Why 99% Of Tour Players Swing This Way!

Are you someone who struggles to take that golf club away correctly? Are you someone who gets the club to go too far outside? Are you someone who gets the club too far inside? And just like me at the start of this video, if I was to put an alignment stick down you just continuously hit it. You get super frustrated, grab the stick, throw it away and thus not improve the takeaway position. If that sounds like you, continue watching and I'm going to provide you the answer that you're looking for. So the first thing we need to understand is what do the best players in the world do in their takeaway? Where does the golf club need to be? Now what you're going to find is there are some differences from player to player but the majority of the best players in the world get their takeaway to be in a position that looks exactly like this. So hopefully you saw the similarities with all those great players. They had the golf club in line with the hands or just outside at what we call P2 or shaft parallel to the ground during the backswing. Now before I get into exactly how to get into that position, the first thing we need to understand is what are the most common tendencies that players have and what does that tendency create in their ball flight and in their strike pattern? So what I commonly see on the lesson tee every day is I'll see players that have their golf club move away from their body so their arms and their golf club disconnect from their body and they would be considered above plane. So if I was to draw a line on my golf club at this moment in time you'll see when I take the hands out and away the golf club moves above or outside that plane line that I've drawn. Now the most common ball flight patterns that I see with players that do this is we obviously get the golf club moving too far away from us which creates a lack of depth and what that's going to create is a more of a slice pattern in their golf swing. So we could get two types of ball flights. We could get a big severe left to right shot which slices out to the right or we could get a pull that goes to the left if your face is closed. Or the other tendency that I see from players is where the golf club moves too far inside during the golf swing. So again if I put that plane line back onto my golf club we see that the golfer gets the swing moving way too far inside or underneath the plane line. Now the most common reason that I find golfers do this is they've been told to turn in the backswing but they forget one thing. If we just turn we actually don't get the golf club to set upwards in front of our hands. So if you're just turning in a bid to try and eliminate that one we're going to run into other troubles. We're going to have too much depth which can cause a variety of different ball flights such as a hook pattern. We can see a block pattern. We can also see a fat shot or we can also see an over the top movement. So golfers tend to think that if I can get my swing more to the inside I can swing more from the inside on the way down. The problem with that is they've got no room and what they're going to do is they're going to hit it fat. You can see how far behind the golf ball I hit. So the golfer is going to compensate and get that swing moving over the top leading to that original ball flight which was slices and pulls. So now that we understand what the poor movements look like and what they create it's time to get into what the good movement looks like. The one that we're looking for. The one that's similar to all the best players in the world. And that movement is where during the backswing we get this golf club and I'm going to draw my plane line back up here again is we get the golf club working back on plane and you can see that right there that club is tracking perfectly up that plane line. And what you're also going to notice is my hands. They're not moving away from me. They're not moving too far inside. They're working fairly straight back on a small arc. There is obviously an arc that our golf swing moves on. So it's not exactly straight back but there is a slight arc to my hands and the club gets set right in front of my hands here. Now the key to this and this is the most important part is if players just think that they need to turn what they forget is that the hands still need to hinge upwards. So if I'm someone who just gets told to turn this is where you'll see the club work too low under the plane and the club never really reaches the hands. So what we want to do is we want to add some vertical hinge and some turn. So if we can combine a little bit of vertical hinge and a little bit of turn what you're going to find is that this golf club sets right in front of the hands at P2 or at shaft parallel to the ground in the backswing. Now why is this move important in the golf swing? Well you saw the shots that I hit by being too far outside. It can cause cutting across. It can cause pulls. You saw what happened when I went inside. I got the block. I got the hook. I got the fat shot. I got the over the top movement. So they are all compensations that you are making in order to try and get the club to basically get back on plane in that downswing. So the benefit to getting the takeaway correct would be that the balance of the golf club throughout the golf swing is essentially in balance. It's not out here over the right shoulder and laid off. It's not back here behind us or across the line. It's in a very nice balanced position at the top which will then allow me to sequence the golf swing much better. Get the golf club to come down basically back down just inside the hands at this moment in time and will then allow me to strike the golf ball with a fairly neutral path and a fairly decent club face. So here's the drill that I want you to perform in order to master that takeaway position. I want you to take two alignment sticks and your golf club. Make sure you're using the golf club that you're actually going to hit this ball with so that we get the correct distance away from the ball. And what this drill is going to look like is this. I want you to grab your golf club and I want you to lay it down basically directly down from the golf ball making sure that that club is dead straight with the alignment stick that's on the ground that you're using to practice. So let's just double check that. So that looks pretty good. I want you to take your two alignment sticks and I want you to place one outside the ball line which would be on this side of the golf club and one inside the ball line which is obviously this side of the golf club. And where do I put them? I put them half a foot on the outside and half a foot on the inside. So it looks like this. I take my foot and I basically go one right there and I put them at the same angle that my golf club is at at address. I don't want it too upright. I don't want it too flat. Roughly the same angle as your golf club is at address. I'm going to re-measure that. So right about there is my next one. So like I said, half a foot on the outside, half a foot on the inside and I'm going to make sure that those two sticks are very similar. Pretty close together there. Pretty good. So now we've got a perfect little alleyway for my golf club to track up. Okay and again it's at a distance whereas if I do this incorrectly I'm either going to go outside or I'm going to hit the sticks. What I don't want you to do is get these sticks too far away because essentially I can do whatever I want and I'm not going to hit the sticks. So I want to be close enough to them that if I make a poor movement these sticks are going to show me or you know trigger me into the fact that I've done a poor movement. So what I can see now, just also see how these sticks are the same angle as my club sits at address. Okay and what I'm going to do from here is I'm just going to practice that movement. I'm going to practice getting that golf club to work up that plane. Now this is actually fairly difficult, it's not as easy as you think and it's a little bit like you're walking on a bit of a tightrope because there's not a lot of room for error and I'm just practicing my movement. You can do this in the backyard or on the driving range and I'm just working on that movement time and time again and you'll see that I'm just hinging that golf club up ever so slightly to ensure that I don't get that one where I just turn and hit the stick. I want to make sure that this golf club is tracking up and obviously not too up to a point where I hit the outside stick. Now a little bit of safety is needed here. If you have some pool noodles place them over the top of these sticks because if you try to swing and you actually try to hit a golf shot at full speed and you come down and you hit these sticks you may be injured. These are obviously going to break, they're going to splinter off and you could do some damage to yourself so just watch that. So for the sake of this video what I'm going to do is now that I've practiced that movement I'm actually going to remove these. What I want to do is I want to live today. I don't want to get an alignment stick in the face. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to feel exactly what I was just working on there which is funny because this is actually what I work on in my game. So I'm really trying to feel that movement and then I'm going to go ahead and hit the golf shot with that exact same feel. A little bit of left to right wind on the range today so that's just fading but that was not too bad. I don't know what that looked like on camera probably reverted back to my old ways but I was really trying then to make sure that I got that golf club to work more up that plane line as opposed to getting it perhaps a little bit inside which is my tendency there. So once you have that perfect takeaway you need to do one thing and that's start the downswing correctly and if you want to learn how to do that you need to watch this video on your screen right now that's going to teach you everything you need to know about how to start that downswing correctly.