Backswing

There are a few fundamentals that must be performed properly that differ significantly from that of a two plane swing, according to Jim Hardy, that differentiate the two swings. Remember, as Hardy pointed out, there are no interchangable parts for the two swings so you must understand the differences between the two, especially if you are at all familiar with the popular two plane teaching of today.

1. The shoulders swing on a steeper plane

The shoulders should always turn perpindicular to the spine, this is nothing new. Quite simply, if you don't, it hurts as you put your spine in a kinked position. Hardy believes the spine should be tilted over more at address in a one plane swing, which will allow the shoulders to rotate on a steeper plane. Compare the two photos below of me and David Toms. Note how David swings the club above the shaft plane he established at address very early in the swing. He keeps the club outside of his hands in order to keep it from coming too far inside. This is a commonly taught position in today's modern teaching and David performs it perfectly. You can already see how his arms are separating from his torso in an effort to create width. In a one plane swing, Hardy says that width is a bad characteristic so the arms swing more to the inside and across the chest. Hogan also talked a great deal about his arms swinging across his chest and the connection he maintained of his upper arms to his chest throughout his swing.



One of the very small nuances that is very important in the one plane swing is the clockwise rotation of the left arm. David Leadbetter pointed this out in his book on Hogan's Five Fundamentals. In a two plane swing, there is no rotation of the forearm because you are trying to get the club up and rotating the left arm makes the swing more "around" as the club goes more into the "depth" dimension of the swing. The rotation of the arm in the one plane swing allows the left arm to more naturally swing across the body. If you stand up and make a baseball swing, you will notice that there is some clockwise rotation of the left forearm. If you do not allow the left forearm to rotate, the club will be "maneuvered" onto a more upright plane rather than being allowed to "swing" on it's natural, more around plane. This is not something that you will concsiously do if you allow yourself to make a natural swing, it is something that will happen on its own. I simply point it out here because you may have heard not to allow the left forearm to roll, which I believe is true for a two plane swing, but not true for a one plane swing. I also point it out here because I don't recall Hardy talking about it and I think it is important.

2. The left arm stays connected to the chest and rotates

One of Hardy's key fundamentals is to keep the arms in close to the body with the left arm connected to the chest. The left arm staying connected to the chest is a key element in a one plane swing that allows the body to control the arms - a key to power and accuracy. As I mentioned, Hogan talked about this in his book, Five Fundamentals. Both arms stay close to the body to decrease width and give control of the golf club over to the torso, removing the responsibility from the much more difficult to control arms. This allows you to use the big muscles of your body to swing the club because the arms are a completely unreliable source of power and control. This swinging motion happens naturally because the arms are simply being led by the rotating body and are being allowed to swing back behind the chest similar to a baseball swing. You can clearly see here that David's arms are continuing their very upward movement whereas mine are swinging more around. A simple way to look at this is that in a one plane swing the arms and body are always in sync, with the arms naturally swinging with the rotation of the body on the same plane. In the two plane swing the body rotates and the arms lift. There is NO lifting of the arms in a one plane swing.



3. The arms swing back on the same plane as the shoulders

This is where Hardy and Hogan differ significantly from today's teaching. Both speak of how the left arm swings on a plane that is very close to parallel to that of the shoulders. In order to do this, you may feel that you are swinging much more around than up. The club is, however traveling up due to the steeper shoulder plane established at address. You'll find that it feels very natural to swing around your body without lifting your arms. It is just how you would swing a baseball bat or an axe.

Observe the photo below of Steve Flesch from 2003, before he started to work with Butch Harmon on swinging more upright, or more on two planes. At the top of the swing, his left arm and shoulders are perfectly on plane together.

Top of the Swing

Compare the following two photos of me and David Toms. Both of us have arrived in solid positions at the top, but there are obvious differences. First, David's hands are directly above his right shoulder, a textbook position for a two plane swing. My hands are outside my right shoulder and are further "behind" my body, as Hardy would put it. Toms' right arm has swung up and away, disconnecting from his body. Also, note the flatter shoulder plane that David has at the top of the swing.

