The slice is the most common miss in golf, and it has one main cause: an outside-in swing path. The club comes down from the top cutting across the ball instead of swinging from the inside. Ben Hogan spent his career fighting this exact move, and the feel he landed on is one of the best images in golf instruction.
Picture throwing a discus. Your arm makes a big, rounded circle. It swings up and over your shoulder, then whips around from the inside. That is exactly the shape Hogan wanted in the golf swing. A big, rounded inside-out arc. The club goes up, drops into the slot from the inside, and swings out toward right field through impact. When you do this, the slice has nowhere to come from, because the club is no longer cutting across the ball.
You can read your path in your ball flight. If your shots make a sharp hairpin turn to the left (for right-handers), you are cutting across it. That is the outside-in signature. When you are swinging on the correct inside-out path, the ball flight looks softer and rounder, a gentle curve instead of a violent banana. Once you groove the discus feel, the slice disappears and something better takes its place: longer, straighter shots, because an inside path also lets the club release with full power instead of glancing across the ball.
Here is the drill. Lay an alignment stick on the ground pointing at your target. Put a second stick on the ground angled about 45 degrees to the right, like you are throwing to right field. Take your normal setup and swing the club on that big, rounded arc. Feel it go up and over your right shoulder like a discus throw, then drop inside and swing out toward the right-field stick. Start with slow swings to learn the shape, then hit 10 to 15 balls staying with that rounded inside-out path. The goal is simple: train the club to come from the inside instead of cutting across.
The mistake to avoid: overdoing it. Some golfers hear "inside-out" and start swinging 30 degrees to the right, which turns slices into pushes. You want a gentle inside-out path, a few degrees, not a lasso. Let the face square up naturally and the ball will start on line and draw softly back.
Big rounded arc. Inside-out path. Slice gone.
Want the video version of this drill plus 220 more? They are all in the Pro Vault for $1 a month at coachellapro.com. And if your slice needs eyes on it in person, come see me for a lesson in La Quinta.