The Importance of the Takeaway

Now that you understand what Trackman is all about, let’s talk about a very important part of the golf swing. Is it the most important? That's still up for debate. After all, there are so many important elements that make up a complete and functional golf swing.

There’s the impact position, wrist angles, backswing, downswing, follow-through, body rotation, pressure and weight transfer through the feet, swing plane, club release, transitioning from the backswing to the downswing, and the separation of the hips and shoulders (also known as the X Factor).

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Whew, did I get it all?

Well, all that super important stuff can be ruined by a bad takeaway.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a world-renowned golf coach, but I have played the game for a long time. I understand more than anyone that when it’s time to play in a tournament, it’s just you, your clubs, and the course. And let me tell you, that’s one of the loneliest I’ve ever been—struggling to feel a solid swing in a tournament, fighting to end up with a decent score, accompanied only by muscle memory ingrained in my being. More often than not, muscle memory can become clouded by your only other companion in those moments: the knowledge in your brain. Nevertheless, despite everything feeling off, you still need to finish the round with a decent score, so it’s crucial to have something consistent to always rely on. In order to have consistency, you must first understand the fundamentals of a good golf swing, and that starts with the takeaway.

An incorrect takeaway makes it difficult to take a good swing without overcompensating and can result in a plethora of misses, including the dreaded shank! This component is what gets everything started, and if you don’t start properly, then it’s nearly impossible to finish properly.

There are some common misconceptions about what people believe is the “correct” takeaway, including those players who try to hinge immediately or drag the club back low to the ground for too long without moving the club up along the swing arc.

In addition, some like the feel of the one-piece takeaway where everything moves back together, and in an effort to achieve this, they move everything back at once, yanking it inside and resulting in no power or coil to the swing.

But fear not! You’re not the first person to struggle with the takeaway, and most certainly not the last. It’s even something that tour players consistently work on and tune up.

This is a two-fold answer, though, because in order to have the correct takeaway, you need to master another fundamental of the swing, which is learning how to setup properly. First, ensuring that these four elements are always tuned will put you in the right position to make the correct takeaway.

Keys to the correct Setup:

1.     Grip

For a good neutral grip, the V formed by your thumb and forefinger of your left hand (for right-handed players) should point between the right ear and right shoulder. Similarly, the right hand should then sit on top of the left with the V pointing between the left ear and left shoulder. Make sure you aren’t gripping the club like you’re holding on for dear life! Hold it gently and with a soft pressure. It’s also important to note that the club should sit more in the fingers of the left hand than the palm. 

As far as overlapping or interlocking, it’s a personal choice. Players also vary between the strength of their grip, and it’s important to understand the difference between a strong and a weak grip. A strong grip means more of the left hand is visible, whereas a weak grip means more of the right hand is visible.

2.     Posture

Make sure the back is straight, and then bend from the hips with a slight knee bend. Let the arms naturally hang down, ensuring that you don’t reach or crowd yourself when gripping the club.

3.     Alignment

This one is more difficult than it seems. To delve further into this part of the setup, check out my post entirely about alignment! But in short, it’s important to ensure that the shoulders, hips, and feet are all in line with each other and pointing parallel to your clubface and target line. Using alignment sticks will help train the feeling.

4.     Ball Position

Having poor ball position can cause some pretty crazy shots, and it’s such an easy fix! To see if the ball position is in the middle of the stance, lay an alignment stick perpendicular to the ball. If using an alignment stick to aim at the target, then the ball position stick should lay perpendicular to that, creating a ‘T’. To hit lower shots, move the position back towards the right foot (for right-handed players), and for longer irons, hybrids, woods, and driver, move the ball up in the stance towards the left foot. Stay tuned for a post where I research what is the correct ball position for each club and how it can affect the swing!

Okay, now that’s settled, and you’re in the perfect setup position, ready to move the club back, but how do you do it?