On the downswing, David's arms must drop a great distance to get back on plane. He must delay his body turn until his arms have dropped back in front of his chest. My arms do not have to drop because they are already on plane with my shoulders. My only task from here is to rotate my body back the left. In my own experience with the swing, from this position I must rotate like hell back to the left to get my body out of the way. Hogan talked about how hard he drove with his lower body in his book and in Jody Vasquez' book "Afternoons with Mr. Hogan" (a great read, btw) he talked about how one of Hogan's secrets was to drive his right knee "into the back of the ball." This, I think is a key to the one plane swing. Hardy phrased it that "your body can turn fast enough." I think they were saying the same thing in slightly different ways. Either way, my interpretation of it is to rotate like hell.



In order to arrive in this one plane position at the top, the arms must stay connected to the body. You can see that you could place a headcover under each of my arms and they would stay securely in place throughout the swing. This is a drill that Hardy and others advocate for this type of swing. My visual is that my left arm is velcroed to my chest. I like this image because velcro gives a little, allowing for some feeling in the arm, but it also gives me the feeling that my arm is securely held in place without me "holding" it in place by being tense. I believe that the arm must be allowed to swing into this position, not be forced into it. You should feel as if you are in a very connected and powerful position at the top of the swing, all the while feeling alive and dynamic.

No swinging motion can get around the fact that the body generates the power and the arms must be below the shoulder plane at impact. Take a look at a photo of Barry Bonds hitting a home run, or any baseball player for that matter. You will see that their arms are clearly below their shoulders for obvious reasons. If Bonds started with his arms above his shoulders before his swing, then he, too would be required to "drop" the arms to get them beneath his shoulder plane in order to use the rotational force of his body to generate power. If he swung at a pitch above his head, he would have no power as his arms would be above his shoulder plane and he then could only use his arms to generate bat speed. The difference between a baseball and golf swing is that baseball players rarely start their swing with their arms far above their heads (with the exception being Julio Franco). They always start with their arms on plane with their shoulders so that there is nothing but rotation in the swing. They don't struggle with the timing needed to drop their arms back down on plane, their arms are already on plane, all they need to do now is rotate their body left as hard as they want and let the arms trail behind their body. Notice how Bonds' arms at impact will be well behind his quickly rotating torso. His chest will be pointing toward the pitcher while his lead arm will stil bel pointing toward the ground.

In a one plane golf swing, the idea is that you are simply duplicating these more natural swinging positions by eliminating as many unnecessary moving parts as possible. In this case, we want to get rid of the dramatic upright swinging motion of the arms. Jim Hardy believes that with the arms on plane, all one has to do is rotate the body back to the left and keep the arms behind my body.

Transition

The transition in any golf swing is perhaps the most important move and the most difficult for most to understand. It is what gives a golf swing its athleticism, grace and power. In both swings, the body must begin moving back to the target before the club reaches the top of swing. In any good golf swing, the arms do nothing active from the top of the swing until they get back down to atleast hip high, this allows them to store potential energy to be used exclusively through the hitting area. The longer they stay passive, the better, as this allows the body to control the club rather than the arms.

The transition is the single most important move for storing power in the golf swing. It is the transition that allows the golfer to maintain lag in the wrists that allow the club to whip through impact with little apparent effort from the body. Ben Hogan is, of course, the absolute master of this. Hogan began moving his body back to the target well before he reached the top of the swing and he, himself, stressed the emphasis of getting the hips moving while the arms stay passive. Hogan said that his "arms were getting a free ride." For many, getting the lower body to move in one direction while the club continues to move back is a difficult task. One way I teach this move is this that as long as the club is moving back away from the target on the backswing, the body can be rotating back away from the target. However, after the club is perpendicular to the ground, it begins moving "back" toward the target as it approaches the top of the swing. It is during this time that the body must be "preparing" to move back toward the target. It does not happen this early, but if you think of it happening in this way it will give the body time to respond to the minds instructions while you are learning the idea. It is at this point, when the body begins rotating back to the left that you can't rotate too fast. The jeopardy in the two plane swing of rotating the body too fast is the don't have time to get back down on plane and they get stuck behind you. In the one plane swing, that is the exact desired effect. You want the left arm to feel as if it were being drug or forced through the downswing by the body. It is as if the left arm were velcroed to the chest, very relaxed but whipping through impact.

