Refining the Backswing
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If you haven't experienced immediate success with the throw it's because you're likely out of position going back. The video will show you how to nail the backswing to be exactly like Tiger's 2000 backswing because it was the simplest of all time.
If you want to learn Tiger's early 2000 golf swing, you have to have a proper backswing.
What's simple, what's cool about this is it's shockingly simple.
And to feel it, to really understand it, all you really need is two clubs or two shafts, two alignment sticks, something like that to stick on the ground.
And then you're going to be able to grasp this, understand it really quickly, really easily.
Now I'm going to show you at first with the club, and then I'm going to break this down.
So we're going to put the club away for a second, and we're going to show you how to feel it with each arm.
So you really understand what arm's doing which, because to me, that made a huge difference in getting my swing to match Tigers.
Do I feel more right arm?
Do I feel more left arm?
Do I feel more left hand?
When do I feel that?
Why do I feel that?
I'm going to go over all of that in the video.
So with the club at first, what I want you to do is set up a two shafts or alignment sticks, whatever you have, one directly down the target line in line with the ball, and one directly down the target line in line with your hands.
Now don't worry about getting this perfected.
It doesn't have to be exactly square or any of that stuff.
None of that stuff really matters.
This is more to understand the big picture of what you're supposed to feel.
Now as you go back in the swing, what I see all the time is the club immediately going inside of this shaft, going back like this, and the face starting to fan open.
The higher the handicap, the more common this is.
And what it leads to is that the club face gets open very early.
Now what does that mean?
The toe of the club, or this leading edge is not at 12 o 'clock, but open.
Like from my perspective, if I was reading clock, that would be one o'clock, two o'clock.
We want that club to be either towed up or slightly towed in.
And in Tiger's case, in early 2000s, he was slightly towed in maybe at about 11 o'clock.
But what I see all the time with amateur golfers who struggle is that they start rolling this left wrist, lead wrist open and keeping it cupped.
And that gets the club open.
And then they're up here and the club can get laid off.
You can get across the line.
But what's happening is this wrist is very, very cupped at this point.
And so when you go to throw, you're just throwing an open club face.
And so of course you're going to scoop, flip, and chicken wing on the way through.
So to get the feeling of this, what you actually want is that club face looking at the ball, what your perspective is.
It's both traveling down that shaft from your eyes perspective.
Okay.
And my hands are traveling down the shaft from my eyes perspective or close to it.
So now as I go back and that club face is looking at the ball, you know, here, it's not looking at the ball.
It's looking at the sky now.
So now as it's looking at the ball, my club face has very little rotation happening.
If I do this, I've just take, I've added a ton that I've got to try and take out in the downswing.
It's just hard to time that.
But if I go straight back where that club bed looks like it's traveling straight in a straight line, straight back.
And my hands look like they're traveling in a straight line, straight back over the shaft.
It's kind of like parallel train tracks here.
They're both moving straight back.
And I'm doing that with that club.
Until it kind of reaches the end of the shaft a few feet back, and my hands are outside of my thigh here.
So from face on, it's just this.
Once they're here, I'm going to explain how all this stuff is going to go back from there in just a moment.
But this is the basic idea.
Once you set this off in motion, These parallel train tracks, with your hands going straight back and the club head going straight back, then it's very, very easy to get to the top of the backswing.
Because from there, if I've got the club face looking at the ball for a long time, as I go back until I'm parallel to the ground from here, that motion just continues and I'm in the right position at the top.
Now let's break this down for a second and understand what this is really going to feel like.
And how do you really internalize this and understand how to do it?
Start with your lead arm only.
Now, This is important because the way that I was able to match up these patterns closely was feeling.
A certain percentage of left arm versus right arm, or lead arm versus trail arm in the backswing.
You can do it either way.
You can have a lot of trail arm.
You can have a lot of lead arm.
But what happened inevitably for me, and of course will happen for most, is that the more right arm I felt, The more that this bicep started to engage in the backswing and my shoulder started trying to engage to lift the club up, I would get narrow and collapsed.
