How To Start Your Backswing – Golf Takeaway Techniques

On the topic of how to start your backswing, let’s take a look at the swing of Tiger Woods from early 2000s. There’s a lot of subtle things you can pick up and put into your game will help you feel more relaxed and fluid. You’ll see how he utilizes his entire body for the backswing, not just the arms. How he starts his backswing with full body motion and mass shift to the right side. This allows him to be tension free and promotes a smooth coordinated swing.

Full transcript: I’m going to take a look at one of my favorite swings of Tiger. This is obviously early two thousands, but there’s so much great subtle stuff that you can learn from this and put into your ball striking that will help you feel a lot more fluid and dynamic and relaxed in your swing. And I’m going to walk you through the differences in what I’m doing in my swing and what I’m trying to learn and evolve into as I continue to put the goat code into action. So we can all learn how to swing like the greats of at setup.

Now, obviously, first of all, I’m hitting a six iron here. Tiger looks like he’s hitting a wedge, maybe even a sand wedge. So definitely a shorter club. So that’s going to change things. But there’s not a ton of great footage from him back in the early days that I have access to. So we’ll use this one as a comparison.

So at setup, you’re going to see a lot of similarities. One big thing I want, a tip that I want to offer is that you need to make sure that you, your head sets up behind the ball. A lot of times I see golfers who, who are like me, who are really right eye dominant, and they want to kind of get their right eye on top of the ball. And so you lose any axis tilted setup. I tend to do that same thing. get my head way over here and then I’m already starting out in front of the ball.

I like to hit a little bit of a high draw. Here in the altitude, I love hitting the ball very high to take advantage of the lack of atmosphere up here so I can hit the ball way farther and the ball doesn’t curve as much when you’re at altitude. That’s where I play the majority of my golf. So you, you’ll see that difference in our patterns as we, as we work through this.

So one of the things I want to draw your attention to that I just absolutely love. In Tiger’s old swing, I’m going to put this line a little bit off his hip, and I want you to watch how he starts his swing. Look at that. Before the club even moves. What’s he moving? Is moving his whole body. You can see his head, the buttons on his shirt, everything. Center mass shifting over to the right. This is such a wonderful feel to get your body moving and get fluid into and take tension out of your arms and shoulders is use your whole body mass to shift into this trail leg to get the club some momentum. As you go back, halfway back.

Now, obviously, I’ve got, you know, well known neck issues and spine issues, so my head’s going to start to turn quite a bit as I get back. Now at the top, tigers just always look so good at the top, doesn’t he? Doesn’t look like he can ever miss a shot. It’s something really special about the way that he’s able to rotate his body. And a lot of this has to do with that initial shift off the ball, getting all that pressure onto the right side.

If you remember my old necktie drill, if you dropped a necktie off Tiger’s chest, it dropped right to the inside of his knee and wouldn’t be draped across his belly. I’m in a similar position, though. obviously I’m no goat and I’m definitely not as good as Tiger. Definitely don’t have the flexibility of a young Tiger either. I’m almost 50 now with numerous injuries, so.

But just a beautiful position. But a lot of this is set up with that initial shift into that trail leg, the whole body shifting over there because it makes it so much more freed up to start your backswing without having to start with your arms and hands. So he makes a huge turn here. You can see both of our right shoulder blades on the backside of our head. Now, this is where you’re going to start to see a little bit more noticeable differences.

Part of this is because I’m much shorter than Tiger. Tiger’s with six one. I’m five nine. And so you’ll see that. Also because I like to hit a high draw, I shallow out the club a little bit more so you can see my right elbow has already dropped quite a bit lower. And part of this, again, is Tiger’s height. Part of this is he’s eating a much shorter club than I am.

So it’s obviously going to change things. I’m going to be more upright and so on and so forth. But overall, you can see very similar tendencies are starting to shift back into the lead side. I tend to stay back just a hair more because again, I want to release the club a little bit more with my hands, which you’re going to see another release pattern in just a second. Tiger’s a bit more on top of it. We all know he loves to hit a fade.

I don’t know what shot he was hitting here, but especially with a short iron, I think it’s a pretty good idea or pretty good assumption they’ve seen the ball pretty flat, pretty low. Not looking for some big, high moon ball. You know, so he’s going to be a little bit more on top of it. And so he’s going to move pressure a little bit more to the lead side than what I am. I’m going to stay back a little bit more to give me the ability to release the club a little bit more with my hands. I like that feeling. It gives me a lot of effortless speed at impact, or we don’t have the frame of his just at impact. When we’re very close, though, in terms of having that frame.

So it’s just after impact, you can see the club shaft is still de lofted. I’m probably in the, you know, six, seven degree shaft lean range here. That’s normal for me to kind of hit the high penetrating draw that I want to hit. But overall, and again, you’re going to see Tiger. This is one of the things I want to mention. It’s a great idea if you’re very right eye dominant like I am, to hit balls with your right eye closed, which sounds kind of strange at first, but I have a tendency, like, I see so many golfers wanting to rotate my head to, toward the target side.

Kind of want to rotate my head this way to get my right eye in a position where I feel like I can see the ball. You know, that’s a really a difficult thing for me to fight because when I’m lead eye dominant, I’m not lead eye dominant. When I try to feel that, it feels uncoordinate, like, I feel like I can’t quite see the ball. But, you know, a good tip is if you’re struggling with getting out in front of the ball and hitting, losing all the balls as a fade or a cut or a slice out to, if you’re a right handed golfer, out to the right, close your right eye.

If you’re a right handed golfer and start making, at least make practice swings, you may find it very difficult to hit the ball with your right eye closed, but start making swings with that feeling of keeping your eye like, just like you see tiger here, like your head rotated to away from the target. And in fact, in the downswing, you can even kind of use that as a trick to start to rotate your head the other way. So you kind of want to imagine in the swing that your head obviously at the top of the backswing, it’s looking this way, and then you want to feel like it rotates in the opposite direction away from the target in the downswing. Now, of course, I physically can’t do that because my neck is fused, but you get the idea.

So now the big difference. Again, I’m just staying back a little bit more because I want to hit a high draw. But you can see and you’ll see that I’m going to let my arm, my club release a little bit more rather than holding off. So I let that my hands rotate over a little bit more aggressively because I want to feel that speed in my hands. But that’s kind of like the big gist of things that you can learn from Tiger’s swing.

If you make a full turn, you get that right leg loaded up in the backswing and you drive through, drive off that right hip to bring, to drive the body into the ball. You’ll be able to release your hands and get a lot of club head speed. And again, I can’t emphasize enough if you tend to lose the ball as a cut, start practicing with your the eye that’s furthest away from the target closed and start getting a feeling for letting that club release past your body.

For more golf instruction, check out how to stop hitting fat shots in golf here