The Golf Swing Plane

You will hear many golfers, professional and amateurs alike, talking about the golf swing plane. Golf legends for years have made it a primary focus in their quest for the perfect golf swing.

After winning the Masters in 1997, Tiger Woods admitted that his backswing was ugly ~ his very own words. Believing in the merits of a good golf swing plane, he changed his swing to adhere to a flatter and more correct backswing plane. If you look at his backswing closely, you will see that he now goes back in a plane that is much closer to his forward swing plane. By flattening his backswing plane, getting much closer to his ideal plane (ideally, where the club goes back in a single plane and the forward swing is more around the body (flatter also) he improved his swing.

Anyone who studies the game of golf knows that although Ben Hogan did not invent the concept of the golf swing plane, he certainly popularized it. His attention to perfecting his own golf swing plane led to his notoriety as one of the best ball-strikers ever. He even wrote a book about it titled, Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf.

So just what is the golf swing plane? The golf swing plane is defined as an imaginary surface that describes the path and angle of the club during the swing. The components of the golf swing plane are the backswing, the downswing and the follow through. To picture it, imagine a golfer standing over the ball, club in hand and extended in readiness to swing. Now in your mind, draw a diagonal line from the ball, along the shaft of the club and towards the sky.

The ideal swing is for the golfer to bring his club back in a line parallel to that diagonal line with the club head stopping at the top of the diagonal, bringing it back down the way it came up and then after striking the ball to follow through parallel to that diagonal line back to the top. So, you are effectively swinging from the bottom of the diagonal line, to the top, back down to the bottom and back up to the top.

You can swing along three different golf swing planes and deviation from the right golf swing plane will lead to bad shots.

The first is the right one, when you swing straight down the target line.
The second one is when you swing down to the left or over the top.
The third one is when you swing out to the right or inside out.

So what causes the deviations to the perfect swing plane? Your swing plane is affected by the tilt of your body as you complete your backswing, downswing and follow through.

If your upper body tilts to the right too much, your ball will start out to the right causing pushes, push fades and duck hooks.

If your upper body tilts to the left too much, your ball will start to the left of the target causing pulls, pull hooks, skied shots and slices.

There are a couple of things that you should look at that will stop the club head from swinging down the perfect line. The first is if you hit with your upper body. This will cause your body to tilt to the left on your downswing.

The second is if you start your downswing with your focus on hitting the ball. This will cause you to get ahead of the ball and your body will tilt to the left because your lower body slides too much laterally on the way down. 

The third is if you slide your lower body laterally through your shot. This will cause your upper body to tilt to the right too much.

Another thing to remember is that an individual's plane gets flatter as the club shaft gets longer and more upright as the shaft gets shorter. However, the golfer's actual position at the top of the backswing should remain pretty much the same, regardless of what club is being used.

This is the first in a series of articles about the components that make up a perfect golf swing.