“I’m looking for the best training aid for coming over the top.”
Nothing ruins a golf vacation like playing bad golf, and one of the biggest causes of bad golf, at least from the perspective of the full swing, is the dreaded over-the-top move, which causes that dying-quail slice that is the bane of so many golfers' games.
Legendary teacher Harvey Penick, in his Little Red Book, so emphasized the prevalence of this problem that he turned the concept into a proper name: "Hitting From The Top." "No one has ever found an instant cure for this particular ailment," he wrote.
In that typical understated fashion that makes his teachings so endearing, Penick's best overall suggestion was the simplest: just try and hook the ball.
"Tell the student to go ahead and hook the ball clear off the driving range," he wrote. "This process produces some of the most screaming fishhook-looking shots you ever saw. But to hit fishhooks, the student has to come into the ball from the inside."
This is the essence of the issue: a slice is a glancing blow on the golf ball. The clubhead traveling through the inner half, however, is a direct hit.
Of course, you've probably read dozens of book excerpts and magazine articles that discuss this very concept, but it's just difficult for most of us to take words from the page to the course.
So take a look at this video, in which acclaimed instructor Martin Chuck demonstrates an incredibly easy drill you can do to start making the kind of contact that produces powerful, straight-flying full shots, or even baby draws if you do it right.
An inventor of several of the best golf training aids on the market, Martin also demonstrates how his Plane Mate aid is great for addressing this exact swing flaw and fixing that slice for good.
Martin is a member of the Revolution Golf faculty of instructors, and you can take a look dozens of videos he's done for them here.
He's also part of an immersive 2-day golf school at Waldorf Astoria in Orlando in December. Click here to grab one of the final remaining spots.