I’ll go out on a limb and estimate that 80 percent of recreational golfers are slicers; for a right-hander, the left-to-right miss is certainly more common than the alternative.
The common mistake
Why do we slice? If you’re like the majority of golfers, it starts with your takeaway: You bring the club inside on the way back and then loop over the top in transition, creating that outside-to-inside action at impact that, combined with an open clubface, puts slice spin on the ball. One way to hit a draw is to do the exact opposite! How? By following the example of 2003 Masters champ Mike Weir.
What Mike does
Whether you watched Mike Weir win the Masters or saw him contend recently on the PGA Tour Champions, he did so by hitting a nice, tight draw.
On his takeaway, Mike brings the club outside his hands — “with the butt of the club almost in his pocket,” as we like to say (1, above) — and then pitches the shaft so that it’s nearly vertical, which you can see in my demo of his swing (2).
From here, it’s easy to transition at the top to where you’re “dropping” the club into a slightly inside-to-outside path on the way to impact (3). When the club is pitching properly, it shallows very easily through the hitting area.
What you should do
If you’re a slicer by nature, you probably do the opposite of Weir. You likely take the club away “flat” — around your body, essentially — and then change that plane at the top of your swing, getting “steep,” with the club too vertical on the way down. Open your mind to a new movement pattern!
To draw the ball, you’re going to do the opposite of what you’d done before: Get steep on the way back, pitching the shaft almost straight up and down. This will get you in a better position on the takeaway.
Use this as a checkpoint: Halfway back, when the club is perpendicular to the ground, the butt of the club should be pointing inside your ball, between your ball and your feet. That’s probably a new feeling, but it’s a feeling that should help you draw it like Mike.
Need more help? Get a club-fitting from the experts at our sister company, True Spec Golf.
