Flat shaft halfway back

[nemo]

Hi

I struggle to get my shaft vertical in the backswing and I don't know why.
For a while I thought it was my swing plane (as in the plane of my hands and arms) but I found even when swinging on a steep plane my wrists automatically roll and cause the club to be in a flat position.

I have attached an old photo which shows the position I am talking about - it causes me to have a flat backswing and steeper downswing - not what I want.

Ideally these would be reversed

I have found a few drills to correct this (not sure if they will work or not) but more important to me is knowing the cause.

Any advice welcome!

Thanks - Jon

[marino]

Re: Flat shaft halfway back

Ya, John. Try standing .5 "-1.5" closer to the ball.

[Neil18]

Re: Flat shaft halfway back

Jon,

It's kinda hard to completely identify the cause from the three photos provided, but I had this problem a while back. For me, it came from over active wrists in the backswing. Rather that just swinging back, I used to roll my left wrist. This automatically brings the clubhead inside your hands before the club reaches parallel with the ground, so when you start to fully turn, the position you've achieved naturally lays the club flatter through the rest of the backswing. To compensate, from the top of the swing the right hand becomes too active to bring the club back into the slot before coming down, hence bringing the whole club in a semi "over the top" move, hence steepening the angle of the shaft on the downswing.

Try some, all, or a combo of these:

- In the first few moments of the backswing, keep the butt end pointed in toward your right thigh. This keeps theclub head outside your hands.

- Instead of rolling your wrists clockwise during the backswing, keep them more passive.

- Feel like when you've reached parallel, that you're going to hoist the clubhead up and over your right shoulder as you turn. But you certainly don't wantr a vertical shaft. In your case, more vertical would be good, The club pointing somewhere near the ball halfway back.

- If you find that everything starts to move at the start of the backswing (hands, arms, body, hips), this can sometimes lead to too much body motion too early, and leads to flatness halfway back. To counteract this, lead the backswing with just your arms until you feel the inside of your left arms pressing lightly against your left rib cage. THEN turn your body. Keeps it connected, keeps it in synch, stops overswing (if you have one), and gives a better coil, as well as helping to start the club back on the right track.

- Dont' use your right hand from the top. Think of it as leading with dropping your left hand, not hitting with your right. This should help keep the shaft on a shallower plane on the downswing. Using your rigt hand only stands the shaft up = the occasional slice that gets worse the longer the club.

Hope at least some of this may help.

N18