Why You Need This: In this video, you'll discover how to swing with a one piece takeaway in golf.

This is a very detailed video to help you develop a great takeaway.

I'm often asked...

"How do I make the perfect takeaway?"

Well, your takeaway doesn't have to be perfect...

But it's important to get a good start to the swing so you'll be in a good position for the rest of your swing.

First, you'll see a demonstration of a common takeaway mistake: dragging the club way to the inside.

This will put you in a bad place from the start.

You'll have to make all sorts of compensations to get the club in a good spot at the top of you swing.

Another common mistake...

Picking the club up quickly without rotating the upper body.

This causes the club to rise up way outside, and again, requires other compensations to reroute the club and put it on a good plane.

Here are some tips to make a good takeaway...

Concentrate on syncing up your body and arms in the takeaway so you can avoid jerking the club back.

Keep your right arm straight (but relaxed) and let your upper body rotate back.

Also, make sure you shift your weight back slightly, pushing into the ground.

Next, you'll learn how much club head angle matters in the takeaway.

Some pros have the club facing straight up while others like to have the club head angle match the spine angle.

I'll show you why it really doesn't matter much because the club head angle will change at the top of your swing.

Watch this video now to learn the common takeaway mistakes...

And discover the simple moves that'll help you start your swing with a great one piece takeaway in golf!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 12:00

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, and welcome back. I’ve got an awesome video for you. I get this question a lot, is how do I do the perfect takeaway? How do I get the swing started?

We know if we can get the swing started on track, it’s going to be a lot easier to continue on track and to hit some nice, solid shots.

How do we get that first few feet of the swing happening correctly?

One of the big mistakes that I see a lot of times is players dragging the club to the inside. We’re going to address that in this video.

We’re also going to talk about how to synch up your body, your hips, your shoulders, your club, your arms, get all that in synch so everything can be nice and rhythmic and fluid.

Now before we get started in this, one thing I do want to go over is a lot of times people will become obsessed with very small details.

I am going to get into a lot of detail, because I know you guys want answers to these questions. But don’t ever become completely obsessed with the takeaway.

There are some great players out there, major championship winners, some players come, the club’s a little bit outside their hands. Some players, the club’s a little bit inside their hands.

It’s not all about we can nail this perfect takeaway and still hit bad shots. We can have a terrible takeaway, or not a terrible takeaway, but we can have flaws in our takeaway that don’t look perfect on camera, and still hit the ball amazing.

That’s one of the big keys with the Top Speed Golf System, is we don’t want to get wrapped up in tiny details, even though I am going to give you answers to those questions.

We don’t want to get wrapped up in so many details that we’re so worried about the takeaway that we completely forget about our rhythm, or timing, hitting the ball solid and getting it to go to our target in the distance.

Enough about that, let’s get to the details. I’m going to start from the ground up, going every single piece of this.

When we set up at address, we’re assuming here that my feet are pretty much going to be parallel with the target in the distance. I went ahead and put this stick down on the ground. What we’re shooting for here, is a pretty good shoulder turn letting that club come back.

When the club’s parallel with the ground, it should also basically be parallel with this stick. That would be my club coming back very nicely on plane, as you would call it.

One of the major things that has to happen here, I’ll put this ball here, what needs to happen is I’ve got to transfer some weight to my right side.

The reason for that is I have to put some pressure in the ground with my right foot to allow my hips and my shoulders to start to turn. This is what people call ground force reaction. Sounds fancy, but basically all it is, I’m pushing into the ground, that’s going to allow my body to rotate.

As I set up to the ball, the very initial move, my very first move that has to happen with the takeaway, I have to start putting some pressure into my right foot. The pressure actually kind of goes down and out this direction.

When I do that, that’s going to allow me to rotate my hips. You’ll notice in the takeaway my hips start to rotate. If we just watch those, just a couple degrees, maybe 10-15 degrees at the most as I’m getting that takeaway, and I’m getting the club to parallel with the ground.

