Sliding in the downswing is one of the most common tendencies I see in amateur golfers. When the body slides too far towards the target as you come down, you’ll struggle with lots of thin shots, heel strikes, pushes and quick hooks.
How do you know if you’re a slider? Video your swing from face-on, across from your chest at address. Imagine a line on your lead leg as you set up to the ball. In the backswing, you should create a small gap between your leg and that line as you load into your trail side. On the downswing, sliders will move their pelvis excessively towards the target and at impact, their hips will be well in front of that original line.
It’s good to bump your hips slightly towards the target in the downswing, but if you overdo it, now you’re into a slide pattern. The good news is, you can still play good golf with a slide if you add these three moves.
1. Play the ball up
When you slide in the downswing, your body gets too far ahead of the ball, which is effectively placing the ball really far back in your stance. This causes the path of the club as it approaches the ball to travel too far from inside the target line and then swinging outward. That’s why you’re hitting those pushes and hooks off the heel.
To counteract this, move your ball position up a few inches. If you typically play your iron shots in the middle of your stance, make sure your ball position is now forward of centre, towards your lead foot. It might feel too far forward, but now when you slide, the ball position will be in the perfect spot.
2. Close the face early
You probably hear all the time that you need to lean the shaft towards the target with your irons and wedges. That’s usually good advice, but if you’re a slider, you will naturally have a lot of shaft lean simply because of moving forward. If you try to get more shaft lean, you’re going to hit lots of heel strikes and pushes.
Instead, sliders need to work on closing the clubface as they come into the ball. This will help turn that push into a baby draw and get the contact into the centre of the face. To do this, focus on the logo on your glove. As you come down into impact, feel like your logo is pointing more towards the ground than the sky. That will help your clubface start closing earlier.
3. Finish high
With your ball position more forward and your clubface closing, you’re almost ready to hit that perfect push-draw. The last step is to feel a full release of the club into a high finish position. As you swing through the ball, allow your trail forearm to roll over your lead forearm.
If you’re looking at your swing from down the line (behind the ball), feel like you’re swinging the club out to the target. The club should re-appear in the follow-through at neck height. This is that high finish you’re going for.
This release will get the club travelling from inside to out with a face that is slightly closed to the path: the perfect recipe for a baby draw.
Add these three moves, and you can keep on sliding.
