HOW TO GET CORRECT TAKEAWAY

Takeaway is the movement that starts the club on the backswing, the golf club moves from the setup position to the hip-level position. The movement includes two main movements: the body rotates and the wrist begins to bend up.

HOW TO EFFECTIVE TAKEAWAY?

In the article shared by VGA coach Huong Ly, the coach annotates the image illustrating a good takeaway location (Figure 1-2). The upper body begins to rotate, bringing the arms up, and wrists slightly bent when reaching a hip-level position. At this time, the spine tilt angle remains the same, the club face tilts slightly downward, and the club head is straight with the wrist position. Good takeaway facilitates a simple, effective swing. The world's top golfers also focus on practicing this movement regularly, such as Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlRoy, Max Homa, ...

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Figure 1

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Figure 2

COMMON MISTAKES WHEN TAKEAWAY

The coach observed that golf students mainly make mistakes in two cases: one is bending the wrist too much while the shoulder rotates little or not at all, and the other is bending the wrist too late or rotating the forearm too much, causing the club head to fall behind the body. The club body and face are turned up (Figure 3).

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Figure 3

Coach Huong Ly finds the second error more common than the first. If we bring the club up to open the clubface and lean back inward, when we hit it down, our body will compensate by rotating our forearms back to hit the ball straight, which is an extra movement that makes ball contact unstable. No one wants to complicate the already difficult game of golf, right?

The coach himself also made the mistake of pulling the club head back, making the swing direction not straight along the target line and making it difficult to control the ball. If you find yourself having the same problem as Coach Huong Ly once encountered, you can refer to the following two exercises to understand the correct movements and improve.

EXERCISES TO TAKEAWAY IN CORRECT POSITION

Lesson 1 - Insert a long stick at an angle behind the direction of play, parallel to the stick handle at setup (Illustration 4-5) about one iron handle length from the body. Practice rotating your shoulders and chest combined with bending your wrists until the stick handle is parallel to the direction of play, the stick head is close to the top of the long stick, and the stick tip is pointing up.

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Figure 4

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Figure 5

Lesson 2- Practice with a club longer than your golf club. Hold the club in the setup position, leaving a piece of club behind the wrist. In the picture, I use the U.S Kids Golf height measuring stick. (Figure 6)

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Figure 6

Practice takeaway by bringing the stick handle up parallel to your toes (Figure 7), then rotate your shoulders a bit and bend your wrist to point the stick at the target line (Figure 8).

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Figure 7

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Figure 8

You can choose one of the two exercises above or combine both in all training sessions for at least a month. During each practice session, you combine cold exercises between shots, occasionally returning to the movements to check your progress.

Hopefully, Coach Huong Ly's explanations and the two exercises I have successfully applied can help people better understand the swing, apply it in practice and have more good shots.