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What makes a golf ball slice? Every golfer has experienced the problem of a golf ball slicing or hooking. The physical actions that create the "slice" or the "hook" occur in an instant. The club and ball are in contact for only about a half a thousandth of a second, or half a millisecond. That's not very long-it takes you 100 milliseconds to blink, 2000 times longer than the time the club and ball actually touch each other. During the half a millisecond of contact, tiny differences in the direction the club face points can have an enormous impact on the ball's flight. At the moment of impact, suppose the club face is not exactly perpendicular to the direction in which the club head is moving. The resulting tilt will move the ball slightly across the club face during the collision, giving the ball sidespin and causing it to curve in flight. If, at the moment of impact, the club face points to the left of the direction the club head itself is moving, the ball will hook to the left. If the club face points to the right of the club head's direction of motion, the ball will slice right.
It doesn't take much tilt to have noticeable effects. A misalignment
of just one degree is enough to cause the ball to curve about seven or eight
yards from a straight line by the end of a 200-yard drive. A tilt in club
face direction of a mere three degrees will send the ball careening off
into the rough at the side of the fairway. No one ever said golf was easy.
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