There is a little bit of hip rotation, there’s also quite a bit of shoulder rotation. When I put that pressure in the ground that allows me to rotate my hips, and then against my hips I’m going to let me shoulders rotate.

The easy way to do this is try to keep your right arm pretty straight, but relaxed. So I don’t want to lock my right arm straight and force it, it’ going to be nice and relaxed, but I’m not going to let my right arm fold.

If I let my right arm fold up, I can pull this club back a million different ways, just by using my hands and my wrist.

If I keep my right arm fairly straight and don’t let it bend very much, and I just rotate my torso, now I’m going to be in a pretty good position where I’m letting my shoulders turn.

Once I get those shoulders turning, I can continue that all the way to the top of the swing, get a good full shoulder turn there.

So it all starts the very initial motion no matter what your technique is, no matter who you use as a model, who your favorite swing is, it all starts by putting a little bit of pressure kind of down and out into the ground.

If you’re a kind of player that tends to hang on your left side, now all of a sudden I’ve got to really fight and work to try to get my takeaway happen right. You’re going to feel like your timing’s off.

I want to have a little bit more weight in my right side, maybe 60 percent, as soon as I start back off the ball, or as soon as I start my takeaway.

If we’re looking at that from the down the line view, let’s take a look at that same thing. I’m going to go ahead and set up here, and again, you’ll notice my right arm is fairly straight. I’m putting a little bit of pressure into the ground.

Now when I stop when the club’s parallel with the ground, you’ll see how my right arm from this angle is pretty straight. Now it’s not, again like I said, locked, but it’s fairly straight and that forces my shoulders to rotate.

One of the mistakes that I’ll see as I mentioned is, starting to pick that club up with the right arm to pull it back. Right-handed golfers, we like to do things with the right hand.

One of the most common ones is pulling the club to the inside and we’ll start to see the hands are actually going out. So if you look at when I do the perfect takeaway, you’ll notice that my left hand is right about over my toes, or kind of around where this stick is.

There’s a little bit of wiggle room in there, it could be here in this general area. What I don’t want to do is let my hands come out this way.

So when the left hand goes out away from my body, to compensate what you’re naturally going to do without even realizing it is letting your right wrist bend back and start to suck the club to the inside like that.

A lot of players go inside and then come over the top, especially players that struggle with the slice a lot. When we’re doing this takeaway, one thing I want to work on, I want to focus on, is my right wrist as I go all the way here.

I’m going to let my shoulders turn and I’m only going to have a little bit of bend in that right wrist. If I start to feel like my right wrist really bends a lot, I’ll know that I’m sucking that club to the inside.

Same thing with my left wrist. At address, it’s a little bit cupped her, slight end in my left wrist. As I continue to the end of the takeaway, you’re going to notice it still has a little bit of bend in it.

If I start to pull that club to the inside, well now you’d notice this has really started to bow and I’m losing that cup and that club starts to go in here.

If you’re struggling with that, what you’re going to feel, this is an exaggeration, but you’re going to feel more like as you turn back, you keep your hands in and let the club stay outside of them.

When you do that, when you look on camera, you’re going to see it’s more something like this. This is very little wrist motion, very little wrist movement as that’s happening. That’s the biggest mistake I see, people getting the club to the inside.

There are also players that tend to pick the club up outside like that, and again, that’s me not rotating my hips, not rotating my shoulders, and I’m picking the club up.

You’ll notice my right arm starts to bend a little bit too much, and I’m picking the club up like this, getting my thumb to start to go up a little bit too vertically. So it’s kind of a picking up motion where you’ll notice my shoulders aren’t really rotating very much, I’m just all arms.

Again, I want to feel like wrists do hardly anything, and then from there, I’m letting my shoulders get the club to go back. Those are two of the really common ones.

Now lastly here, we’re going to talk about how much the arms move up and down, which is a very small amount. Then the big kind of topic of controversy is how much we should rotate or pronate the club.

