LETTER FROM THE TEACHING PROFESSIONAL LET ’ S MATCH YOUR BACKSWING TO YOUR GRIP
Greetings once again Eaglebrooke ! Hope you all had a great month of May out on the course . This month we ’ re going to take a dive into the backswing and grip relationship and work a little bit on matching them up . As many of you have heard me say before , we are all built different and will swing the club differently , but we can matchup to be more effective in the way we hit golf shots . If we look at Tony Finau , Brooks Keopka , Xander Schauffele , Rory McIlroy , and Jon Rahm all of them are amazing ball strikers and great players , but they all have noticeably different backswings .
So we ’ re going to look at first how we grip the club with the trail arm , and take a look at how it will match up in terms of how the backswing looks . The trail arm is sort of the steering wheel for the backswing . The types of grips will either be On Top , Side Cover , Side On , Side Under , or Under . I have covered the grip in previous articles , so we are going to leave the grip alone for this month .
The length of the backswing is something that we are going to look at . The backswing length is dependent on the thickness of your chest , and also how flexible you are . The simple way to figure out your backswing length is to get into your golf posture and let your lead arm swing like you were making a normal backswing keeping it relatively straight and using normal amount of hip turn , and once you can ’ t go back any further , reach your trail arm up and your hands together . That would be considered your ideal backswing length . You may have been told to make your swing wider , or stretch your backswing , which isn ’ t necessarily bad advice , but trying to extend your backswing longer than your level of flexibility or body type will cause you to pitch your weight forward towards the target . This will create downswing problems that will negate any increased speed you might be generating with a longer backswing . If we look back to our tour pro examples many of them “ bomb it ” without bringing the club to parallel at the top of the backswing .
First , we will start with the on top grip and backswing . On- top simply means that the palm of the trail hand faces toward the ground . And in the backswing the tail elbow will separate from the body , and the path of the club will start outside the target line ..
6 eaglebrooke newsletter