If you have read any golf instruction in the past, or if you have talked to other golfers on the range about golf technique, you’ve probably heard about the importance of using a square clubface.

Specifically, you’ve heard that your club face needs to be square at the top of the backswing. That’s great – but what does it mean? Without further information, that tip is pretty much useless.

With this article, we’d like to take away any of the confusion that may be rolling around in the back of your mind on this topic. We are going to explain what it means to have the club face square at the top, as well as offering advice on how you can check for yourself. While it is not 100% necessary to have your club face square at the top in order to hit good shots – you might be able to recover on the way down – the game tends to be simpler if you can find this position. Take some time to work on the positioning of your club face throughout the swing and you will be on your way to becoming a better player.

Before you get started working on this part of your swing, it’s important to note that you need to be honest with yourself anytime you are working on swing technique. Don’t just see what you want to see – try to be objective, judge yourself fairly, and think through how you can improve moving forward. The ball doesn’t lie in golf, so faulty technique is going to be exposed one way or another. If you aren’t happy with the position of the club face at the top of your swing currently, take action on the driving range and make the changes that you feel will lead to better play.

All of the content below is based on a right-handed golfer. If you happen to play left-handed, please take a moment to reverse the directions as necessary.

What Does It Mean to Be Square?

There are a lot of terms to learn in the game of golf. Some of them are important, many are not, and it is crucial that you are able to sort through them all in order to pick up a meaningful understanding of the game. In this article, we are talking about the concept of keeping your club face ‘square’ at the top of the swing. As you might guess, since we are dedicating an entire article to this topic, this is one of those things that is certainly worth learning.

Before we talk about what it means to have your club face square at the top of the swing, we need to first talk about what a square club face is and why it is important. At impact, the club face is said to be square if it is pointed directly down the target line you have selected for the shot. In other words, the face of the club will be perpendicular to the target line when it is in a square position. If the face is pointed to the left of the target, it is said to be in a ‘closed’ position, while leaving the face pointed out to the right of the target means it is ‘open’. Understanding this basic concept is important if you are going to make progress with your game moving forward.

Okay – so we’ve now established that a square club face is one which is pointed at the target when you make contact with the ball. But what about when the club is up at the top of the swing? This is where it can get a little tricky. To be sure, you don’t want the club face to be pointed at the target when you are up at the top of the swing. The golf swing is a rotational action, so the club face is going to turn open on the way back before rotating back to the left as you swing through. If you were to try holding the club face square to the line throughout the entire swing, you would be quite disappointed with the results.

Since the club face is not supposed to be pointed at the target when you are at the top of the swing, you will need another point of reference to use in order to evaluate your progress. Fortunately, you can use your left arm for just this purpose. As it happens, if the position of your club face at the top of the swing matches up with the position of your left arm, you can be confident that you are in a square position.

It is best to think about this concept as viewed from behind the golfer (from the down-the-line angle). Imagine that you are standing at the driving range watching one of your friends hit a few shots. You are standing a few yards behind them, safely out of the way of the swing and looking directly down the target line. If your friend were to stop his or her swing at the top, you would be able to compare the club face and the left arm pretty easily from this view.

• If the left arm and the club face match up – meaning they both form a similar angle with reference to the ground – the club face is square, and the swing should be in good shape moving forward.
• If the club face is forming a flatter angle than the left arm, meaning it is facing more up toward the sky, the face is in a closed position.
• If the toe is down at the top of the swing, causing the face of the club to be more vertical than the left arm, the club face is in an open position.

As you can probably tell already, it’s hard to evaluate your own swing in regard to this key point, since you can’t stand behind yourself as you swing. Later in the article, we will talk about some options you have at your disposal for assessing your own performance. For now, all you should focus on is understanding how this works.

To recap, the club face matching up with the left arm is an indication that you are in a square position. If the club face is pointed up toward the sky, the face is closed, and if the toe is pointed down toward the ground, your club face is open. Even if this all still seems a bit murky, don’t worry too much – it will become clearer as you start to work on it on the range.

Three Options

As mentioned above, it’s going to be nearly impossible to accurately assess the status of your club face at the top of your golf swing while you are the one making the swing. You just don’t have a good angle to view this particular part of your swing while it happens live. Fortunately, there are three options you may want to consider for analyzing your club face at the top. It isn’t smart to make adjustments to your swing before you actually know the status of your current swing mechanics, so making an accurate read on your technique at the moment is the best place to start.

