A critical concept in the one plane swing that many golfers have failed to fully understand while learning the swing is the concept of swinging left. It is important that the body control the club throughout the swing in order to take more control out of the smaller muscles of the arms and hands. Tools like an AI swing analyzer can help you instantly see whether your club path and body rotation are working together correctly through impact.
By checking your divots and using a simple golf tee, you can quickly groove the proper feeling of rotation in the swing and immediately improve your ball striking. During the video, pay close attention to how the club works immediately to the inside after impact in a natural arc around the body. The arms and hands do not manipulate the path of the club — it simply swings in an arc and sends the turf from the divot to the left of the target line.
Note the following three pictures taken from the video segment. If you look closely you will note how the path of the club is more on top of the ball one frame before impact.
At impact, it is of course square. The important thing to note is the following frame of film where you can see the club has already moved immediately to the inside and is heading over the tee to the left of the shaft.
In the final photo you can see the club has continued working left out over the tee and the ball has come out straight. When you truly start to get the essence of the one plane swing, you will find that you can swing left as hard as you want and the ball will never go left. It is a unique sensation but a very desirable one in the one plane swing.
Video Transcription: Divots Left Tee Drill
One of the important concepts in the one plane swing is this concept — and you've heard it said a million times — of swinging left. Always be rotating to the left.
What does that mean, exactly? What are things that you can check to make sure you're doing that properly in the swing and understanding the swing correctly?
A lot of amateurs, when they're starting to learn the concept of swinging left, all they simply do is as they get to the top of the swing they over drive with their shoulders and they'll take the trail shoulder and arms and come over the top of the swing, over the top of the plane, and they'll actually yank the ball left.
That's definitely misinterpreting the idea of swinging left. When we're saying "swinging left," what we mean is that through impact our bodies are actually open to the target. The hips and the shoulders are open and rotating to the left.
You can watch, if you look down the line, you can see that the club, as it comes into impact — this is the target line, so going straight down the shaft — the club immediately works back to the inside. It never comes out to the right.
If you took the opposite of swinging left, it would be swinging right, coming out and releasing the club down from the inside out, releasing the club shaft out to the right.
If swinging more down the line, it would look more like coming into impact square and the club would be traveling along that line as long as possible. In order to do that, the body would essentially have to stop rotating so that the arms could release and extend down the target line as much as they can.
You've heard people talk about "shaking hands with the target." Well, some of them will exaggerate it and actually try to get you to extend the club down the target line as long as you can — but actually, in a one plane swing, what you're trying to do is get the club to work back left, or to the inside, very quickly. It's something that happens very naturally if you let it.
As we're looking at this swing, at the top of the backswing with full rotation, all that needs to happen is to unwind the body — the entire core — back to the left so that as the downswing begins and the arms stay passive, all that's happening is striking the ball and then immediately moving back to the inside because the body keeps turning.
The body never stops turning in the one plane swing. If the body ever stops and the arms and hands release, that's going to be a bad shot because the arms are in complete control of the club head at that point. There's no ability to square the club with the body — it becomes completely reliant on timing and tempo to get the club face square, and that's inconsistent by nature.
In a one plane swing we're trying to take that timing and tempo — and all those variables — out of the swing so they're not quite as critical, to the point where poor timing means poor shots and good timing means great shots. We want to be far more consistent than that, obviously.
All we're trying to do is square the club face. If you look at the club coming into impact — as long as nothing is done with the arms and hands, and that relationship stays exactly the same as it was at the top of the swing — rotating the body left and keeping turning left means the club face comes into impact square.
Nothing has been done to manipulate it with the arms and hands. Then it works back to the left and to the inside. That's simply allowing the body to keep turning, driving through the shot, swinging left, and getting the ball to come out straight because the hands are not releasing.
Now, if you take this concept of swinging left and get the body to rotate very aggressively through impact — everything working great there, the body just turning to the left, the club working left — and then release the arms and hands, the toe of the club is naturally going to turn over.
The club head is actually getting out in front of the hands, and more importantly out in front of the body turn, and shutting through impact rather than staying square and being squared with the body.
What that's going to cause is shots going left. It's very, very important that you keep the arms and hands quiet, rotate everything square with the body, and release the body through the shot.
A lot of times what students feel is that they're actually going to hit this ball dead left. At the teaching facility, the students are often told: "Try and hit the ball over the fence to the left" — meaning rotate and drive everything through with the body.
That's exactly what is meant by this — rotating and driving the trail shoulder down and through the shot with the body, aiming it out to the left through impact of where the target actually is.
It's a strange concept at first. People either feel like, "I'm going to hit this ball dead left" — and if you release the arms and hands you will — or they feel like, "I'm going to slice it," because they feel like they're coming over the top when in fact they're actually, for the first time, rotating level on plane rather than dipping the trail shoulder coming through. The GOAT Drill system is specifically designed to train this body-first, arms-passive rotation pattern through structured, measurable practice reps.
There are two main checks to work on for this. One is simply to take a tee and place it a little bit more than a foot in front of the shot and just a few inches to the inside of the target line.
Here's the target line. The tee is about 3-4" inside of that, and a foot and a half to two feet in front of the ball.
All you're looking to do, as you come through impact, is try to clip that tee with the club. It's not critical that you actually clip the tee. It's a visual — you're trying to get a sensation or a feeling of the body having to rotate very aggressively to the left while the arms stay more passive in order to get that tee to clip and take it out of the ground.
As you're working on these shots, this is a great, simple drill to get the sensation of working the body, rotating everything left, and getting the club to swing along that path. If you want to verify your club path and divot direction with data-driven feedback, an AI swing analyzer gives you an objective look at exactly how your body rotation is translating to the club's post-impact trajectory.
Another simple check — and you can do this at the same time — is paying attention to where your divots go. With a shaft on the ground delineating the target line, the goal during practice swings is for the divots to fly to the left of that shaft.
You can see, looking down the line, that the divots are starting out just to the left and working inside the shaft.
When making actual swings, the same thing needs to happen — the divot direction should fly left of the shaft, definitely not to the right of it. Coming in straight or slightly to the inside is ideal. The more left you can move it while making solid contact and keeping the arms passive, the better the swing is going to be.
We'll hit this shot here and watch. Imagine clipping the tee, then swing and get the divot to go inside that shaft. Think of nothing else and see what happens.
Looking down the target line.
The divot went left, the ball started out on the target line, and the swing went to the left. If the arms and hands release, the ball will come out just a little bit left — and if everything stays passive, the ball starts out on line.
That's what we're looking for — these divots starting to work to the left. As you're making practice swings, just get those divots flying to the left. Imagine trying to clip the tee, but again you don't want to be releasing the arms and hands because then you'll actually shut the club face down.
You're wanting to rotate through the shot, and that is what produces compressed ball flight — because you're actually hitting the ball more with your torso and getting the club to continue to accelerate through impact, because it's not released out prematurely.
As soon as you release the club out, away from you, it begins to slow down because you can't accelerate it anymore — you lose the arc.
As you continue to rotate left, the club can keep accelerating through impact. That's how you get more compression on the ball, better club head speed, and better control of the shots.
Work on getting your divots to fly left and that tee in the ground to clip just in front of you — just as a visual, to kind of feel that you're rotating to the left — and watch your ball flight and impact improve.
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
Open at impact
Target line (yellow), club head path (red)
If the club followed the target line (left) instead of continuing around (right)
Square at impact
The toe of the club turns over
Tee placement (red) in relation to target line (yellow)
Divot flies left
