Fix a slice 13 Aug 2026 9 min read

How to Fix an Over-the-Top Golf Swing When Nothing Has Worked

If you have tried every swing thought going and you still swing over the top, the problem might not be effort. It might be clarity.

I saw this with Vernon at one of our golf schools. He had a phone full of notes: turn more, keep the club low, stay centered, drop the hands, separate the arms, get to the left side, hit out to the right. He had watched loads of videos and tried loads of fixes, but the same move kept coming back.

That is when I got excited, because Vernon did not need more information. He needed to know which thing was actually stopping the change.

This is the order I would use if your over-the-top golf swing still will not shift: clubface first, feedback second, alignment third. Once those are in place, the swing thought can become much simpler.

Why More Swing Thoughts Do Not Fix An Over-The-Top Move

When a golfer is trying to stop swinging over the top, the obvious answer is usually to add another path thought. Tuck the right elbow. Shallow the club. Drop the hands. Swing from the inside.

Those can all be useful, but only if the body has a reason to trust them.

With Vernon, the issue was not that he did not know enough. It was that he was focused on the wrong things first. If your swing keeps reacting the same way, you need to ask a better question:

What is making the over-the-top move feel necessary?

For Vernon, there were three answers:

1. The clubface was open.
2. He had no clear feedback on whether the swing was changing.
3. His alignment on the course was forcing the old move back in.

That is why another random swing thought was never going to be the full answer.

Fix The Clubface Before You Try To Fix Your Swing Path

The first thing Vernon was trying to fix was his path. He wanted to tuck the right elbow, shallow the club, and swing more from the inside.

But the first thing I checked was the clubface.

If your clubface is open, your swing will often react to it. Your brain knows that if you swing more from the inside with an open face, the ball can go even farther right. So the body finds a way to get the club moving left. That can create the exact over-the-top move you are trying to remove.

This is why I like the phrase clubface first, path second.

At the top of Vernon’s swing, the face was open relative to his lead arm. Ideally, I want the leading edge much closer to the lead arm at the top. That gives you a face position you can actually work with when you start changing the downswing. If the face is wide open and you are also trying to fix your slice, path work becomes much harder to trust.

Check Your Grip If The Face Is Open At The Top

For Vernon, the clubface issue came from how he was holding the golf club.

His lead-hand thumb was too straight down the middle of the grip, and I could only see about one knuckle. That is a weak position for many golfers, and for him it helped the face hang open at the top.

So we rebuilt the grip in the air. I wanted the lead-hand thumb more around to the trail side of the handle, and I wanted him to see more like two to three knuckles. For Vernon, I would rather see three knuckles than one, because the open face was the thing blocking the rest of the change.

This is not me saying every golfer needs the exact same grip. It is a checkpoint. If you are over the top and the face is open at the top, look at how you build your golf grip before you blame the downswing.

Let The Ball Go Left Before You Ask The Club To Swing Right

After we changed Vernon’s grip, I told him what was going to happen: the ball needed to go left.

I did not want him trying to hit it left. I just wanted him to understand that if the face improved, the first few shots might pull. And they did. The ball went left, and Vernon looked at me as if to say, “How is that good?”

But it was good information.

Before that, he could not trust swinging to the right because the face was too open. Once the ball started left, he finally had permission to feel the club move more out to the right.

That is a big point. Sometimes a short-term ball-flight change is not failure. It is the sign that one blocker has moved, and now you can work on the next one.

Use Feedback So Feel Matches Reality

The second thing holding Vernon back was feedback.

He had lots of thoughts, but he did not have a reliable way of knowing whether the swing was actually changing. What you feel and what is really happening can be miles apart.

So we used Swing Coach down the line and looked at his swing plane halfway down and at delivery. Early on, he was very steep. Then he moved toward steep by five, steep by four, and eventually into much better zones when he slowed down and exaggerated the feel.

The feel was simple: swing the club more from the inside and out to the right.

But the reason that feel worked was the feedback. He could see whether he was still steep or whether he had actually moved the club into a better place. That is the value of golf swing feedback: it ties reality to feel.

If you want that kind of feedback in your own practice, use the Swing Coach app here:

Check Your Alignment Before You Blame Your Downswing

The third issue showed up on the golf course.

Vernon was setting up around 30 yards to the right. Feet, hips, shoulders – everything was aiming too far right of the target.

Now think about what that does. If you aim right and swing along your body line, the ball starts right. To get it back near the target, your body has to swing left across it. That is an over-the-top compensation built into the setup.

So even if you fix the swing plane on the range, the old move can come back on the course if your alignment keeps asking for it.

That is why I do not want you only checking the downswing. Check whether your setup is making the downswing harder than it needs to be. Your body alignment can be the reason the over-the-top move keeps returning.

Build Your Setup Around The Clubface First

We gave Vernon two ways to train the alignment.

First, on the range, put a club down on the ground toward the target and build your body around it. This helps your eyes learn what square actually looks like.

Second, on the course, change the order of the routine.

Do not walk in, set your feet first, and then try to rescue the aim with the clubface. Pick an intermediate spot a few feet in front of the ball, walk in from an angle where your feet are not already set, aim the clubface first, and then build the feet around that.

In simple terms: face first, then feet.

Replace Five Swing Thoughts With One Clear Feel

By the end, Vernon did not need the long list of swing thoughts.

He had a better clubface. He had feedback telling him whether the club was steep or shallow. He had an alignment routine that stopped him aiming miles right.

Only then did the simple thought make sense:

Swing the club to the right.

That feel would not have worked at the start, because the face and alignment were fighting it. Once those blockers were removed, it became simple. If you want more help with the path piece after the face is under control, this guide on how to shallow the golf club is a useful next step.

If you are still trying to fix an over-the-top golf swing after trying everything, do not start by adding five more thoughts. Start by checking the three things that might be making the old move necessary: clubface, feedback, and alignment.

You can use Swing Coach to get feedback on your swing plane and make practice more specific:

FAQs

Why do I still swing over the top after trying drills?

Because the drill may be chasing the path while something else is making the path change hard to trust. The common blockers are an open clubface, no feedback, and poor alignment.

Can an open clubface cause an over-the-top swing?

Yes. If the face is open, swinging from the inside can send the ball farther right, so the body often reacts by swinging left across the ball.

Should I fix my clubface or swing path first?

Check the clubface first. If the face is open, path work becomes much harder. Once the face is in a better place, you can work on swinging more from the inside.

Can poor alignment make me swing over the top?

Yes. If you aim too far right, you may need to swing left just to get the ball near the target. That can make the over-the-top move return even after good range practice.