So I would have this type of backswing where I wouldn't really fully turn because as soon as this starts to bend, then all of a sudden I feel loaded up.
I have nowhere else to go.
And if I just turned, it's just going to create a really weird swing.
Of course, you guys have seen my old videos where I've talked about the right arm is the governor of width.
And so by keeping this straight as long as possible, this allows the club to stay out in front of me and create a really wide backswing, which is what we're looking for.
So what I feel is the vast majority of what I'm feeling in the backswing is lead arm, lead shoulder.
The more trail arm I feel, the more I activate that too early in the swing, the more collapsed I get, and the more narrow my golf swing becomes.
So what I feel at first is I'm going to focus exclusively on the left arm, lead arm.
And as I go back, I'm going to take that arm and see how I would take it down that shaft line as long as I could.
Now, I'm not going to try and exaggerate it and really extend it, but what I'm trying to feel is what would naturally make that motion happen.
And of course, as you saw from the other takeaway videos and the goat theory stuff that I was studying, You'll know that I talk about how that lead shoulder always goes down in the grates to start the swing.
So as I do this, That helps that arm travel more down that shaft line until it gets at least a foot outside my hands or so.
If I don't do that and I start to turn this way, my hands immediately go to the inside.
So once I do that, now I'm going to have that club with a lot of momentum going to the inside.
My wrist is going to tend to cup, and then I'm going to end up in a position to where that club is deep and buried inside.
And it's going to be open at the top, most likely, because I'm going to cut my wrist.
So instead, if I take that left shoulder, lead shoulder, and I start to use that to help push that hand down that line, then I get that tunnel that I'm looking for, for my hands to travel on this path for the first few, you know, couple feet of hand travel in the swing.
And as I do this with the lead arm, What I want to notice is that this elbow pit goes from pointing slightly away from me at an angle to feeling like it's pointing straight up at the sky.
At the end of the takeaway.
And what that gives me is the feeling of not my arms internally rotating and dumping that club inside, because that's what's going to happen.
As soon as I start letting this happen, and this internally rotates that way, the club's going to get inside.
But if I keep this feeling like it's pointing up at the sky, then it's easy for me to keep the club at outside my hands.
And now from here, I only have to go what feels like up.
So let me talk a little bit more about this.
So now, as I'm taking that hand straight back, what I want you to start to feel is what would give you the added benefit, What would make it easier to keep that hand traveling back that way in terms of how you move your body?
Because a lot of times what we see is the hips turning like this in the swing.
And the hips do, quote unquote, turn in the golf swing.
But I don't think that you need to feel or should feel that you turn them per se, unless you have a swing that's very rotational in nature.
And as I talked about in the intro video, you know, the way that you produce power is everything in the swing, but there's not necessarily one way to do it.
You can have a lot of rotational speed and the less trail arm throw that you're going to have in there, the more rotational speed you're going to need to make up for that loss of power.
So a lot of times golfers turn their hips a lot.
That allows their hands to go way inside really early, creates a lot of momentum for the club head.
And then we're in that position where the club gets open and our wrist gets cupped and the club is buried.
So instead, If I was trying to make my hand travel down this line as long as possible without really exaggerating it, what I would want is lateral move, right?
If I move laterally, it makes it easier for that hand to travel just a little bit longer down that line.
And by lateral, it's only about that much, you know, maybe an inch.
Give yourself an inch of movement because once you start to turn as you go back, so even if you feel an inch of movement this way, obviously you don't want to get out to the outside of your foot, but as you kind of move and get planted onto that foot an inch, and then you add rotation.
And because this happens so fast in the swing, it may not even look like you moved much at all, which is what I was talking about in the dead drill videos, when you're talking about shifting and turning, and it looks like you're always on that right hip line.
Well, the same is true with what we're talking about here.
If I focus on just a little lateral move, not only does that give me momentum to help swing my arms so it can stay more relaxed, but it buys me a little bit more time for that hand path to travel more straight down that line.
Again, I'm not trying to exaggerate it.
I'm trying to make it really nice and relaxed.