Well, it can be described in a variety of ways not atypical to the rest of the golf swing. Some say it feels like they are turning their shoulders back to shake someone’s hand with their left hand, others feel like everything moves back at once as the club stays in the middle of the chest and begins to move up. However you choose to think about the takeaway, and because what you feel in the swing is often different than reality, it’s important to understand exactly what is happening with the club in the first few feet of your swing.

The club actually starts first. It's a sequence of clubface first, followed by the arms, shoulders, torso, and finally the hips. Even though, for some, it may feel like everything is moving back in one piece, that isn't actually what is happening. As with anything in golf, if the sequence is off then the whole swing will be thrown off. Turning the hips too early, or only using the arms, may be correct movements, but performed at the wrong time in the swing.

It's also important to understand that the clubface should stay square for as long as possible to create less room for error, which means the clubface and forearms should not roll open. There is a recent Golf Digest article that speaks about keeping the clubface "square" in the takeaway. In a nutshell, Golf Digest Top-10 teacher Michael Breed explains that the old school idea of rolling the clubface open in the takeaway so that the toe of the face is pointing to the sky when the club is parallel to the ground is actually not a square face, but an open one. He explains that the golf swing has shifted a little and that when the club is parallel to the ground, the toe of the face should match the golfer's spine tilt. All in all, it's a slightly different position for everyone, but the gist of it all points more towards quiet forearms and hands in the takeaway.

Here are some other important keys:

• Keep your balance and weight centered

• The clubface should remain square as it moves straight back

• The clubhead should begin to move gradually upward along the swing arc.

• The club moves first, and then the body activates.

• The shoulders and core should then activate and begin turning back in sync with the club.

The tricky part about golf, in my opinion, is that more often than not, the swing is a combination of different feels that are taken out of context and explained as one singular feeling. For example, if you have heard the takeaway described as the club starting first, the body rotating back in one piece, or as the hands hinging and beginning to move upward, or simply moving the club straight back low and slow, then you are correct! All of these things happen. But the key is they happen in the correct sequence. Only focusing on one aspect of the takeaway without fully understanding what is happening with the club and your body can result in an incorrect movement.

The correct combination of the body working back together, while the club moves up, can be practiced with simple drills. I am sure you have seen videos of Tour pros like Nelly Korda and Justin Thomas (slide 4) taking the club back and stopping to check the position and then taking a full swing. This is one drill that I have always stuck with. When things feel off and I don't know what to do, I always fall back on this. It even comes with a creative and totally original name: The Pause Drill.

The Pause Drill:

Set up to the target with alignment sticks and tee the ball up. To start, hit 10 balls moving only the hands straight back and stopping at the right edge of the right shoe (for a right-handed player). From that point, begin to hinge the wrists upward and move everything back together while keeping the club in the center of the chest and swing through. You should really be able to feel your shoulders and core activate as you begin the upward and back rotation.

Next, hit 10 balls stopping at halfway back. Check the position to make sure the hands and club are in the correct place, coil back, and hit.

Finally, hit 10 balls without using stopping points and feel how the body moves. Repeat this process of 10/10/10 as many times as you like to feel comfortable with the movement. It also serves as a good warm-up to start the body moving correctly before a round.

Whenever you find yourself losing the rhythm of your swing, stop and first evaluate your setup. If all is good there, then go back to the 10/10/10 drill. It also helps to aim at different targets on the range and visualize the type of shot you would like to hit. I find there are certain targets that I aim for that give me a higher tendency for a poor takeaway, so it’s important to really gain some awareness of your proclivities. We’re talking inches here; it doesn’t take much to throw off the golf swing. This part requires discipline, so resist the urge to pound ball after ball, determined it’s some other aspect of your swing that needs fixing, and focus on doing the drills correctly.

I can assure you that having a poor takeaway can lead to all sorts of problems in the backswing and downswing. So don’t focus on the problems, just focus on what you need to do correctly, then there won’t be any problems!

See, golf is so simple.  

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