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The clubface is open at the top if the toe of the club is pointing more downward than the angle of the forearm. If this is the case, then you likely had a weak grip, or excessively extended your wrist during the backswing. By checking your club face at shaft parallel in the backswing, you'll be able to determine if the clubface was open early because of a weak grip. If the clubface is solid at the top of the swing, but you still struggle with the slice, then you know it was more of a downswing issue.
Tags: Not Straight Enough, Draw vs Fade, Concept
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In this concept video, we're going to talk about open club face at the top of the swing.
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So one of the key references for looking at ball flight is your club face position.
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And one of the key timings to look at or references the check is if you look at the club face
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of the top of the swing, this is easiest to do from the down the line camera angle.
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Just as a rough definition, if we had the angle of our arm at the top,
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and open club face is going to point more downward compared to that wrist.
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So square would be compared to the wrist just a tiny bit closed like this,
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and then closed would be pointing up that way.
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So open would be pointing more down like this, or almost vertical at the top of the swing.
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So if the club gets to vertical at the top of the swing, that means something during the back swing is opening it.
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It's either going to come from just having a really weak grip, which we'll discuss, or from a specific wrist movement.
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So first let's look at this grip alignment.
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If I tend to grip more in the palm and I tend to have my wrist more on top, kind of like this,
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well now if I go up to the top of the swing where that left wrist is pretty flat,
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you'll see that the club is pointing more downward just like that.
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So if it doesn't look like I'm massively opening the club, or if it looks like it's open in the takeaway,
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and then also at the top of the swing, that's a good indicator that I have more of a grip issue.
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The second key for looking at the open position of the top of the swing is looking at the angle of the left wrist.
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Now I could easily be doing this with the right wrist, but the left wrist is a really good indicator.
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And basically looking at half flat the wrist is compared to either set up or the first parallel or takeaway.
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So if I use a left arm flat as a grip reference angle,
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basically a neutral grip will be when the club is pointing about 10-15 degrees up like this.
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So a weak grip would be pretty much vertical and then a strong grip would be pointing much more up like that.
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So if I take my grip and then I just hold my hand so that my left arm is flat, I can get a quick snapshot of my grip.
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If my grip is pretty neutral, but then I get up to the swing and the club is pointing down, you'll see that the way that I did that was by extending the wrist.
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So basically going like this tends to open the club face, that can make it more powerful for me to pull down with my wrist.
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But it makes it much weaker for me to pull down for my body, to rotate my body.
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So that causes some problems further down the road.
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So if you are struggling with the club face getting open and you're looking through your timeline and it's open at the top,
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you either want to check your grip or you want to check the way that you're setting the club.
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There's the two main reasons that you'd be getting open at the top of the swing.
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In other videos we'll discuss the common problems that happen from being open,
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but this video is just designed to help you identify whether or not it's open at the top and which of the two main causes created it.
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If I'm open at the top, I might hit him thin and I might have more of a slice kind of like that.
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Try to correct it, but it's hard.
