The 3 Planes of the golf swing.

Tiger and Dustin.

With so much being talked about and written regarding the golf swing and with video technology readily available on phones and other devices there is a ever growing number of people who are going DIY on their golf swing.

Now I don’t have any problem with people sorting out their own games, I believe learning about what works and doesn’t work in your game is one way you can grow as a player.

What is a problem is making changes to your swing without having a full understanding of the mechanics. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The first area people need to understand is the swing planes and wrist set.

Club Plane

Most people focus on one area, the club plane. Obviously this is the most important part as it is what makes contact on the ball. Unfortunately people strive to get this onto the perfect plane without any idea of what influences this. The club plane is mainly influenced by three other elements; the wrist set, the arm plane, and the shoulder plane.

Wrist Set

The wrist set is one of the most common errors I see in the golf swing, people don’t realise how the wrist should set in the swing and will bow, bend, cup and rotate their wrists in all kinds of positions. The wrists can influence clubface position, arm plane, club plane and even shoulder plane. I will talk about proper wrist set in a future blog as it is a subject in itself. Suffice to say proper wrist set is essential to correct club plane.

One final point on the wrist set is that it in itself is often performed poorly as a result of incorrect hold and also the setup position of the hands at address so ensure this is correct before anything else.

Arm Plane

The way the hands rotate around the body have a huge influence on your shots. People who have a flat club plane can have a steep arm plane. This is a very popular mistake. The club gets dragged around them by a poor wrist set or shoulder plane and as a result they lift their arms to correct the swing.  Alternatively they take club up steep and drag hands around their body. Both of these errors can cause all manner of poor shots.

Again, you must check other areas of the setup and swing to see whether these are influencing the arm plane.

Shoulder Plane

Shoulders turning around too shallow or too steep can attribute to the same effect on club and arm plane. It can also have the opposite effect as these planes often change to compensate for the poor shoulder plane.

Remember poor shoulder plane can be caused by posture, wrist set and arm plane and also lower body action.

The key to improving your golf swing is not just identifying the faults but also the direct cause/causes of these. The skill a golf professional has is to identify these. Where DIYers go wrong is they identify one fault but don’t fix the cause of it. Therefore actually making things worse. It’s a bit like replacing the gearbox on your car when its only the clutch that has gone!

If you would like more swing tips/ videos and other ways to improve your game or would like a golf lesson either onsite or online please visit my website www.jrgolfacademy.co.uk