So if we’ve established that a backswing needs to be a good solid takeaway, a good solid takeaway is a good start to a backswing. We need to make sure the big muscles are doing this, and a lot of the smaller muscles and the legs are staying quite stable. We need to also look out for a couple of key faults that might be an issue. A couple of key faults you can see one key fault you can’t see. Lets start with the one you cant see first. When we set up to the golf ball nicely, and I’ll set up just here so I can see your phase on, we are getting ourselves into a good position nicely here, the first motion should be the shoulders turning in their way there. And it looks very simple, but for a lot of golfers they make it quite complex, they make it quite complicated. And actually for a lot of golfers the thing you cant see is how much they are thinking about, they’ve stood over the ball thinking ten different things, do this, don’t do that, what did Pete say about that, how should I do this movement? And actually we want to take the club away utilizing the shoulders and nothing else.

So from here we turn the shoulders and we take the club back in a way nicely, and it’s a relatively simple motion and you need to think of it like a relatively simple motion, don’t try and overcomplicate that movement in your head, just turn the shoulders, let the club come back on line because if you are overcomplicating it there you are probably going to get even more complicated as more things move in the backswing and that could cause you some big struggles for your down swing. So once we’ve got set up we are moving this away nicely, we need to make sure that the two other things don’t happen. We don’t want too much action with the hands, if we are setting up to a good position and then the hands start getting involved they either go out or they go in very rarely will they come back on line. Let the shoulders bring the club back on line and keep your hands relatively passive through this early phase. Very few golfers will benefit from using the hands here or here during the swing. Let the shoulders do the hard work; keep your hands quite passive. And one more area to look at slightly different part of your swing is going to be in your legs, we need to make sure the left knee is not too involved in the backswing.

For a lot of golfers particularly those that struggle with flexibility, poor flexibility through the core, as the club moves back away from the ball we see a lot of golfers start to get involved in the legs, and the left knee particularly starts to help them or tries to help them should I say, in the backswing. Now if the club is going back and knee is starting to bend we often get ourselves into difficulty here that we flex into the golf ball coming this way here, starting almost in reverse pivot. If the left knee starts to collapse as the shoulders turn, the body weight will drop on to that lower side, we reverse pivot into the ball then we are in all sorts of trouble. So from a good set up, we want to avoid any reverse pivoting this way and then backing out of the ball this way. That’s not going to be good for you; we want to set up, turn away to your right side and then drive through the ball nicely rather than reverse pivoting onto your left side. So try and keep that backswing movement simple in terms of what you are thinking about, avoid too much hand action, and avoid too much left knee action and hopefully that will help improve your takeaway in that first 18 inches from the ball.