Click here and enter your email address to watch the full video
Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America. Meet your new instructor.

Subscribe now to watch the full video.

Troubleshooting - Setting The Club

  • All arms
  • sway
  • loss of posture
  • manipulating the clubface

Tags: Backswing, Concept

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000
In this concept video, we're going to go over troubleshooting setting the club,

00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:08,000
where the second half of the backswing.

00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:15,000
So, there's a handful of errors that we typically see that are very similar to what we see in the takeaway.

00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:18,000
If you recall from the concept video about what we want to do,

00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:24,000
once we've made this good takeaway movement, we want to set the club with a simple kind of

00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:31,000
hinging folding, rotating of the arms, as well as continuing to have the shoulders go down.

00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:37,000
Now, one common one would be to have the shoulders come up during setting the club,

00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:43,000
and one major reason why you may be standing up or having that left shoulder come up during the

00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:49,000
setting the club phase is if you are focusing on it and you're trying to get that shoulder down so

00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:54,000
quickly and you do it as much as you can, it can't stay down there and so it tends to come up.

00:00:54,000 --> 00:01:00,000
You want this side bend movement to be kind of evenly distributed throughout your backswing.

00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:04,000
So, pay attention to the rate at which your side bending and maybe too fast too soon.

00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:09,000
Another common error, or the second one, would be the sway.

00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:14,000
So, I mentioned in the takeaway of getting to the outside of the foot, it's very common

00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:20,000
that when you go to set the club, you will actually get into the outside of your foot like so.

00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:24,000
So, it'll be a good looking takeaway and then as I set the club, it'll go like that.

00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:32,000
Like that. The tour average is about an inch of lateral movement. That's the upper end.

00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:39,000
What I frequently see on 3D with amateurs is somewhere around four, five inches sometimes,

00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:44,000
a lateral movement to the right away from the target. That just, it doesn't load the hip for

00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:50,000
what we want to do in transition. All it loads is the shoulder for creating a chop pattern on the

00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:54,000
way down. So, pay attention to the sway section if this is one of your issues.

00:01:56,000 --> 00:02:01,000
The next piece that we tend to see is going to be your arm plane. Now, this tends to go a little

00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:05,000
bit with that standing up movement, but if I were to face this way,

00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:11,000
when I have my arms, if I just stand up and go through that movement, you can see how this, the shaft,

00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:17,000
gets close to parallel to my body. It's a little bit less than parallel. I'll turn a little bit more that way.

00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:25,000
See right there. If this is perfectly vertical, then when I bend forward, now the weight of the club is actually pulling

00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:32,000
down this way. So, very commonly, if I have a very vertical arm plane, my body will stand up

00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:37,000
so that the weight of the club is supported better by my hands. But what that could mean is that you have a

00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:42,000
good takeaway and then you just hinge it up vertically. So, you stand up to balance it out instead of

00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:52,000
letting that rotate as the club sets. So, as I fold my arm, it also rotates out like so. This gets you

00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:59,000
in position for the motorcycle move or to get into delivery position. The last piece that we tend to

00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:04,000
is something called reverse spine angle. This can go very often with the sway, but it doesn't have to.

00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:12,000
It's basically when you go to set the club and you completely collapse your spine where you basically

00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:18,000
arch your lower back like so. That puts a lot of pressure in your lower back and is one of the top causes

00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:25,000
of lower back pain. It can simply be, well, I'm not holding on to my abs or it can be a result of

00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:31,000
some tightness in the rib cage. So, when I get to here, I feel like I can't go any further unless

00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:38,000
I collapse my spine like so and that kind of gives the appearance of extending the spine, but it's all

00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:44,000
in the lower back and it's very problematic. It can mess up the timing of the lower body in

00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:51,000
the sheying your transition and cause you to get to armsy, but the big thing is it causes back pain

00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:57,000
which could force you to not be able to play as much as you'd like. So, we've got standing up,

00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:02,000
we've got the sway, we've got the steep arm plane and we've got reverse spine angle as the big

00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:07,000
common areas that you'll have to pay attention to when you're working on setting the club.

00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:14,000
One last little piece with the arm with the arm plane, you'll notice in order to get that arm

00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:21,000
vertical. I'll tend to have this right arm work more back behind me with the elbow going high

00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:26,000
as opposed to the hand getting above the elbow. If the hand goes behind my body, that'll tend to get

00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:32,000
this club very flat or sorry, very steep. Where if the elbow stays more in front, that allows

00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:36,000
the club to flatten out a little bit and prepare you for a delivery position a little bit more.

00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:44,000
So, in summary, we've got standing up, you've got swaying off the wall, you've got your arm

00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:50,000
plane either from just the wrists or from that right shoulder. You've got the reverse spine angle

00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:55,000
and those are the biggest issues that we tend to see with setting the club. So, pay attention to which

00:04:55,000 --> 00:05:01,000
one I've recommended or which one your issue is and go find the Associated Drills to help you correct it.

Subscribe now for full access to our video library.