Let’s quickly walk through each of the three options you have for checking on your club face at the top of the backswing.

• Use a mirror. The first idea we would like to present is the possibility of using a mirror. Some driving ranges have one or two full-length mirrors located somewhere around the practice facility for golfers to use. If your driving range has a mirror available, go ahead and use it to see if you can view how your club face is performing at the top. Basically, you are going to use the mirror to allow you to get that down-the-line view that we were talking about earlier. Stand so that the mirror is to your right, on an extension of the target line. Then, swing up to the top of your swing and hold (obviously, you need to be far enough away from the mirror to swing safely). If you are positioned correctly, it should be pretty easy to see both your club face and your left arm, which are the two things you need to see in order to make an accurate assessment.
• Use video. If you frequently practice golf with a friend, you can easily use video to check on your swing. Ask your friend to record you making a few swings, all from the down-the-line viewpoint. Once you’ve captured a few swings on video, simply watch it back to see how you are doing. You should be able to pause the video at the top in order to get a good look at your face angle. In addition to begin able to use video to check your face angle, you can also use it to check a variety of other important elements like your stance, your swing plane, and much more.
• Take a lesson. This last option is not free, of course, but it certainly is the most powerful. Consider enlisting professional help by taking a swing lesson from a teaching pro at a course near you. When you book the lesson, or when you first get started with the lesson, tell the pro that you are specifically concerned about the club face position you are reaching at the top of the backswing. The pro is certainly going to be familiar with the importance of this position, and he or she will be able to watch this point carefully as you hit some shots. Most likely, it won’t take long for the pro to assess how your club face is behaving and pass that information along to you. As an added bonus, the pro will be able to provide tips and suggest drills with regard to fixing your club face position (assuming there is a problem in the first place).

To simply start making changes to your swing without first trying to figure out what is going wrong would be a big mistake. The goal of a swing change is always to make you play better, of course, but making a change without a specific plan in mind can actually cause you to play worse. Take the time to analyze the current state of your swing and then come up with a specific path you are going to take in order to improve your mechanics.

The Adjustment Phase

In this section, we are going to assume that you have found some sort of error with the position of your club face at the top of the swing. Whether you are leaving the face open or allowing it to become shut, the next step is obvious – you’ll need to fix that position to get closer to square at the top. But how do you accomplish that goal? Let’s take a look.

First, we are going to address the issue of an open club face at the top of the swing. When you find that the face is open at the top, it’s likely that you are using your hands too actively during the takeaway. This is an extremely common mistake. If you use your hands and wrists to help move the club back away from the ball, it’s likely that you’ll wind up turning the face open – at least to a slight degree, if not severely. From there, even if you do everything right throughout the rest of your swing, you’re still going to have an open club face and it’s likely you’ll hit either a fade or a slice.

To straighten out your ball flight, try using your shoulders to get the swing started. Simply turn your shoulders away from the target while keeping your hands as quiet as possible. Your hands will get involved eventually to set the club and prepare for the downswing, but don’t let them take action too early. When executed correctly, this type of takeaway feels controlled, simple, and repeatable.

On the other side of the coin, you will need to make a different adjustment if your club face is closed at the top. When this is the case, it’s possible that balance issues are actually to blame. Ideally, you’d like to rotate away from the target in the backswing without moving your weight much in any direction. However, if you lean a bit to the left – toward the target – while swinging back, your rotation may suffer, and the club face may remain closed. This is sometimes called a reverse pivot, as the golfer moves toward the target in the backswing only to move away (back to the right) in the downswing. You don’t want to find yourself in this pattern.

If you would like to get away from the closed club face position at the top of the swing, the first thing you need to do is work on improving your balance. Put your club down and try making some practice ‘swings’ without actually using a club. This will allow you to focus on where your body weight is as the swing develops. If you feel your weight moving to the left as you turn to the right, stop and try again. Work on staying nicely centered throughout the backswing. Succeeding on this point will put you in a great position to swing down aggressively once the backswing is complete.

Of course, there are many different reasons why you may be struggling to square up the club face at the top of the swing. If you are having trouble solving this riddle on your own, turning to a local teaching professional for help is a good idea. We mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating, as it is a potentially game-changing option to consider. A teaching pro will be able to provide you with plenty of tips on how you can improve the way your club face works from address up to the top. Given the fact that golf lessons tend to be rather affordable, investing time and money in this way could pay off for years to come.

