Learn how to setup your backswing (Part 1)
What is the backswing for?
How many golfers, I wonder, have ever asked themselves that question? They know all the things they are supposed to do to make a good backswing — “head still,” “shoulders turned 90 degrees, hips turned 45 degrees,” “left arm straight,” “right elbow tucked in,” “transfer the weight,” and so on. But have they ever stopped to ask themselves just what it’s all for: what is the real purpose of the golf backswing?
In case you haven’t, I want now to tell you.
The backswing has two purposes. One, the obvious one, is to provide power through the wind-up, or torque-like action, of the body. Its second purpose — perhaps less evident, nearly as important — is a matter of simple geometry, of two vital angles — swing plane and club direction. Assuming you have a grip that returns the face of the club correctly, golf would be a simple game if you could always get these two angles correct.
Theoretically, of course, the ideal swing plane would be vertical — the ultimate in upright swings — because this would eliminate any divergence of the clubhead from the target line. Unfortunately, such a swing is anatomically impossible. Even if it were possible, it would create problems in another dimension — the angle of the clubhead’s approach to the ball. Too upright a swing produces too sharp an angle of attack of the club on the ball, creating a weak glancing blow — a “choppy” action.
Thus, since we are endeavoring to propel the ball forward, the ideal plane for the clubhead to travel is a happy medium roughly half-way between vertical (totally upright) and horizontal (totally flat). This is the plane on which most of the world’s best golfers swing the club — certainly through impact.
Now, let’s look at plane in terms of your game. The plane on which you swing is established chiefly by your address position. As you stand to the ball comfortably and squarely, neither cramped nor reaching, your left arm and club form a more-or-less continuous straight line. The angle of that line relative to the vertical is the “ideal” plane on which to swing the club up and down with your arms.
What you are aiming to do, in golfing terms, is to shift your right side out of the way in the back-swing and your left side out of the way on the throughswing, so that at the moment of impact the club is being swung freely by your arms with the clubhead moving straight through the ball, along the target line. To do this a golfer of shortish stature will normally have to stand fairly well away from the ball, and will naturally turn his body on a fairly flat plane — at a fairly rotary angle, as do, for example, Ben Hogan and Lee Trevino. A tall golfer, on the other hand, usually needs to stand nearer to the ball, and will naturally tilt his body on a more upright plane — less “round himself” and more “underneath himself” like Jack Nicklaus and George Archer.
The shoulders, of course, must also turn on some kind of plane. Should the shoulder-turn plane match the arm-swing plane? Despite what you may have heard or read, or thought to have seen in good golfers, the answer is no. The shoulders should always turn on a more horizontal — flatter — plane than the plane of the arm-club swing: (a) to allow the club to reach a top-of-the-backswing position from where it can be swung down to the ball; and (b) to give the arms room to do that swinging. Attempting to “marry” the arm-and-club swing plane too closely to the shoulder-turn plane tends to create excess body action, which inhibits the arm swing and thus reduces clubhead speed.