[PHOTOS: Jesse Rieser]
Instructors have long preached the importance of a one-piece takeaway, where the club, hands, arms and shoulders start back together. That’s bad advice – the clubhead should start first. Some players might feel like they have a one-piece move off the ball, but feel and real aren’t always the same thing. Taking everything back together gets the club too far to the inside and starts a chain of events that produces a slice.
When we look at the swings of the best players with 3-D technology, we see that the clubhead moves away from the ball first, followed by the arms, then the shoulders, then the torso and finally the hips. This is the proper kinematic sequence, which keeps the club tracking on a good path, so you can simply reverse the order coming down and deliver the club efficiently to the ball.
To nail this move, focus on giving the clubhead a head start [above]. This might feel like an earlier wrist set, as opposed to moving everything together. A good thought is small to big. The smaller muscles of the hands, wrists and arms move before the larger ones of the shoulders, torso and hips. To give you another view, check out this face-on angle below. Notice in my first move, the clubhead starts before the hands or arms.
Mark Blackburn, voted No.1 by his peers on Golf Digest‘s 50 Best Teachers in America, has coached dozens of tour pros, including Justin Rose, Max Homa, Collin Morikawa, Adam Hadwin, Daniel Berger, Charley Hoffman, Alex Fitzpatrick, Matthieu Pavon and Trey Mullinax. His golf academy is located at Greystone Golf & Country Club in Birmingham, Alabama.
