3.2 The GOAT Takeaway
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The GOAT Takeaway
Once you have a proper grip and a proper setup, the takeaway is going to seem very simple.
It's going to start to kind of fall into place and be a very natural movement for you.
And I'm going to give you checkpoints and a very important drill that's going to help walk you through how to get the takeaway.
Exactly like the goat.
So once you're set up correctly, to start the club back, what you're going to feel are a couple things.
I'm going to give you a couple checkpoints first.
The first thing that you're going to start to check is this lead arm.
Once the club shaft is parallel to the ground, at the end of the takeaway, this lead arm should look like it's angling back behind your foot with an iron.
With the driver, it's going to be a little bit more toward the foot, but with a mid iron, like a six iron, like I have here, you're going to find that it's going to go back and angle back behind you.
But the club head has got to stay outside your hands.
That's why getting this arm set up the way that I showed you during the setup video is so important.
Because if it's not, and it's protracted this way, it's going to be so easy for the arm and wrist to do this and dump the club inside.
So instead, what you want to feel is that your shoulders are more or less tilting to start the takeaway.
And the drill that I'm going to show you in the second half of this video is going to show you exactly how to do this, but I'm going to give you the checkpoint first.
So now my arm is angled back behind my foot.
And now I want you to look at the club face, the arm and my spine actually all match.
So all of these angles should look exactly the same.
And what that's going to show me is that I did really nothing with my arms and hands to start the swing.
I'm doing it primarily with getting my body to tilt, my shoulders to tilt and my hip to kick back.
Now, you've no doubt seen Tiger do this really funky looking drill a couple of times, where he's doing this or this and trying to kick his hip out.
What he's trying to do there is trying to load properly.
Like I just showed you during the takeaway, when you look at it from face on, instead of trying to turn, which is going to get the club wanting to go way around and inside, I'm going to, like, I'm going to show you in the drill in just a moment, slide my shoulder down, and that's going to push the club back.
And in order to do that, as my shoulder goes down, my hip needs to feel like it goes this way rather than turning.
And that's a very different concept.
But what Tiger's doing in his swing is getting himself loaded up in such a way that, as the club, feels like it's going more inside on the way down, he gets to feel like he's coming over the top.
And you'll see that the position of his arms is very different from the takeaway to the downswing.
His arms are much more out in front of him.
And the reason that's so important is because it's so difficult for most golfers to go to the top and then wait and shallow out the club.
It's not really a natural movement.
Swinging over the top is very natural.
It's what most all golfers want to do.
By copying Tiger's takeaway move of getting this hip to kick out, which I'll talk more about in a moment, and going back, my trail leg straightening instead of turning, which we see all the time, people trying to rotate their hips and rotate their hips.
It's a very difficult way to try and swing the club.
But if I'm sliding this shoulder, so if you imagine a pane of glass on my arm, which Tiger talks about, I'm going to show you a clip in just a moment, my arm sliding down that pane of glass, rather than going out this way, what that's going to do is my hip is going to go back.
It's going to help me get into this hip and my leg is going to straighten.
Instead of my knee turning out like this, I want my knee to feel like it just goes straight back during the takeaway.
And that makes room for my arms to go more inside.
If this knee is turning and my hip is turning, I create a lot of momentum for the club to going to want to swing out of control behind me.
But as I start thinking about tilting my shoulders this way, that's going to make my hip want to go this way.
And then of course, as I'm tilting and turning that shoulder going down, that creates the look of rotation of the swing, but I'm not really turning my body.
So it's more of what's going to feel like this shoulder going down, which is going to drive the hip back this way, which is going to straighten the knee slightly.
And that's going to make the club feel like it goes more inside with my arm pointing more this way, club, club face, arm and spine are all matching each other.
And from here, as I continue this to the top, I can then feel like I'm swinging more over the top.
I don't have to try and wait for that club to shallow because it's such a difficult, unnatural move.
So now let's go inside.
I'm going to show you a phenomenal drill.
That's going to help you understand how to make this movement super natural.
And then you can feel, instead of trying to feel like you've got a weight at the top and drop it under and shallow, you can feel like you swing straight over the top.
And that's exactly what Tiger feels at his swing.
Here's a quick clip of Tiger helping another golfer understand how to create this proper movement in your swings.
Not to have your hands go up like that.
Try and feel as if there's a plane of glass across your left arm.
And you try and keep that left arm up against that plane of glass that keeps your hands down.
And then she won't have this reroute that she has this way and this way and then a high handle.
That'll get the handle a little bit lower by keeping this connected a little more, club more in front.
And I'll get the handle lower and more stable.
A simple drill just have, just go up on a mirror and just make sure that you look, as you look back on the mirror, that your, your club is not behind your hands.
