With a heartwarming victory at East Lake, Tommy Fleetwood finally broke through with his first PGA Tour Win — and it couldn’t have come at a bigger moment. By clinching the Tour Championship, Fleetwood secured a career-defining victory and claimed the FedEx Cup title.
By all accounts, it was the perfect end to Fleetwood’s whirlwind season. But it didn’t come without a bit of a fight and a lot of preparation.
The work players put in to achieve these monumental wins isn’t always visible. But a couple of months ago, Fleetwood offered fans a rare peek behind the curtain to see how he practices ahead of a major championship.
In the video, which you can watch here, Fleetwood demonstrates one of his go-to drills using a training aid called the Swing Plane Perfector — a device developed by Michael Bannon, longtime swing coach to Rory McIlroy.
Tommy Fleetwood’s go-to range drill
The Swing Plane Perfector is essentially a stand that holds two alignment rods in place to provide visual and physical feedback by creating a reference for the ideal swing path — one of the three elements of the golf swing that Fleetwood says he likes to focus on in his practice.
“The three big ones I think are spine angle, shaft angle and arm track — or where your arms are swinging,” he says, “This [using the swing plane perfector] for me basically takes care of the one that I would probably struggle the most with at early stages in my career would be the shaft angle. Keeps me nice and on plane.”
To set it up, Fleetwood places one rod down on the ground to mark his target line. The second rod is positioned vertically at a slight angle, roughly two to two-and-a-half feet from his trail foot. The angled rod acts as a visual reference for Fleetwood’s ideal arm track, or swing plane, showing the path his arms should follow during his backswing and downswing. The training aid is also positioned close enough that he can see and feel the discrepancy if his swing drifts off-plane.
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After hitting a few balls to ensure he is on plane — or above the vertical alignment rod — Fleetwood adds in a flat-sided object (like a golf ball box or even a yoga brick) on the other side of the ball. This helps his practice in a few ways.
First, it acts as a gate, similar to the drill you’ve seen players do on the putting green, which helps Fleetwood focus more on his impact position.
“I’m a big believer that six inches before and after the golf ball is unbelievably important,” Fleetwood says.
Placing a flat-sided object on the other side of the golf ball also helps Fleetwood confirm that he’s not unknowingly ingraining bad habits into his swing.
“It’s easy to cheat something like this and think it’s doing you a lot of good,” he says, “But if you get that wrong you could easily come over the top and cut across the ball.”
Fleetwood demonstrates that if he came over the top, he would run right into the box he has set outside of the golf ball.
“So now, I can’t cheat my takeaway,” he says, pointing to the alignment rod, “and I can’t cheat my impact.”
“Even though it looks like there’s a lot going on, it actually makes me feel like I can swing as free as possible,” Fleetwood notes. “The more constrained I’ve made certain aspects of my golf swing, the absolute freeer I can feel, the more I feel like I can turn, the harder I feel I can hit it because I’ve stayed in such a good, structured place.”
Fleetwood’s go-to range drill is an excellent reminder that even the best players rely on simple practice to fine-tune their swings. By focusing on swing plane and impact awareness, you can achieve more consistency in your game — just like Tommy Lad.