If your transition is poor and doesn't "trap" or "catch" the left arm against the chest, you will swing over the top with the arms as you begin to rotate your upper body back to the target with the lower body still "in the way." Hardy didn't talk much about the transition on The Golf Channel, but for me it makes a golf swing. Hogan also believed this and gave it concern in his book Five Lessons. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the transtion. It is the transition that stretches the muscles to their fullest extent and this stretching is what allows them to "snap" back like a rubber band to generate tremendous speed with very little effort.

Consider the two photos below of me at impact hitting an 8 iron. In the swing on the left, I have purposely made a "late" transition. This has forced my arms over the top and caused me to come down on the ball too steep. You'll notice that my arms are in front of my body, rather than behind it. I am a bit scrunched up as my arms didn't have room to swing with my hips not getting out of the way. In the second picture, you can see how my better transition has allowed my arms to be pulled by my body rather than swing back in front of it. While it is difficult to see in still pictures, the consistency in ball striking is night and day and the effort required to hit the much more dynamic shot is significantly less.

Downswing

In initiating the downswing, there are several things to consider. The mantra of the one plane swing might be something like "get to the left side" or "rotate the shoulders on the same plane." While these are proper things that you need to do in the downswing, I first will address the one thing that you must NEVER do. It is a killer to the swing, one plane or two. Your right hip must never, ever, under any circumstance kick toward the ball at the start of the downswing. This move is an absolute destroyer of all golf swings and is something that I struggled with a great deal. It is such a quick, seemingly harmless motion, but it changes more things in your downswing than any other single action. It is a problem that plagues many, many golfers at all levels. When the right hip kicks in toward the ball during the transition, the spine angle changes, becoming more upright. No matter how hard you try and maintain your spine angle, your lower back will straighten, even if you manage to maintain the angle with your mid and upper back. Note the picture below. The yellow line represents the spine angle I established at address and maintained throughout my backswing. However, I initiated my downswing by kicking in my right hip toward the ball rather than rotating my body hard to the left. This puts me in a "stuck" body position where I must work extra hard to save the shot. My arms are forced onto a steeper plane and to the outside of my turn. My spine angle is becoming more upright and I am, in effect, coming out of the shot because my hips never cleared properly during the transition. I can attest first hand that this is a dreadful position to try and play from consistently. Not only is it bad for accuracy, it's also bad for the back. If you perform the one plane swing properly and initiate the transition correctly, you will not have to struggle with this swing killer any longer.

Shoulder Turn vs. Shoulder Tilt
One of the most eye opening things I thought that Hardy spoke about was the shoulder turn/tilt. Hardy places an emphasis on the way the shoulders rotate in the one plane golf swing. He believes, they must rotate perpendicular to your spine at all times. If they do not, they are tilting, not turning. On the backswing, most all better golfers turn their shoulders rather than tilt them, but it is during the downswing that the turning becomes more of a concern. If your right hip moves toward the target as I mentioned above, the shoulders will stop turning left and "tilt." You can see this in the pictures of me above. At impact, my left shoulder has stopped rotating around to the left and now my right shoulder is coming underneath. Because this is something I struggled with for years in a two plane swing, I feel I can speak authoritatively on the subject. The only thing that I believe that fixes this "tilting" through impact caused by the right hip kicking in toward the ball is an aggressive transition and rotation of the hips and core to the left while the shoulders stay back a little. This creates a stretch between the shoulders and the hips, storing energy that allows them to snap through impact. This is exactly in line with what Hogan spoke about in his book and I have found it to be true in my swing as well.

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