Taking the Next Step

To finish up our article, we are going to operate under the assumption that you have now fixed the position of your club at the top of the swing, and you are ready to get back out onto the course. So, it’s all going to be smooth sailing from here, right? Not so fast. As every experienced golfer knows, nothing ever comes as easy as you might hope when you head to the first tee. This is a hard game, and you are going to have to earn every bit of your progress. Even after you have made great strides on the driving range, there is still plenty of work to do before you can record lower scores on the course.

The first hurdle you will need to get over is building trust in your new and improved swing. Even if you have seen great results on the range, it’s still likely that you will struggle to trust this new club face position when you get onto the course. Most golfers want to revert back to what is familiar when they leave the range and get back to the course for an actual round. There is nothing magical we can say to get you over this hurdle, other than simply knowing it exists will help you deal with it more effectively. If you are tempted during one of your first rounds to give up on your new technique and go back to your old ways, slow down for a second and keep the big picture in mind. With each shot you hit, your new technique will become more and more comfortable, and your confidence will grow. In time, you’ll forget all about your old swing, and the new one will be completely natural.

In addition to the trust issue, there is also the matter of changes to your ball flight that you’ll need to consider. It’s almost certain that a change to the position of the club face at the top of the swing is going to lead to a change in your standard ball flight. For example, if you used to play with an open club face at the top of the swing, you were probably hitting at least a fade, if not a slice. If that club face position is now closer to square, you may be hitting a reasonably straight ball, or even a draw.

Even if your new ball flight is better than the old one, which is likely the case, you still need to learn how to play it effectively. For starters, you’ll need to adjust the way you aim. Obviously, if you aim to the left expecting a fade, and hit a draw instead, the results are not going to be pretty. Pay close attention to the way the ball is flying and adjust your aim accordingly. Also, your course management strategy should evolve based on your new tendencies. The holes that you used to play aggressively might now call for a more conservative approach due to your ball flight changes, and vice versa. Keep an open mind and make adjustments as you go in order to get the most out of your new game.

Playing golf without a square club face at the top of the backswing is not impossible, but it certainly can be challenging. To make things a little easier on yourself, work on finding a square position at the top, or at least as close to square as you can. We hope the tips and ideas presented in this article will help you get closer to a position at the top which will set you up for an excellent downswing. Good luck!

So how can you tell if the clubface is square at the top of your back swing? Well, the first thing is you don’t want to be looking at the top of your back swing, but you want to be away of where it should be, so let me demonstrate. When you set up the golf ball you swing the club back, if I were to set the golf back and get into position like this; you can see that the back of the left arm, the left hand and the club are already parallel with each other. So that is the square position. So let’s change the position. If I get myself into a position like this, this is an open position, okay? The key here is the back of the left hand, this is how I coach. So that’s open that’s square and that’s closed, so if you actually think about a clubface, if I get up to 12:00, the clubface is open, if I get to quarter past, the clubface is closed, so the clubface is facing the sky, the clubface is here with the top post to the ground and the perfect position is when it is half way between the two markers which is here. Now you might have think, okay I will take you with that, but I want a bit more evidence? Very, very simple, very – very simple tip, so let’s take it back, don’t take my word for this, you go and try this.

So I'm going to set myself up and I'm going to swing the clubface but now which is closed now remember the clubface, where it was? So I take it myself top, I swing the club back like this and I said to you this is closed. So how would I know that’s closed? If I take the club back into this position here, if I turn my body back round here and drop the club back down, the club is facing the closed position. If I; were to take the clubface back and swing the club up like this, open and as I turn my body like that, so I'm back head on and drop the club back down, the clubface is open.

Now before you say oh I have moved the club, I can sure you I haven’t, I haven’t moved the club at all, but very, very simple at the top of the back swing, the clubface, the shaft and the arm should be in one piece, it should be the same angle all the way up as you can see. And that’s where I need you to get yourself into and that’s where the focus. I'm showing you the other two things because the most common swing out there is this, and that’s an open position. The most golfers tend to hit the ball from left to right, so that’s the open position. So now you know what you are looking for, everything should be nice and parallel with the shaft and the clubface at the top of the back swing from your left arm and that’s how you know if you are actually in a square position at the top of your back swing.