the body. Slicers often have this sequence backwards and will never fix that dreaded curve unless their sequence improves.
Where a slicer goes wrong is when the shifting of weight becomes the most dominant motion on the backswing. Then, on the downswing, the most dominant move is an aggressive turning of the body. We call this sequence the “shift back-turn through.”
While a major shift of pressure back to the trail foot gives a player the feeling of generating more power, it ultimately throws the proper sequence of moves off when there is too much rotation early in the downswing. Then, on the downswing, when a slicer’s most dominate move is rotation, it will often result in the body spinning out, leaving weight on the back foot and forcing the club to move on a outside-to-in path, causing the slice.
Instead of the “shift back-turn through,” the proper sequence of the backswing and downswing is “turn back-shift through.” It’s the opposite.
When your first move on the backswing is rotation of your shoulders and body, the weight shift will happen naturally as you complete the turn. This sets you up for a powerful downswing.
On the downswing, the shift-through becomes your most important, and often forgotten, move. The shift-through gives you the feeling of your body and pressure shifting to your lead foot before you even begin rotating. This will set you up for more power and also help deliver the club from an inside path, helping reduce the slice.
So if you’re fighting a slice, you be the judge and get your swing in correct order. You’re game will be then be on the straight and narrow.
Peter Harris is the director of Golf at the Fore-U Golf Center in West Lebanon. His column appears weekly in the Recreation page during the golf season.