“You Can Talk To A Slice But A Hook Won’t Listen.” Is That Even True?

Welcome back to this MyGolfSpy series where I take a hard look at the golf clichés you have heard a thousand times and figure out if they hold up.

The goal isn’t simply to label each one as true or false. It’s to figure out what has been oversimplified and get back to the lesson golfers were supposed to take from the advice.

Next up: “You can talk to a slice but a hook won’t listen.”

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What does “you can talk to a slice but a hook won’t listen” mean?

If you’ve hit both a slice and a hook, you probably understand where this one came from. (It’s commonly attributed to Lee Trevino, by the way.)

A big slice can climb, lose distance and eventually fall out of the sky. A hook can feel different. It gets moving left (for a right-handed golfer), lands with some speed and keeps going.

But is there something about a hook that makes it inherently harder to control?

Not really.

TrackMan’s spin axis data shows that curvature works almost identically in either direction. On an optimized 200-yard shot, 10 degrees of spin axis produces about 15 yards of curve whether the ball is moving left or right.

So a hook does not curve more simply because it is a hook.

We’ve tested draws and fades before

This is where the cliché starts to make a little more sense.

In a previous MyGolfSpy test, 12 golfers hit 30 draws and 30 fades. When the data was normalized to 100 mph of club speed, the fades carried 222 yards and the draws carried 224.

Almost no difference.

Total distance was a different story. The fades finished at 249 yards while the draws finished at 258. The draw group produced less spin and got considerably more rollout. These were controlled draws and fades, not hooks and slices. A lower-spinning shot that lands flatter can keep moving after it hits the ground.

Spin rate and spin axis are not the same thing

“Spin rate” tells you how fast the ball is spinning. “Spin axis” tells you how that spin is tilted. That tilt is what makes the ball curve.

Our own golf ball testing helps show the difference. In 2025, we used data from our robot testing and FlightScope’s trajectory optimizer to see what happened when spin rate changed but spin axis stayed the same.

Reducing spin by about 300 rpm made very little difference in how far offline the ball finished. At five degrees of spin axis, the lower-spinning ball finished just 0.3 yards closer to the center line. At 10 degrees, the difference was 0.6 yards.

So lowering spin doesn’t suddenly make a hook curve more or less.

Spin axis is controlling the curve. Spin rate has more to do with the height, carry and landing conditions that determine what happens along the way and after the ball hits the ground.

The verdict

So is it true that you can talk to a slice but a hook won’t listen?

Not because a ball curving left behaves differently from one curving right. At the same spin axis, the amount of curvature is essentially the same.

Where the cliché has some merit is what happens after the ball starts curving. Draw patterns can produce lower spin and more rollout. When that draw turns into a hook, the ball may still have plenty of work left to do once it hits the ground.

Play the shape you can repeat. More importantly, know what happens when that shape gets a little bigger than you planned.

More golf cliche articles we have written:

• “It’s The Golfer, Not The Club.” Is That Even True?
• “You Can’t Buy A Golf Game.” Is That Even True?
• “Practice Like You Play.” Is That Even True?
• “Fairways And Greens.” Is That Even True?
• “Let The Club Do The Work.” Is That Even True?
• “Never Up, Never In.” Is That Even True?
• “Drive For Show, Putt For Dough.” Is That Even True?