And how would I feel?
That is by a little lateral shift and my arm and shoulder working together to travel that hand down that path.
Now, from here, once I get here, the feeling that I've created is important.
This is what you're going to work on in order to get into the right position at the top.
And it's shockingly simple to get it perfect.
Okay.
So just pay attention to this feeling from here, As I've created this momentum of a little lateral movement and my hand and shoulder working together.
Once I'm here, it feels like my hand is just kind of doing this, but it's moving with my shoulder and my lateral shift.
So now all I need to do is continue that feeling all the way to the top.
And it will feel, at least in my case, it feels very vertical, but it's not as you'll see.
So what I feel is my hands traveling down a straight line.
My hips are shifting down a straight line.
My shoulder is going down kind of a straight line.
And as it does this, that if I just feel like that hand keeps going up, well, look where my hand is.
If I put my right hand in place, I'm in a great backswing.
All I did was continue the feeling of this hand going straight.
But because I'm turning, because I'm using my shoulder to help move that arm, as I'm turning that feet, that rotation gives the arm an angle to swing up on.
Because obviously it's not going to make sense to do this.
I could only take my arm straight up vertically, keeping it on there if I didn't turn.
But as I allow my shoulder to turn, because my shoulder is helping move that hand down the line.
And now once I'm there and I just continue that feeling while I continue to turn, my hand goes up exactly where I wanted it to.
And I didn't have to do anything with it.
All I continued was the feeling of a straight line path with my hands.
And then all I have to do there is take my wrist and flatten it out at the top.
Now, what I want to do is show you exactly what this is going to look like from your perspective.
When you're looking at your hands and the club and the arms as they go back and do this movement.
So now from this perspective, this will give you an idea of what you're looking down at and what's really happening in the swing.
So I've got my hands basically on top of the blue shaft and the club head in line with the black shaft.
And as I go back, I'm just, A, I'm going to move laterally.
So I'm shifting pressure to the right to my trail leg.
And that's helping my hand continue down that line.
You can see if I just turn, club wants to go inside really quickly.
But if I go a little bit lateral and keep that hand moving down that shaft, and you can see the club head tracing that shaft, and I just continue this to the top, how little movement there really is.
Watch my wrist movement.
The entire movement to the top of the swing is that.
That's it.
From setup, where I am here to the top of the swing is literally nothing more than that with the wrist.
Let's see that.
So I'm going to go back to the top, flatten out that wrist, and I'm just going to bring it down exactly how it was.
So now you can see how much my wrist has or has not moved here.
And if I undo it, that's all I did.
So if we take the club out of the equation, what you're going to be looking at is your wrist just does this.
You see how little movement there is?
If you start doing a lot of internal rotation of your arm, taking your hand and twisting it a lot, there's really very little movement.
Again, If you're trying to feel that things are going straight back and just flattening that wrist at the top, my wrist from the top of my swing to address is just that movement.
That's how little Tiger was moving back then with his hand.
So of course, to square the face from there, it's already square at the top.
And then as he comes down, that wrist just bows a tiny, tiny bit.
And as he comes down to impact, everything's done.
And that's really important to understand because a lot of golfers take the club and they do this right away.
And so that club face is now looking up at the sky, instead of kind of imagining that.
It's looking at the ball the whole time.
And the hands are tracing that straight line path and then continuing that feeling all the way to the top.
From here, club face is already square.
I have so little to do to try and square that face coming down at impact.
So again, the feeling straight back on that shaft with the hand, straight back with the club head, continue that feeling to the top and you're done.
So as you just saw from my perspective, which will help you see from your perspective, what you're actually seeing your hands do, the wrists literally go from here to here.
That's it.
That's the entire backswing.
It's that you're going from cupped to flat, not, you don't have to bow it, just flat and a tiny amount of rotation.
And that's it.
And all it is, is continuing this feeling of my hands going down that line.
And of course, as I continue to turn, my arm feeling stays exactly the same.
I feel like it's going straight back, but because I'm turning, it kind of goes up and ends up right over my right shoulder, just like you see in tiger swing.
