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I have a terrible slice with my driver. I can release and fight the slice with all my irons/hybrid. But I can not do it with my driver.

The driver is a 9* driver. My question is, does the 9* make the slice even worse?

In general, leaving any club open a certain degree will put the same amount of slice sidespin on the ball. It doesn't matter if you are hitting a wedge, or a mid-iron or a driver. (Ok, it's not exactly the same sidespin, but it is very close -- the degree of openness is the dominant factor in how much sidespin is generated.)

However, in going from wedge to mid-iron to driver, the relative effect of the sidespin increases. For example, consider if you put 500 rpm of slice spin on your ball. Well, a full wedge shot can put over 10,000 rpm of backspin on the ball... the 500 rpm of sidespin is almost completely overwhelmed by the 10,000 rpm of backspin. Now, compare that with a driver, where you might only put 2,500 to 3,000 rpm of backspin. Now, that same 500 rpm of sidespin is a significant portion of the total spin. This is what I mean by relative amounts.

So, what does that mean to your question: the less loft a club has, the less backspin it will impart on the ball, and that means that the relative amount of sidespin does indeed increase. So, yes, a 9* makes it worse than a 10* or 12* driver, though not worse than if you were trying to hit a 8* or7* driver.

So, if this was a lead-in to ask whether you shouldn't demo a higher lofted lofter, I'd say that if you can't fix your slice or don't want to (if you are a casual player and/or don't want to pay for a lesson to try to fix it), then by all means you should try a higher lofted driver. You should probably also try a driver with offset and a closed face to try to remedy the swing a little.

However, if you want to try to fix this swing flaw, don't get a driver with large offset and a closed face -- because those band-aids will only ingrain a faulty swing. But, if you are just a weekend warrior trying to have more success on the course, then a closed face and high offset will help. It won't be a miracle fix, but it might be enough to turn that 30 yard slice into a 15 yard fade.

Yes, the less loft, the more side spind you develop for an open clubface..

Realistically, a higher lofted driver is probably just going to leave you closer against the trees on the other fairway, instead of giving you a clear shot to get back over them

No, that is not right. The same degree of openness leads to the same amount of sidespin. It is the fact that less loft generates less backspin which means that the sidespin is a larger proportion of the total spin on the ball. If you had included the word "relative" in there, I wouldn't object. As in: "The less loft, the more relative side spin..." I know it is just one word, but the way you say it is not correct. Because the way you wrote it, it makes it seem like there is more absolute sidespin, but that is not true, because it is the same amount of sidepsin, it just becomes a lot more influential as the backspin decreases.

I'll repeat here what I said in the other forum..

The answer is YES!!!

But not necessarily for you.

If there is simply not enough loft on the club for you then you may be trying to get the ball up in the air. When you try to get the ball in the air you tend to hand back and pull the arms across your body through impact. Voila .. sliceroni.

Definitely demo some higher lofted drivers. We have a place in Columbia, a driving range, where on certain days one can go demo a variety of drivers. See if you can find something similar. It probably won't completely cure your slice but there are a lot of parameters the can be tweaked in a driver that may help.

This is a pretty good point, here. If you are not obsessed with grooving a perfect swing, i.e. you consider yourself a reasonably casual player, there are clubs that can be built specifically to help remedy a slice. Closed faces, offset, and mass distributions in the clubhead that can reduce the slice spin. These are the so-called draw biased clubs. They won't be perfect band-aids, but if they turn a 30 or 40 yard super slice into a 10 or 15 yard fade then you'll probably have significantly more success keeping your ball in the fairway.

The flip side of these clubs is that they will groove an imperfect swing, and if you went back to a neutrally biased club, you will have that nasty slice back. So, if you are obsessed over your swing, and consider yourself a serious player or want to become a serious player, you probably should work on reducing/eliminating the slice.

Wow, for once I totally agree with Bignose.

Yeah, I think what Bignose is saying and Martini is agreeing to is that you don't fix a slice with a club

I have to say that it can indeed make your slice worse. I've been hitting a 9.5* TaylorMade R7 and no matter what I try, I still manage to slice the ball alot. Today at the driving range, I decided to hit the cheap 10.5* driver that came with my clubs and everytime I hit it, it went straight down the middle. I was even able to work a draw with the cheap club, something I could never do with the Taylormade.