Best drills to stop coming over the top and slicing

I need help bad with my slice. It is getting worse the more I practice.

What are your best drills to stop coming over the top and slicing?

There are no quick fixes. Take your 8 iron, put your feet together and align directly at a target 75-100yds away. Keep your feet together and hit balls with 1/2 to 3/4 swings until you can start the ball right of the target and draw it back to the target. It might take 1 large bucket or it could take thousands of balls but you will discover more than anyone can tell you through trial and error. This drill will also drastically improve your overall ball striking as you will teach yourself club face control and how to hit the sweet spot consistently.

Get a yoga block or cardboard box and place it about 4" outside your ball. You'll get a visual about avoiding hitting the box and it will help direct you to a different swing path.

When you are both coming OTT and slicing, this isn't a do a drill to fix it thing. Yes, I'm going to be the guy that says you need to show us the full swing because the swing is a system. There are myriad reasons why you might be OTT and comined with an open clubface, there is a lot to "fix."

That is good. I feel like when I start at the range and take 1/2 swings that things go well. 3/4 swing, still ok with just a little slice at the end. Full swing is when the wheels come off. It is frustrating. Thank you for the tip

You have to approach this like a doctor.

You cant call your doctor and say, “I have a cough, send a prescription to the pharmacy.”

He has to examine you and run tests before he gives you a course of action. There are different reasons for coughs and different reasons for slicing.

just like a cough, if you take the wrong course of action, you can make a slice worse.

A drill that helped me fix my OTT move was to set up to the ball with the toes of my trail foot in line with the heel of my lead foot (left foot). This drill makes it easier to take a full turn and the set up encourages you to attack the ball from the inside. Another drill I used was a feedback drill where I put a headcover behind and slightly away from the golf ball (think the golf ball is 12 on the clock and your object is 5 o' clock). If you are swinging OTT you will strike the headcover (or other object) before you hit the ball. Swinging with more of an in to out path will have you miss the object.

These are good! THank you for all the feedback so far. I need all the help I can get. I bought the Speedtrap 2.0 from Eyeline golf that has 4 sticks available to learn to hit it square or open. I dont think it is helping all that much so far as it has continued to get worse than better. I am a mess I think

Jack Nicklaus said he liked to feel that the buttons on his shirt pointed behind the ball at impact. A good feeling to prevent an over the top move.

Steve

I found the gate drill to be helpful at taming my worst excesses. Place a range basket a foot or two back from the ball with its nearest edge on your target line. Put another basket ahead of the ball a few inches inside the target line (ie; your side of the target line). Then swing between the two baskets.

Be aware that this will probably cause a block to the right at first. That leads on to phase 2 where you learn to let go of your wrists and leave them and your arms to do what they do naturally. That's pretty much where I am these days. I still occasionally hit a slice (or as I joke 'an excessively powerful fade' :) ) but it's coming from holding my wrists and therefore the club face open which I still do a bit with my driver.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPwOWIQ7jnE

What I found (and this is probably a personal thing) I started to feel like I was leaning away from the target through impact. As long as you can keep your weight forward this is secondary tilt. For me this automatically drops the club into the slot. Just don't develop the bad habit I'm currently fighting which is not getting the weight forward. Your driver will be okay-ish with that but nothing else will be :(

Face is open to path. Stop allowing the face to be open to path. It’s not rocket science.

Your left and right hand are basically the club face. When they face the sky, you slice. When they face the ground, you hook. If they face the target, you hit it pretty straight.

People make it WAY more complicated than it needs to be. Is it more complicated, yes, but as the guy looking to simplify things and fix this, just keep it as simple as possible.

I agree here but I guess I am making it more complicated. Do you have a suggestion to get stop doing this so I dont come over the top? I just got back from the range and did a few drills over and over to stop it. Once I pull the headcover away from next to the ball, I start coming right back over the top again.

You are not making it complicated, it's just not a straight forward answer. The only real way to make lasting changes is to fix the issue causing the face and path issues, which there is no universal drill to address. Post a video of your swing if you want real help, otherwise everyone is just guessing and you very well might make it worse following bad advice that doesnt apply to you and your specific flaws.

I "fixed" my slice on my own and have been battling a dirty hook for the last few years because of it.

If I could figure out how to post a video I will. I record them from my iPhone and it says it won’t take that file.

One of the oldest drills out there:

Same thing:

If you slowly rehearse this drill and lock it down, you should never slice again. If there's was only one drill out there, this would be the end all be all (FOR ME). Good luck.

Check out Jake hutt golf on IG. His little tripod + pool noodle is a great tool for sub $30 all in. Really easy to set up and give you that visual and physical feedback.

Thank you! I have followed a few guys on Instagram lately and they are helping. Slow motion golf videos help me as well try to replicate their swings.

Put video on YouTube then post the link here.

