The block might be golf's most confusing miss. The ball doesn't curve — it just launches dead right and stays there, as if the target moved at the last second. And it often shows up when you're swinging your best.
That last part is the clue. Blocks are usually an overdose of something you were right to want: lower-body drive toward the target.
Here's the mechanics. Through the downswing, your hips need to do two things — shift toward the target and rotate open. The shift moves the low point forward; the rotation brings the club around so the face can square up. Blockers max out the first and skip the second. The hips slide hard down the line — often chasing that "drive your legs" feeling — but they never turn. The chest stays closed, the club gets trapped behind the body, and the face never has time to rotate back to square. It arrives open, aimed right, and the ball obeys.
Swing harder at the problem and you slide harder — more blocks. Shut the legs down entirely and your hands may flip the face closed instead — now it's snap-hooks. If you alternate between blocks and hooks, this slide-without-turn pattern is almost certainly your engine.
Slide and turn, in proportion
There's a sweet spot worth knowing about. By impact your hips should have shifted slightly toward the target — that part of your instinct is sound. It's slide without rotation that sends the ball right. CoachVision measures how far your hips have moved toward the target at impact, which helps separate the healthy shift from the runaway slide — because from the inside, the two feel identical.
The drill — L-to-L Swings
The cure isn't less leg drive. It's teaching the club to catch up — and L-to-L Swings rehearse exactly that.
Take a wedge. Swing back to where your lead arm points at 9 o'clock, wrists hinged so arm and club make an "L." Swing through to the mirror image — trail arm at 3 o'clock, wrists rehinged into the opposite "L."
Pay attention to what the through-side "L" requires. To get there, your forearms have to rotate and the club has to swing past your chest — the face squaring and closing as it goes. That's the release your slide has been outrunning. In a blocked swing, the through-L never forms; the club stays stuck behind you, face open. The drill makes the missing piece the whole assignment.
Do 15 reps with a wedge at an easy pace. Once the through-L shows up reliably, add a little body: feel the hips turning open — not just sliding — so chest and club arrive at the target together.
The block is your swing telling you it's one ingredient short, not broken. Add the rotation, keep the drive you've already built, and those dead-right launches turn back into shots that start at the flag.