You know, when your club is all waist high.
It's still, you want to keep it more in line.
If not, maybe just a touch in front for now.
And then it'll kind of even itself out.
But this, this back here, man, that's a, that's just a recipe for having a high handle and having to time a lot of shots.
So as you just heard Tiger talking there, if you just feel that the upper part of your arms slides down this wall, an imaginary glass pane or wall, that will get you the feeling of a proper takeaway.
But just looking at yourself in a mirror, in my experience, most golfers need a little bit more help than that.
You need to feel something.
So in order to feel this, all you need is a wall that's a corner, an outside corner.
So the wall goes like this and then backs in here.
So for a right handed golfer, I want my lead shoulder to be on the flat and I need the corner to go away from me.
Because I'm going to have to put my head down this part of the wall.
So what I'm going to do, what I want you to do is get your eye roughly in line with the corner of the wall with your setup.
So that's about how far you're going to set up away from the wall.
Take your normal setup.
You don't have to do it with a club.
You can do it with or without a club.
But if you do it with just your arms in position and get the wall, the split, the corner of the wall, right about just ahead of the center of your stance.
That's where your, the side of your head is going to be.
That's where the ball would be roughly.
What you want to feel instead of going this way and turning and ramming into that wall with your eye, even with the corner of the wall, You want to feel like your shoulder and your hand slide down that wall, and that your hand path starts to go immediately to the inside.
If you're somebody who's used to doing a lot of rolling with your arms and dumping the club inside, you're going to find that you'd want to go way outside and break that wall.
This imaginary plane of glass here.
You want to feel that as your shoulder slides down this wall and your arm slides down this wall, That it drives your hand inside so that you can get the angle of your arm pointing back behind your foot.
As you start feeling this, you'll start feeling that your hip needs to work like Tiger's doing that exaggerated drill.
Now, of course, you don't want to roll to the outside of your foot.
It's mostly going straight back, but in order to really get into that hip and get into that proper load, you'll see my pants kind of crease like this as I go back into that hip.
As my shoulder slides down that wall, instead of turning really flat, like so many golfers do, that's going to drive that hip this way.
Get me deep into that hip.
Straighten that leg a little bit.
That knee is going to go straight back instead of rotating like this, and so now all that's happening from this guiding motion of sliding my arm down that wall, getting my hands to go inside, and I will have a perfect takeaway.
Now, let's look at this with doing it with a club.
Now that you have the idea of how to move your shoulders to get them steep, and this is very important because most golfers turn, and this gets everything really flat in the swing, but the ball is on the ground, and so we need to get the club to go up to hit the ball down on the ground, and to do that, we need the shoulder to go down.
If you look at Tiger Swing, the first thing that happens is that lead shoulder immediately starts to work down, and most golfers start to work around.
So that's why that wall drill with the corner is so important to help you feel how to load properly in the swing, and if I start to do this with the club, you'll find that the club head will stay outside my hands.
Now, if I start to do something with my wrists and my hands, or I turn flat, it gives the club head too much momentum, and it just kind of flings around inside.
So what you're going to practice is as you're sliding down that imaginary plane of glass with your upper arm, you don't want to be breaking that glass by turning really flat, you're going to feel like you slide down it, now of course your shoulder is going to go forward a little bit, of course it is, but you just don't want to feel like you're turning flat, it's going to feel more of a tilt.
And that's why I had you put the corner of the wall on your eye, because that gives room for your shoulder to naturally go more out toward the ball, even though you feel like you're sliding it straight down.
And as you feel that, you'll find that if you keep your hands and wrists nice and quiet, you'll have no problem keeping the club head outside your hands.
Now also, if you recall, we were talking about that supination that you had it set up, it's very important that you maintain that if you start to pronate, what's going to happen to that club, it's going to dump it inside.
If you start to pronate your trail arm, It's going to start to make it very easy where it wants to bend, and then you're going to have this very kind of narrow, collapse looking golf swing.
In order to load properly, you're going to feel that both arms stay supinated throughout the swing, and that's what helps keep the club in line with your hands as you go back.
And then from there, as you go back to the top, it's such a small move if you get this takeaway right.
And if you're set up correctly and you've got that shoulder protracted, you're going to find that to get to the top of the swing from there, it's just a little bit of extra movement.
And that momentum that you're going to have in the swing is going to take care of that.
But if you can just focus on getting this takeaway right, your hip getting deeper, your trail legs straightening up instead of rotating, don't lock it out and hyperextend it, of course.
It's just going to straighten a little bit.
As you get deeper into this hip and start loading this hip, slide that shoulder and arm down the wall.
Keep both arms supinated, your wrists nice and quiet, and you'll have a perfect takeaway with one simple feel.
Chris
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
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