At the end of my takeaway, should my club be straight up and down, the leading edge of that club be straight up and down? Some players would tell you it needs to be there.

If you look at early 2000s with Tiger Woods, that’s what you’re going to see, something like that. You look at Adam Scott, some of the best-looking swings out there, that club’s going to be a bit more vertical that way.

You look at some other players and they try to match the leading edge of the club with the spine angle. So which one is correct? Well, it really comes down to preference.

What really happens here, and the reason that that doesn’t particularly make a huge difference, is that it’s all going to change right after that anyway.

If I’m going to the end of the takeaway, and here my club matches my spine, well at the top of the swing, my club face is going to match the back of my forearm and it’s going to rotate open anyway.

Even if it's closed here, at the top of the swing it’s going to be open regardless. It doesn’t really make much difference. I could go closed, I could do this at the end of the takeaway, that just means I have to rotate a lot more in the second half of the swing.

If I’m more toe up, that means I’m gradually kind of letting that rotate throughout the entire backswing. That rotation happens from what’s called pronation and supination.

My left forearm, if I grab that, you’ll feel there’s two bones that roll over each other. As I do my takeaway, that starts to pronate a little bit, or turn like you grab a doorknob, turn it to the left.

My right arm, same thing, or excuse me, turn the doorknob clockwise, turn the doorknob to the right. Same thing on my right hand, I’m turning a doorknob to the right, that would be called supination.

I have a little bit of that throughout the backswing to get this club to come back and the club face to stay on plane.

If I don’t do very much of that in the backswing, I have to do – so if I keep my hands kind of closed – I have to do twice as much to continue the backswing. If I don’t do very much in the takeaway, I’ve got to do twice as much as I go to the top.

If I do a little bit more in the takeaway, then I can just continue that same pronation/supination happening all the way to the top of the swing.

It’s a little bit down to your personal preference. What we don’t want to do is to have the club face very open and then have it wide open at the top of the swing. Or we don’t want to have it very closed and keep I really closed at the top of the swing.

There has to be a little bit of pronation, a little bit of rolling of the forearms as we go back to the top. So that’s going to cover the main pieces.

One last thing here, how much do we need to lift up? A good rule of thumb is as you get to the end of your takeaway, your club when it’s parallel with the ground, should be somewhere between the bottom of your pocket, just below there, or the belt buckle, or the belt itself.

If I’m really picking my club up with all hands and arms, kind of like this, my club’s already parallel to the ground and its way down here because I’ll I’m doing is kind of flicking my club up with my wrist, I’m not really using my shoulders again.

Again, the key is, a little bit of pressure in that right foot and let my shoulders rotate, we’re not using much wrist action at all.

My club should be parallel with the ground somewhere in this general zone here, and if you’re doing that, you’re having a nice, wide takeaway, that’s going to create a big arc. If I pick the club up, all of a sudden I’m creating a narrow arc and not going to get a lot of speed.

If I keep my arms, again right arm straight, big arc going back, now I can really create a lot of speed in a big arc, and I can create some easy swing speed like that.

Let’s recap on the major pieces here. Number one, I’m starting out. I want to have a little bit of weight on my right side.

We go over in the Top Speed Golf System how we have what’s called the stable fluid spine, we get a little bit of tilt, that’s automatically going to set you up where you can get that weight on the right side early.

Number two, not going to use the wrist or the arms very much in the takeaway. I’m going to let the rotation of my body bring the club back.

Then lastly there, I’m going to be parallel with the ground somewhere around pocket height, and I’m going to go ahead and I can pick which one I want to do as far as how much pronation I get, but I have to continue that to the top of the swing.

If I do that I’m going to be perfectly on plane, I’m going to look just like some of your favorite golfers out there, Adam Scott, Tiger Woods, those kind of guys.

Let’s go ahead and hit one, and we’ll see how I do with the takeaway. All right guys, nail that takeaway, you’ll be hitting some great shots.