Unfortunately I have to agree with the above. I've struggled with an OTT swing for a long time (literally over a decade of actively trying to fix it both on my own and with instructors), and I've only recently made any appreciable improvement. To illustrate Monte's point. I made a lot of mistakes and wasted a lot of time before I saw a couple videos that all said that you have to fix face issues before you fix path. I was cupping my lead wrist at the top of the backswing, which opened my face and basically necessitated an OTT swing to advance the ball. So I tried to just get a Dustin Johnson bowed look with my lead wrist, but it wasn't that simple. A poor backswing was causing my wrist to cup because the poor backswing I had and the limits of anatomy (the way the wrist hinges), kept me from being able to keep the face square. By improving my backswing (I had been sucking the club inside), I figured out how to ALLOW for a more neutral looking wrist hinge, and then I had to retrain myself to avoid my habit of the cupped wrist, and make a more flat or even slightly bowed wrist my default. So that was step one. Then I was left with a bad habit of poor sequencing, which is what I'm still addressing now. I know it's kind of messed up to respond to someone looking for help with more or less, "it depends, figure it out on your own" so I'll provide the video that helped me the most.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7b4OwVdR3gI posted a video of my own swing, and then someone on this forum sent me this video. After watching both, I realized that I was lunging my upper body forward in transition, which made it impossible to come from the inside. As this video does a much better job of explaining, if you maintain a slight tilt away from target, keep your head slightly behind the ball at impact, but still learn to shift your pressure/weight forward you can learn to stay onsides and fix the OTT path.

That one video is not a cure all, and it certainly didn't fix all my faults, but I think it's the video that helped me with my OTT swing the most. When I swing OTT, I have a very flat swing. It's inside and around on the backswing, and then over the top and steep on the downswing. When I'm swinging well (for me), it FEELS much more vertical. My backswing feel way more vertical and inverted, and then in transition, when stay onsides, the transition 'move' feel like I'm using my lower body (left knee and hips) to drive everything (the club, my body) straight down. This may be particular to me and the way I think, but the point I'm trying to make is that if you want to swing the club on an in to out path, you'll never get there by trying to swing the club back behind you and then try to swing out to first base. I think that kind of advice is common to instructors that were naturally good at golf and never personally experienced bad path issues. I had other issues this video did not address. I was standing up (losing spine angle) in my backswing (which was related to my wrist issue). I was starting the downswing with my shoulders rather than my lower body. I'm sure I have other issues I'm not even aware of yet. But this video could still be a good place to start. I hope you find it helpful. If my struggles sound relatable, maybe search a few of my old posts on path/ott.

One last thought is that while I do think one can fix issues on their own, it's way more efficient to get lessons. I haven't had great success with instructors personally, but at a bare minimum, I do think they can steer you in the direction of what issues to work on in what order. For example, I think the majority of instructors could identify a club face issue, and tell you to prioritize that issue, prior to trying to work on path. That's the kind of thing you could waste years on trying to fix on your own.

Do you mean you were cupping your lead wrist, which was opening your face? Bowing it is going to close the face.

Sorry, yes. I'll edit the post to fix the typo.

I was cupping it. I tried to just bow it. But what I eventually figured out was that the cupping was a result of a bad backswing (sucking the club inside) which made it difficult if not impossible to have a flat/bowed wrist. Once I improved the backswing, I was able to train a more neutral lead wrist (on video it looks pretty flat, neither cupped nor bowed), and then I was able to shift my focus to sequence, further improving my backswing, decreasing sway, eliminating upper body lunge, training better hip motion, etc.

this x100! for me i would use aligment stick on follow through and if i hit it i knew i was OTT. or used a headcover just to get the visual. For the next what felt like a month i was pushing everythingm until it clicked i had to tutn my hands over so my new thought at the range is try and hook the ball and has so far at the range meant im now hitting really nice draws that feel great. good thing about these drills is dont need to hit a ball i often just swing practice swings and make sure im missing the stick or headcover

Same boat. I got no golf swing insurance so I can't go see the doctor. I do the next best thing, the WebMD version for golf, YouTubes.

I am going to try the "dropping the club at top of backswing" drill and the box drill (to 2:00) that Michael Breed has. One other chap has a drill where you go back to the top of your back swing then you try to swing almost straight out to the right.

I fought a hook for years and made a grip change early last year and was hitting pretty little fades or a tiny little draw and really hitting the ball well. It devolved into dirty push slice with the driver and is creeping into my irons. Got to get it fixed before it is completely off the rails.

My home course is a classic Nicklaus layout that punishes the left miss. My best hook might still run through the fairway/green and into a hazard lol

Listen to Monte (he's kind of a big deal). If you're trying to fix the problem with the wrong medicine you'll end up confused and it'll put you off trying to change. YouTube is GREAT for drills and advice IF you know what you're doing, and self diagnosis amongst high handicappers leads to more high handicappers.

Find a way to post a video and you'll be golden here.

I had this issue and could not solve it myself, here is my suggestion. Take the $75 you're going to waste hitting range balls trying to self fix and do an online video with Monte. that is what I did and it helped. Turned out I wasn't really OTT but was yanking the handle in combination with poor posture which was causing a steep downswing. Your cause could be any of of numerous reasons.

Part of my issue/issues is that no two swings seem to be the same in videos. I know I am overthinking things but I feel like the more technique I apply, the wheels come off even further for me. I played today and had one of the worst first 5 holes of my life. Then I started to just try to not use these things in my head that I KNOW I am doing wrong and go back to playing my slice game. Aim far left and slices so bad that I end up in the fairway sometimes. I hate playing this way, but maybe I should be waiting until the fall to try to correct this mess.

Take some video of that slice swing.

pool,noodle drills seem to help.

Let me know what in the world is going on . . .