When taking the club away from the ball, trying to get all of your body parts to move together and in unison is like a Broadway dance performance.
A good takeaway of the golf club has your body parts connected and moving as one piece. It takes teamwork, patience and plenty of practice.
Your upper back, arms and hands are the key players in your takeaway. If they don’t work together or in the right order, the whole song and dance is out of sync and the audience will boo your bad shots.
A good takeaway begins with your thoracic spine, or upper back, as the lead. Your arms, and then your hands, are the partners that follow. Rotating your upper back around your spine first, while maintaining the forward tilt in your posture, is the beginning of the dance.
Our hands love to take over and almost always try to steal the show and take the lead. These smaller and faster moving parts make your swing feel quick and will always outpace the bulkier and slower-moving upper back if you let them.
When your hands take the lead, they often yank the club head too much to the inside, which results in the club swinging under the swing plane and too far behind you. This misstep will cause overall poor timing, resulting in poor ball-striking. Kind of like stepping on someone’s toes.
To get a good feel of your back, arms and hands dancing together on your takeaway, put a ball between your forearms at address and practice your takeaway by rotating only your back to lead your forearms and quiet hands. When connected and in unison on the takeaway, you should see the letter Y formed by your arms and club, with the butt end of the grip pointing at your left thigh.
When your back, arms and hands dance together on your takeaway, you’ll set yourself up for more power and better ball-striking. That’s certainly something worth boogieing about.
Peter Harris is the director of Golf at the Fore-U Golf Center in West Lebanon. His column appears in the weekly Recreation page during the golf season.