This week I would like to feature one of our new members to Lakeside Greens. Brent and his wife Arlene moved to Chestermere last year from Orangeville Ontario, as part of their retirement dreams, to be near their grandchildren and of course to be close to a golf community. Both are avid golfers as well as sports enthusiasts in general.
Brent retired as the president of the Ontario Hockey Association for 36 years and now brings his skills and wry sense of humour and zest for life to the Chestermere community and Lakeside Greens.
Having the pleasure to have met Brent and play some golf with him, it became apparent that Brent has a habit of doing what so many golfers are prone to do and that is taking the club back too far to the inside on the takeaway. This is very common, unlike taking the club back to the outside which is something you see from Rory McIlroy and has been pointed out as a source of his inconsistencies by Nick Faldo.
So why is it so common and what are the problems it can lead to? First, it only makes sense that when we take an object back. in this case a golf club, to hit something, we naturally want to wind up and use our body to its full advantage and this entails taking it back to the inside and around our body. We do this with a bat an axe or whatever it is we want to deliver a powerful blow. However in golf, not only do we want to deliver a powerful blow to the ball we also want the ball to go straight.
When we take the club back to the inside three things can happen. The most common action we will see from taking the club back to the inside is to then swing back over the top resulting in a slice or if you release the hands too much when doing this…a pull hook. When taking the club back to the inside and bring it down from the inside will often result in swinging out to the right of your target (for right handers) and this is what happens for better golfers and in this case Brent. What we will see is pushed shots or hooks if the hands release too much to compensate for this error. This is what happens when you hear golf analysts talk about a player getting “stuck” on their down swing. The only way to get “unstuck” is to flip the hands over to try and hit a straight shot. Our last scenario is a straight shot from taking the club back to the inside but this only happens when the timing of the release of the hands and wrists are perfect but this rarely happens consistently.
So, the solution to the problem is to take the club straight back for approximately the first 12 inches and to the point where the butt of the club points to your target when the club is parallel to the ground as we see Brent doing in the photo. At that point simply take the club up and deliver it back down to that same position on the downswing. In so doing, you will be swinging on plane and delivering the club face square to the ball, resulting in straighter shots. A good way to practice a straighter takeaway is by putting a club down along your target line, as seen by Brent in the photo, and use this as a guide to take the club back and through. PGA tour players will often use a club or a teaching aide in this way to assist in their takeaway and alignment.
Like Brent, if you work to straighten out your takeaway you will hit straighter shots, be more consistent and play YOUR best golf!
