THE TRUE COST OF A SLICE ... INYOUR HEAD

Your thought process can help or hinder your technical work on taming your slice. Improve your concept and story to make sure it’s the former

At first, it may appear a physical and technical issue like slicing a golf ball has very little to do with the mind. But dig a little deeper and you begin to see how the two are linked. For starters, golfers slice primarily because they do not have a clear concept of what they are trying to achieve with the swing and the clubface. A concept is of course a mental thing; when your mind is giving your body clearer, more effective messages of what you need to do to hit the ball straighter, you can start to make progress.

Further, when I talk to golfers who slice the ball, I’m typically given the clear impression that they feel doomed to their fate. They are a slicer, they always have been and they always will be. I’ve talked in these pages many times about the stories we tell ourselves as golfers, and their power to become self-fulfilling. Label yourself a perennial slicer and that’s what you’ll be.

“OK,” you say. “But the facts are I’ve sliced the ball for the last 10 years. I went out yesterday and sliced my way round again. How can I not label myself a slicer?”

Fair enough. But that doesn’t mean you can’t change your story today… and that starts with a commitment to concept, and understanding more about what causes a slice.

Elsewhere in this feature, Gareth Johnston explains how the relationship between impact face angle and swing path can increase or reduce the curvature on the flight. He also demonstrates the dominant influence of the face aim, and gives you three ways to get that face squarer. Read this advice, absorb it. Understand and accept that you slice because somewhere along the line, you open the clubface. Build a new concept of your action, one based around face awareness and control. When you change your concept, you can start to change your story. Perhaps you are not a chronic slicer after all; maybe you’re a golfer learning how to draw the ball, or at least groove a controlled soft fade.

Of course you need to experiment with new concepts, put them to the test. It’s vital you do this on the golf course itself. This is because your environment has the power to trigger movement. You can spend hours on the range nurturing a squarer clubface or a more neutral path… but out on your bogey hole – the one where you always slice it o” into the trees – your old motor patterns will reassert themselves in the face of that familiar stimulus and the old shot will emerge.

I would advise going out on to the course, probably on your own, with some old practice balls. Head to that bogey hole, or the shot where you always seem to slice. Give yourself permission to explore what happens when you write it down in a notebook afterwards. By writing it out you have to recall it vividly, and when we recall we rehearse. Make this a habit and you begin to create a store of bright, fresh positive memories and experiences. You will begin to struggle to tell yourself you are a slicer, because you have so much great evidence to the contrary.

With a poor concept and story, your mind will constantly work against all the hard physical work you put in to get on top of your slice.

Change them both and your progress will be easier, faster and enduring. place your attention on the face and exaggerate those strengthening moves – the stronger grip, flatter lead wrist, increased forearm rotation. Do whatever it takes to get the ball moving the other way. When you see yourself achieving that on the hole where you always seem to slice, you disarm its power to prompt that shot… and that’s going to be so beneficial on your next proper round.

You also write another chapter in your new story that says you are not a slicer.

One final thing – even if you hit only one draw or straight shot during the course of the round,

DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO GET THE BALL MOVING THE OTHER WAY