The takeaway is arguably the most important part of your backswing. It sets the tone for your entire swing. Get it wrong, and you’ll struggle to hit great golf shots. But we’re here to help you get it right.
To do that, you need three things, GOLF Top 100 Teacher and Director of Golf Instruction at Pinehurst Eric Alpenfels explained during a GOLF Facebook Live from Pinehurst on Wednesday. You can watch the full replay of the Facebook Live below:
https://www.facebook.com/golf/videos/2153998898156702
1. Good posture
Good posture is the centerpoint of every good golf swing. If your posture is hunched, too bent over or too upright, it affects your body’s ability to take the club away on the correct path. Get your posture nailed-on, and you’ll be off to a great start.
2. Club shaft parallel to your toe line
Don’t worry or fret about terms like “inside” or “outside” or anything else. All you need to know is this: As long as your clubshaft is directly parallel to your toe line about halfway through your backswing, you’re two-thirds of your way to the perfect takeaway.
3. Toe of the club pointing to the sky
The third element of the perfect takeaway is making sure, when your club shaft is running parallel to your toe line, the toe of the clubhead is pointing up to the sky. Doing so ensures the face is square at a crucial part of your golf swing.
A simple drill to make sure you do all of this, demonstrated here by GOLF Brand Director Ashley Mayo, is to simply take the club back, pause, check to make sure it’s in the correct position, and resume your swing. Her posture looks great, she makes sure the clubshaft is parallel to the target line, and the toe is pointing to the sky, so she’s ready to go.
And the improvement speaks for itself. As you can see on the left, Ashley’s takeaway before had a shut clubface and the club was moving outside the plane line. After a quick lesson, now Ashley’s clubface is moving much more on-plane, and the clubface is far more square.