This is all he's doing to get there.
It's lateral this way, lateral with the hands, lateral with the club, and it's predominantly lead arm feel because you want your right arm, your trail arm to be soft so that you can get some speed out of it.
If you're trying to pick the club up aggressively with your arm, get really narrow and kind of compact with your swing.
And so then you're going to have to do all kinds of stuff coming down.
But if you're just going back wide, straight back, continue that feeling up to the top.
Now my hands are wide at the top, way away from my hand, head.
My wrists are wide.
As I just showed you, the wrist hardly does anything.
And then from there, as I would just begin to toss it, that's where all the speed is.
So if you're doing anything more than that in your backswing, you're doing way too much.
It's truly, truly simple.
What tiger did.
When you look at what his hips were doing in the backswing, you don't see any rotation where your knees kind of going like this, I guess his hips are turning, but his hips are turning as he's, but what he's doing is moving laterally to keep the hands moving that way, the club head to moving that way.
And then of course, as the shoulder goes down, his hips turn, But there's a difference between turning your hips and your hips turning as a result of your body turning and the arms swinging up.
I feel much more relaxed in my body because I'm not trying to generate a lot of rotational speed.
I'm trying to move everything.
What more or less feels like to me in a straight line, because that's what I saw in tiger's early swings is how simple he was.
And when he talks about it in that old 2000 clip of him and Butch on the golf channel, he really describes it in a really simple way.
He talks about his hands, his arms staying on top, keeping the club on up front.
And then as he turned it, rounding off this lead arm.
Let me play that clip for you real quick.
So you have a reminder, try to get the club up a little earlier, keep the club head in front of my hands a little longer, going back higher, right arm.
Then from there, round off the left arm, make it a little flatter at the top, left wrist, left arm up a little higher.
Then from there, get the club down in front of me from here, there I can arc it off.
So all he was really saying there is, as his arms are staying out in front and this trail arm staying on top.
This is an awkward position for your trail arm to be in because it can't bend this way and do anything in your swing.
So it's really a passive position for the trail arm.
It's keeping width, but it's not really in a position where it's going to do much to help swing the club back.
So for me, I feel like it's 60, 40 or 70, 30, maybe lead side.
My trail arm is really not doing that much to help.
Now, again, I can feel that trail shoulder blade glide because I'm used to keeping this lead arm straight and still arrive at the same position.
So either one will work.
But what I recommend for most people is to feel this lead arm, this lead hand going straight down that line.
And as you continue to feel that arm going up, it ends up right over your trail shoulder with a flat left wrist and you're ready to rock and roll.
You don't have to have all of these crazy thoughts going through your head.
It's truly straight, flat throw.
And that's why Tiger, in my opinion, one of the reasons he was so great back then because his swing was so simple.
And really today it hasn't changed radically.
His core movements are much, much the same.
The way he powers the swing is the same.
And in fact, some things I love about his swing today that are even better than he was doing in 2000.
But I think if you learn this 2000 pattern, because it's so simple, it's so basic.
I mean, he couldn't move any less and have a proper golf swing that if you just focus on this action, keeping the club face feeling like it's looking at the ball.
It doesn't mean hood it.
So it's looking at the ground.
Just imagine, like you can see the club face is still kind of looking at the ball here.
It's kind of looking away.
So I'm kind of imagining the sweet spot of this club, which I have lined up with the ball right now.
As it goes back, the sweet spot still in line with the ball, still looking at the ball, still looking at the ball, still looking at the ball.
And then as I continue to go up, it's going to start to look away a little bit, but it's still peeking at it.
It can still see it.
Now it's blind.
It can't see that golf ball at all.
For those of you who fan the face, open really bad and get a cupped wrist at the top and get really long and loose at the top.
That's a great visual for you to feel as you're taking your hands straight back, your hips going straight back, the club head going straight back and continuing that feeling up to the top.
You're in the right position at the top and you're going to see it's so much less work.
It's so efficient.
And it's exactly what I believe how Tiger got there back in 2000.
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