Keeping your weight predominantly behind the ball (notice the back heel) causes the body to spin or over-rotate and the club to come over the top. (Andrew Rice/WorldGolf.com)

Suffering from a fade or slice? Here's why (plus, a tip that can help)

By Andrew Rice,
Contributor

The photo at right illustrates the most common error when it comes to impact, and the biggest reason why the majority of golfers tend to slice the ball.

In this type of impact error, the weight is predominantly behind the ball (notice the back heel), which causes the body to spin or over-rotate and the club to come over the top.

Notice how the golf club is outside the ball and in order to make solid contact it must work aggressively across the target line. For a right hander, the ball launches left, and either stays there or curves too far to the right and trajectory tends to be too high.

With the irons, divots tend to be infrequent (with the majority of them occurring prior to impact), and the best shots are picked off the surface of the turf.

If your weight hangs back and your body spins through impact, you are destined to hit pulls and weak fades.

To improve, tee the ball up and place an empty water bottle just outside your golf ball. Work at it until you can start the ball to the right of the target and draw it back.

October 12, 2009

Prior to accepting his current position as Director of Instruction at Berkeley Hall in Bluffton, S.C., Andrew Rice spent six years working for David Leadbetter as a senior instructor at the Junior Golf Academy in Florida. He has coached PGA, LPGA and Champions Tour golfers along with multiple USGA champions. His first book - "It's All About Impact - The Winners of 165 Majors Prove It!" - was published in the fall of 2009.