Golf Hook & Slice - The Worse Habits in Golf

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Louis Pringle
Mar 31, 2020
3 minutes

Golf is much easier when you manage to stay in the fairway and get your ball on the greens. Anyone who’s played a single round of golf realizes just how difficult this task can be. So you can imagine how challenging your round can become if you have to deal with a slice or a hook.

So, in order to shorten your rounds and lower your score, we want to share some solutions to fix these bad habits.

The Slice

If you’re lucky enough to never have had issues with the slice, we’ll explain it to you. The term refers to a shot that takes a hard curve to the outside following the impact (to the right for righties and left for lefties). More often than not, the slice will be the result of an outside-in swinging motion.

If you’re looking for a quick fix off the tee, you can always opt for a draw driver (a driver with either a closed face or weighted adjustments favoring the heel) and artificially fix your swinging issue. However, this won’t fix any of your other clubs which you’ll end up using more often than your driver.

Here’s how to fix the slice:

  • A very simple drill to help fix your slice requires two sticks (you can use your clubs if you prefer).
  • You simply set them in front of the other at a 30-degree angle going away from your body. Set them up in a way that the back stick is closer to your back foot than the front stick is to your front foot.

If you’re more of the visual type, we got this drill in video form for you, brought to you by the people at Me and My Golf.

The Hook

Often referred to as a snap hook or the duck hook, the golf hook is the counterpart of the slice. The hook can sometimes appear right at impact with the ball shooting straight for to the inside (left if you’re a righty, right if you are a lefty.) The hook can also manifest itself mid-flight as your ball will seemingly head straight for about a hundred yards before taking a hard turn to the inside.

Contrary to a slicing golf ball, the hook will rarely be the result of a poor swinging pattern. It is most notably associated with issues related to the grip and the follow-through.

Here’s how to fix the hook:

The first solution you should explore, and the easiest one to do, is to freshen up your grip. Some golfers who use a very strong grip (closing the wrists together) will tend to send the ball straight to the inside. Try loosening up your grip a little by leaving some distance between the wrists in order to adopt a weaker grip.

Weaker doesn’t mean that it isn’t good when talking about grips. It simply refers to a grip where there’s more space between the inside of your wrists. This will usually result in an opening of the club face which will in turn help to send the ball more to the outside.

Fìnally, make sure to keep the follow-through in mind. Try to think of your follow-through as your guiding arrow. It is important to complete your follow-through in a straight manner with the face of the club pointing upwards after the impact all the way through the last part of your swing.

Once again we’ve included another instructional video to help illustrate this solution:

While there is no magic solution to either the slice or the hook, we still wanted to share some drills and exercises that have shown results in the past. We hope they do the same for you when you get back on the course.

Until next time,

The Golf Avenue Team

Further reading

Need an easy golf slice fix? Here's our top picks for draw-biased golf drivers to help you correct your slice. Perfect for right and left-handed golfers alike.

A good day with the driver will make a huge difference on the scorecard. Our team came up with easy five drills to help you find more fairways than ever!